Themes
This seminar follows from one held at the University of Ottawa in September 2010: “Multiculturalism and Religious Identity,” which focused on Canada-India comparisons and included speakers from both countries. It explores issues that emerged from the first seminar as urgently in need of further attention, at the level of both academic research and the formulation of practical social policy. Many of the papers presented at the Ottawa workshop pointed to the limits of constitutions, laws and courts in bringing in bringing about social harmony across religious differences, and in ensuring the protection of vulnerable minorities. For example, several presentations demonstrated the extent to which law and social policy in both Canada and India inevitably reflect majoritarian attitudes and fears, however many legal and constitutional protections there might be in the nation. Other papers drew attention to the perverse effects of policies of recognition for religious groups, examining cases where these policies incentivize the formation of rigid identities, while marginalizing communities that end up being liminal or excluded in relation to the categories recognized by the state.
As a result, in “Living with Religious Diversity,” we wish to look beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, to consider other levels of society involved in fostering respectful, non-violent and (ideally) welcoming social relations between religious communities that have come to identify themselves as distinct from one another. The seminar will not exclude consideration of the role of the state, but will examine this role in its interactions with civil society, religious organizations and private individuals, looking at the way various actors participate in the negotiation of religious diversity and the quest for equality. For example, we ask how religious and state actors collaborate to create particular models of religious behaviour in various states and contexts. In the face of an emergent discourse of the Other both in India and western democracies, moreover, what are the interactions that both ground and subvert that tendency? And does close examination of the challenges individuals face in their everyday lives reveal more subtle barriers to equality for members of minority religions? If so, how might these be remedied?
Second, we ask what kinds of conditions, beliefs and practices within religious communities foster or hinder both inter- and intra-group equality under legal regimes where these communities are granted different forms and degrees of autonomy. What forms of religious discourse and behaviour serve either to reinforce or to undermine hierarchies within and between religious communities? How do these interact with legislation, and with national and transnational discourses of equality and religious freedom? Within the Indian context, caste, as a form of entrenched intra-group domination supported by religious views, is centrally important in this regard and will form a prominent theme in our discussions.
A third focus of the workshop is the potential role of publicly-funded schools and universities in educating citizens about religion. Does education about religion contribute to or enhance the possibility of successful negotiation of difference? Or is it too easily hijacked by religious conservatives for their own goals of proselytization and thus too risky? We also examine the compatibility of religious education with secularism, in the case of publicly-funded religious as well as secular schools, which impinges on the issue of varying definitions and versions of secularism. Does mandatory education about religion in all schools, of the sort implemented in Quebec’s “Ethics and Religious Culture” program, for instance, provide a good model? Or does it conflict with secular values as well as principles of religious freedom? Why has religious education not been provided in Indian public schools, and why are there are no Religious Studies programs at universities there? Thus, we ask how feasible it is in practice to provide non-sectarian education about religion in different countries; what should be the form, level and content of such education; and what are its potential benefits and hazards in the context of different societies.
Finally, we explore other measures, including ones that draw on the internal resources of religious traditions, that may help to counter tendencies towards exclusive, rigid and hostile definitions of identity. How does lived religion inform the ways in which people work through and negotiate diversity? Attention to the actual religious behaviour and interactions of individuals often reveals a very different picture from the one presented by dominant media or the proclamations of official religious authorities. In many cases, while the latter sources project an image of sharply distinct communities with opposed systems of belief and practice, living in confrontation with one another, the former reveals quotidian practices of flexibility, compromise and accommodation, sometimes even of borrowing and fusion, grounded in attitudes of friendship and respect. Here, it is also important to examine views on religious plurality within different communities and traditions, but again in relation to how religious individuals and communities actually live and engage with one another rather than exclusively through the authorized texts of the so-called “world religions.”
Transnational comparison
The workshop retains an India-Canada comparative focus, as this subject is under-studied and underrepresented in the literature on the management of religious and other forms of diversity. Although vastly different in many ways, there is much to be learned about diversity and its negotiation by bringing these two countries into comparative focus. Despite their differences, both countries confront the basic question of how to make room for religious identity and diversity within a national framework, in a manner that is fair and helps to minimize conflict. Canada and India have both struggled to determine the forms of differential legislation and policy that such accommodation legitimately requires, and face the problem of balancing these efforts at accommodation with a respect for individual rights and freedoms, as well as with the search for a common national identity and moral consensus. Both countries also struggle with the majority-minority structure as a way of realizing genuine equality between religious groups, as this structure problematically assumes the dominance of a particular community but also seems to be indispensable in safeguarding the rights of non-dominant religious groups. Furthermore, the precise meaning of “secularism” is a hotly contested issue in Canada and India, as in many countries.
In view of these common problems, cross-cultural comparison can help us to learn from one another to envision creative solutions. Contexts and histories vary, of course, and what works in one nation can rarely be simply transferred without modification to another. Yet presenters at our first workshop argued convincingly that Canada can learn positive lessons from India’s deep religious pluralism and its model of secularism, while India can learn from Canada’s way of balancing individual and community rights as well as its policies regarding religious education. Other presenters rightly pointed out common dangers posed by the fact of religious majorities in both nations, and by the politics of recognition. At the same time, discussion of these issues highlighted the benefits of expanding our conversation to include some comparative discussion of how religious diversity is negotiated in other societies facing similar realities and challenges, such as the U.S. and Europe. Not only can this can enrich our imagination of possibilities and alternative frameworks, but processes of migration, exchange and internationalization mean that countries are not best studied as self-contained units.
Indeed, the use of the term “comparative” should not mislead us into thinking that we are dealing in our case studies with nations comprised of wholly separate histories and peoples, arriving independently at distinct ways of doing things. The world has never been quite like that, and is less and less so. Globalization has yielded vast quantities of cross-border traffic, of many interlinked varieties: trade, communications, tourism, migration, education, to name a few of the most significant. Religion is part of this traffic, and is affected by other elements within it. We have already mentioned diasporic communities whose members keep in close touch with their homelands through new media and frequent travel, in ways that were not possible in the past. Consequently, in comparison with migrants in earlier eras, members of these communities are far better able to preserve the patterns of life and belief they bring with them from their countries of origin. They also exert greater influence on religious communities in their homelands, with which they sometimes maintain close ties. The fact that in India, for example, people of Indian origin living elsewhere have their own legal and social category, complete with the well-known acronym of NRI (Non-Resident Indian) reveals the cultural and economic importance of this group within the country’s landscape.
In addition, one cannot overestimate the impact on religion of international discourses regarding justice and human rights, revolving around concepts like religious freedom, secularism, and equality. The normative principles indicated by these concepts are instantiated in varying ways and degrees across different nations, but hardly any nation remains unaffected by the transnational moral and legal discourses that employ them. Equally influential is the spread of ideas via the internet, which has contributed to a globalization of knowledge, as well as misinformation, about the world’s religious traditions and communities.
In this context, transnational knowledge and “comparison” (for lack of a better term) is more important than ever if the goal is to understand one another across religious differences, especially given that these “others” are also part of who “we” are in so many ways. Such knowledge can help in developing adequately sophisticated approaches to particular cases of injustice, and in correcting orientalist and occidentalist caricatures deployed to justify modes of exclusion and subordination. Many educators and policy-makers have come to believe, for these reasons and others, that teaching citizens about the world’s religions is important, and religious education is one of our primary themes. Too often, however, learning about religion has taken place primarily through the study of religious scriptures and the words of religious authorities. It is equally essential to examine how people negotiate living together in their day-to-day lives, and to look at the traditions of religious thought and practice they evolve in doing so.
This seminar follows from one held at the University of Ottawa in September 2010: “Multiculturalism and Religious Identity,” which focused on Canada-India comparisons and included speakers from both countries. It explores issues that emerged from the first seminar as urgently in need of further attention, at the level of both academic research and the formulation of practical social policy. Many of the papers presented at the Ottawa workshop pointed to the limits of constitutions, laws and courts in bringing in bringing about social harmony across religious differences, and in ensuring the protection of vulnerable minorities. For example, several presentations demonstrated the extent to which law and social policy in both Canada and India inevitably reflect majoritarian attitudes and fears, however many legal and constitutional protections there might be in the nation. Other papers drew attention to the perverse effects of policies of recognition for religious groups, examining cases where these policies incentivize the formation of rigid identities, while marginalizing communities that end up being liminal or excluded in relation to the categories recognized by the state.
As a result, in “Living with Religious Diversity,” we wish to look beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, to consider other levels of society involved in fostering respectful, non-violent and (ideally) welcoming social relations between religious communities that have come to identify themselves as distinct from one another. The seminar will not exclude consideration of the role of the state, but will examine this role in its interactions with civil society, religious organizations and private individuals, looking at the way various actors participate in the negotiation of religious diversity and the quest for equality. For example, we ask how religious and state actors collaborate to create particular models of religious behaviour in various states and contexts. In the face of an emergent discourse of the Other both in India and western democracies, moreover, what are the interactions that both ground and subvert that tendency? And does close examination of the challenges individuals face in their everyday lives reveal more subtle barriers to equality for members of minority religions? If so, how might these be remedied?
Second, we ask what kinds of conditions, beliefs and practices within religious communities foster or hinder both inter- and intra-group equality under legal regimes where these communities are granted different forms and degrees of autonomy. What forms of religious discourse and behaviour serve either to reinforce or to undermine hierarchies within and between religious communities? How do these interact with legislation, and with national and transnational discourses of equality and religious freedom? Within the Indian context, caste, as a form of entrenched intra-group domination supported by religious views, is centrally important in this regard and will form a prominent theme in our discussions.
A third focus of the workshop is the potential role of publicly-funded schools and universities in educating citizens about religion. Does education about religion contribute to or enhance the possibility of successful negotiation of difference? Or is it too easily hijacked by religious conservatives for their own goals of proselytization and thus too risky? We also examine the compatibility of religious education with secularism, in the case of publicly-funded religious as well as secular schools, which impinges on the issue of varying definitions and versions of secularism. Does mandatory education about religion in all schools, of the sort implemented in Quebec’s “Ethics and Religious Culture” program, for instance, provide a good model? Or does it conflict with secular values as well as principles of religious freedom? Why has religious education not been provided in Indian public schools, and why are there are no Religious Studies programs at universities there? Thus, we ask how feasible it is in practice to provide non-sectarian education about religion in different countries; what should be the form, level and content of such education; and what are its potential benefits and hazards in the context of different societies.
Finally, we explore other measures, including ones that draw on the internal resources of religious traditions, that may help to counter tendencies towards exclusive, rigid and hostile definitions of identity. How does lived religion inform the ways in which people work through and negotiate diversity? Attention to the actual religious behaviour and interactions of individuals often reveals a very different picture from the one presented by dominant media or the proclamations of official religious authorities. In many cases, while the latter sources project an image of sharply distinct communities with opposed systems of belief and practice, living in confrontation with one another, the former reveals quotidian practices of flexibility, compromise and accommodation, sometimes even of borrowing and fusion, grounded in attitudes of friendship and respect. Here, it is also important to examine views on religious plurality within different communities and traditions, but again in relation to how religious individuals and communities actually live and engage with one another rather than exclusively through the authorized texts of the so-called “world religions.”
Transnational comparison
The workshop retains an India-Canada comparative focus, as this subject is under-studied and underrepresented in the literature on the management of religious and other forms of diversity. Although vastly different in many ways, there is much to be learned about diversity and its negotiation by bringing these two countries into comparative focus. Despite their differences, both countries confront the basic question of how to make room for religious identity and diversity within a national framework, in a manner that is fair and helps to minimize conflict. Canada and India have both struggled to determine the forms of differential legislation and policy that such accommodation legitimately requires, and face the problem of balancing these efforts at accommodation with a respect for individual rights and freedoms, as well as with the search for a common national identity and moral consensus. Both countries also struggle with the majority-minority structure as a way of realizing genuine equality between religious groups, as this structure problematically assumes the dominance of a particular community but also seems to be indispensable in safeguarding the rights of non-dominant religious groups. Furthermore, the precise meaning of “secularism” is a hotly contested issue in Canada and India, as in many countries.
In view of these common problems, cross-cultural comparison can help us to learn from one another to envision creative solutions. Contexts and histories vary, of course, and what works in one nation can rarely be simply transferred without modification to another. Yet presenters at our first workshop argued convincingly that Canada can learn positive lessons from India’s deep religious pluralism and its model of secularism, while India can learn from Canada’s way of balancing individual and community rights as well as its policies regarding religious education. Other presenters rightly pointed out common dangers posed by the fact of religious majorities in both nations, and by the politics of recognition. At the same time, discussion of these issues highlighted the benefits of expanding our conversation to include some comparative discussion of how religious diversity is negotiated in other societies facing similar realities and challenges, such as the U.S. and Europe. Not only can this can enrich our imagination of possibilities and alternative frameworks, but processes of migration, exchange and internationalization mean that countries are not best studied as self-contained units.
Indeed, the use of the term “comparative” should not mislead us into thinking that we are dealing in our case studies with nations comprised of wholly separate histories and peoples, arriving independently at distinct ways of doing things. The world has never been quite like that, and is less and less so. Globalization has yielded vast quantities of cross-border traffic, of many interlinked varieties: trade, communications, tourism, migration, education, to name a few of the most significant. Religion is part of this traffic, and is affected by other elements within it. We have already mentioned diasporic communities whose members keep in close touch with their homelands through new media and frequent travel, in ways that were not possible in the past. Consequently, in comparison with migrants in earlier eras, members of these communities are far better able to preserve the patterns of life and belief they bring with them from their countries of origin. They also exert greater influence on religious communities in their homelands, with which they sometimes maintain close ties. The fact that in India, for example, people of Indian origin living elsewhere have their own legal and social category, complete with the well-known acronym of NRI (Non-Resident Indian) reveals the cultural and economic importance of this group within the country’s landscape.
In addition, one cannot overestimate the impact on religion of international discourses regarding justice and human rights, revolving around concepts like religious freedom, secularism, and equality. The normative principles indicated by these concepts are instantiated in varying ways and degrees across different nations, but hardly any nation remains unaffected by the transnational moral and legal discourses that employ them. Equally influential is the spread of ideas via the internet, which has contributed to a globalization of knowledge, as well as misinformation, about the world’s religious traditions and communities.
In this context, transnational knowledge and “comparison” (for lack of a better term) is more important than ever if the goal is to understand one another across religious differences, especially given that these “others” are also part of who “we” are in so many ways. Such knowledge can help in developing adequately sophisticated approaches to particular cases of injustice, and in correcting orientalist and occidentalist caricatures deployed to justify modes of exclusion and subordination. Many educators and policy-makers have come to believe, for these reasons and others, that teaching citizens about the world’s religions is important, and religious education is one of our primary themes. Too often, however, learning about religion has taken place primarily through the study of religious scriptures and the words of religious authorities. It is equally essential to examine how people negotiate living together in their day-to-day lives, and to look at the traditions of religious thought and practice they evolve in doing so.