Global terms: Hindu Dharma

The lived religious beliefs and experiences of English Hindu teenagers at home and at school

Research Summary: The lived religious beliefs and experiences of English Hindu teenagers at home and at school

This is a study of the lived religious identity and practice of Hindu teenagers in the UK. Utilising an ethnographic approach, it investigates how Hindu teenagers in the UK experience their religion at home and at school. There is found a contrast between these teenagers’ home life and school experience. Hindu teenagers experience a strong sense of cognitive dissonance pertaining to their religious identity: their home life being a healthy relationship with their religion but their school experience being a sense of anger and shame. There is an outline of what the teenagers themselves believe is lacking in the RE classroom and what they regard as the key features of their Hindu faith.

Researchers

Joseph Chadwin

Research Institution

University of Vienna

What is this about?

  • How do Hindu teenagers in England experience their religion, at home and at school?
  • Are there contrasts between these two arenas?
  • What do Hindu teenagers in England see as the key features of Hindu faith?
  • What do they believe is lacking, or would like to see more of, in the RE classroom regarding Hindu tradition?

What was done?

There was a prior survey of existing relevant literature, and an ethnographic study of 30 London secondary pupils who self-identified as Hindu. The ethnographic study consisted of a series of semi-structured interviews.

Main findings and outputs

  • There is immense variety within the category of Hinduism; researchers should accept the multiplicity and fluidity of lived religious identities and experiences.
  • Such acceptance characterises much recent RE literature but Hinduism is still a ‘blind spot’ sometimes significantly mishandled in school RE.
  • 12 of the pupils were apathetic to their Hindu identity, 18 highly engaged with Hindu beliefs and practices. 25 stressed how Hinduism is highly internally diverse. 28 were unhappy about absence from or superficial treatment of Hinduism within the school curriculum. Only 1 was happy; the school in question received visits from Hindu community members. The unhappiness is a source of anger for them and means that Hinduism, in their view, is really for the home.
  • A ‘secularised’ ‘yoga-for-relaxation’ type of activity offered in school added to the Hindu teenagers’ sense of anger.

Relevance to RE

The findings include the Hindu teenagers’ views on what is lacking (or needed) in school RE:

  • 26 referred to the importance of Hindu values, and the need to reflect these in curriculum coverage: equality, honesty, non-violence and love.
  • These can be, but should not be, obscured by attention to Hinduism’s ‘strangeness’ or exotic appearance.
  • Informed teaching about the meaning of yoga is lacking, but should be included; the same also applies to puja.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The author acknowledges that his is a small and localised sample. However, he argues that the ‘small window’ of the ethnographic data is much needed, providing an in-depth examination.

Find out more

The original article is available on an open-access basis: Joseph Chadwin (2023) The lived religious beliefs and experiences of
English Hindu teenagers at home and at school, British Journal of Religious Education, 45:3, 251-262, DOI: 10.1080/01416200.2023.2184326

Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams

Research Summary: Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams

The Bhagavad Gita is a philosophical Hindu scripture in which the god Krishna imparts lessons to the warrior prince Arjuna about sacred duty (dharma) and the path to spiritual liberation (moksha). This classical scripture has had a long and active life, and by the 19th century it had come to be regarded as a core text, if not the core text, of Hinduism. During the colonial period, interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita considered the relevance of Krishna’s lessons to Arjuna in the context of British colonial rule. While some Indians read a call to arms into their interpretation of this scripture and urged their fellow Indians to rise up in armed resistance, Gandhi famously read a nonviolent message into it. This research argues that equally as important as Gandhi’s hermeneutics of nonviolence is his commitment to enacting the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita as he interpreted them in the daily life of his ashrams (communities). When explored through the lens of daily life in these ashrams, we see that Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita emphasized not just nonviolence but also disciplined action, including self-sacrifice for the greater good.

Researcher

Karline McLain

Research Institution

Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

What is this about?

  • The Bhagavad Gita.
  • Mahatma Gandhi.
  • Life and ethics in Gandhi’s ashrams.

What was done?

This is a scholarly essay, analysing source material to cast light on Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Main findings and outputs

  • Firstly, it is clear that Gandhi sought to find the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita in practice, and through life in a community.
  •  For Gandhi, the battlefield scene of the Gita was an allegory: “it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind (sic),and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring.”
  • The path of karma yoga was understood as disciplined action in pursuit of self-realisation, in the course of everyday life.
  • For over 40 years, when Gandhi was not residing in prisons run by the British colonial government, he was living on back-to-the-land intentional communities (ashrams) that he founded in South Africa and India. They tried to live out the Gita’s message.
  • The ethic of the ashram was not a neutral shared space but a ‘nonviolent neighbourliness’. Social ‘equals’ were treated as friends, ‘subordinates’ with service and superiors through civil disobedience. All this was worked out in local situations as self-discipline in everyday life.
  • In 1906 Gandhi took a vow of celibacy. He did this to better practice the Gita’s principle of self-sacrifice and service of others; he would lessen his attachments to his possession of a wife and four sons and treat all ashram members as co-equals.
  • When imprisoned, e.g. for refusing to carry an identity card (in South Africa in 1908), he read the Gita in prison and later wrote that its teachings should be carried out fearlessly – people should do their duty by what was right, even at the cost of their lives.
  • The practice of selfless service was the basis of Gandhi’s ashrams in India. Duncan Greenlees, a British resident, wrote –
    Then began the day’s work in earnest. Some went daily to the stables to scrub the floors and milk the cows; others swept the Ashram paths with brooms; others again prepared the morning meal in the fine kitchen. All in their turn went to clean the latrines. This was indeed a sacramental, purifying work that, bringing us at once into sympathy with the lowest castes of men, taught us to see God in everything, even in what the ignorant have named unclean.
  • On the morning of the Salt March in 1930, Gandhi insisted that only ashram members prepared to be killed should join him. They were allowed to take no food or drink, only a copy each of the Gita.

Relevance to RE

The research will develop teachers’ knowledge of Hinduism (the original article is very detailed, fascinating and to be recommended strongly). The material can certainly be of use in classroom teaching. The various stories can be told and discussed: why did Gandhi insist that only those ready to be killed should join him on the Salt March (note: ‘ready’ included having taken vows of celibacy)? Why were none allowed to bring food or drink? Why were all required to bring a copy of the Gita? Students can carry out their own research into life and ethics in Gandhian ashrams, drawing comparisons with communities of which they are members themselves and evaluating how people benefit from different kinds of community membership.

Generalisability and potential limitations

This research does not provide generalisable data as such, more a distinctive case study with which to deepen knowledge and understanding of the Hindu tradition.

Find out more

The original article is Karline McLain, Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams, Religions 2019: 10 (11), 619.

The article is available open-access at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110619

The Hindu Concept of God – Jim Robinson

The Hindu Concept of God

Try to explain the Hindu concept of God and suddenly RE teachers become cosmologists saying that God is a trinity represented by Brahma who creates the universe, Vishnu who preserves it and Shiva who destroys it (even though this means buying in to a cyclical rather than a linear view of a time-bound universe). Or else physicists, saying that, like clear white light refracted through a prism and emerging as all the colours of the rainbow the other side, so God is one but seen in many forms. Or else genealogists, comparing the different ways of seeing God as a mother, sister, daughter, cousin, neice and so on yet still the same person. Ultimately, there is only one God seen in many forms and ways, all forms of Brahman the Absolute, Ultimate Reality (not to be confused with Brahma the creator God of course).

In one sense this is fair enough, if you are also prepared to explain that this is only one of many ways of understanding God in Hinduism. If you want to be really clever about it you give this way of seeing God a name and call it Vedanta, or at least a form of it. Vedanta promotes the notion that ‘knowledge’ of God is achieved through a process of self-realisation, a process that is open to all. What is meant by God is Brahman, the Absolute, the Supreme and Ultimate Reality, although God is also referred to in less abstract terms by the epithet Ishvara meaning Lord. God-consciousness and self-realisation are bound up together in this system of thought which is based around the phrase ‘That thou art’ from Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7. This phrase came to be interpreted differently by each of the 6 schools of Vedanta with a modern version being represented by the Advaita (monism, non-dualism) of Swami Vivekananda. In the Vishistadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and Dvaita (dualism) forms of Vedanta, bhakti to Vishnu and his incarnations is the path to moskha or liberation.

However, even Swami Vivekananda (19th c) was not averse to bhakti and meditation on a personal god with ‘form’ and ‘qualities’ rather than a ‘formless’ Absolute devoid of such things, at least initially. He realised that ‘God with form’ was easier for most people to grasp than ‘God without form’. Which is fine as Brahman can be seen as both a personal God ‘with form’ (Saguna  Brahman) as well as ‘formless’ Absolute (Nirguna Brahman). Play around with this notion of God with or without form and you might get a sense of what Vivekananda meant when he said ‘A Hindu does not worship an image made of wood and clay, he sees consciousness within the earthen-ness and loses himself in it’. You also come to sense that it is something to do with consciousness, meditation, self-realisation, God-realisation.

Vedanta is a spiritual understanding of God represented by the Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre in Buckinghamshire and Jay Lakhani the education director of the Hindu Council UK. It is also an understanding that promotes community cohesion. Just as Swami Vivekananda encouraged religious tolerance in his world tours, stating that all religions strive towards the same truth, so Jay Lakhani is quoted as saying ‘All faiths must accept pluralism if we are to diffuse strife caused in the name of religion’ (Face to Faith 2007). As such it may be considered more ‘mainstream’ than the westernised version of bhakti represented by ISKCON and Bhaktivedanta Manor which promotes Krishna consciousness overall.

So if as an RE teacher you subscribe to the Vedantin view of God, then you are not alone in finding this an attractive route. Vedanta has been a major influence on many Western writers and philosophers such Aldous Huxley, T S Eliot, Voltaire and Nietzsche. But also be aware that for the majority of rural Hindus in India who worship not only a personal God (ishtadevata), but also a family God and a village God, the abstract philosophies of Vedanta, let alone the concept of Trimurti, may have little or no relevance. God ‘with form’ and personal or ‘God without form’ and abstract may be two sides of the coin and the notion of starting with the former before moving to the latter may give us some sense of the way that Hindus approach the concept of God as both personal Ishvara as well as abstract Brahman. It also highlights the need for us as RE teachers to be more aware of how we present the Hindu concept of God to our students and not to be tempted to oversimplify.

RE-searchers Approach

RE-searchers Approach

A team from Exeter University and the Learning Institute has developed a new approach to Religious Education in Primary Schools. It is called ‘the RE-searchers approach’. It encourages pupils to think about the significance and effectiveness of different methodologies and methods of enquiry in Religious Education. To make these accessible to young children, they have personified some of them as cartoon characters. Individually these characters are called Debate-it-all Derek, Ask-it-all Ava, Have-a-go Hugo, and See-the-story Suzie, but collectively they’re known as the ‘RE-searchers’. Each character holds different assumptions about religion(s) and advocates different research methods (e.g. questioning and arguing, interviewing and empathizing, participating and experiencing, and narrating and exploring interpretations). Once acquainted with our characters and their respective characteristics as researchers, pupils can undertake learning activities associated with each of them in pursuit of different understandings of religion(s).

Watch and Learn: BBC and the Educational Recording Agency

Resource Spotlight: Watch and Learn: BBC and the Educational Recording Agency

December 2024

Where do you go to find programmes suitable for showing lived religion and belief to your pupils?

As you sample the programmes below you might like to consider

  • Who might these programmes be useful to support teacher subject knowledge?
  • Where might snippets of these programmes exemplify the concepts and understanding we are teaching?

BBC

There is some interesting programming coming up on BBC radio and TV next year, but what did you miss in 2024? Look on iPlayer- lifestyle and page down to Faith and Hope to find Sacred wonders, Big Zuu goes to Mecca and much more. For those of you teaching younger pupils also look at Treasure Champs which has stories you may share in lessons.

If you would like to read a little more from Daisy Scalchi, Head of Religion and Ethics at the BBC, read this professional reflection piece, Religion, the most important subject on the curriculum?

The Educational Recording Agency (ERA)

The Educational Recording Agency (ERA) offers you free access to a wide range of high-quality, ad-free video content to support your lessons on religion, faith, and ethics. Their curated resources align with the RE curriculum and are available for instant streaming in your classroom, including:

These programmes provide engaging, real-life examples of how religion shapes individual lives and societies, making them excellent tools to bring classroom discussions to life. Search Religious Education and the age group you teach to see all the programmes available. Alternatively click on the links below for some curated resources.

Primary religious education

Secondary religious education

Concepts of God and the Ultimate

Concepts of God and the Ultimate

In 2015 we commissioned a group of writers to produce articles on the concept of God and the Ultimate from a variety of different belief traditions: Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Muslim, Jewish and Sikhi. You can find links to each of them below.

Ultimate reality, God and gods in Buddhism – Denise Cush

Summary explaining that Buddhism does not centre on a creator God but on awakening to ultimate reality through the Dharma; seen as truth, nirvana, emptiness, mind‑only or Buddha‑nature depending on the tradition.

Christianity and God – Jane Brooke

Christian concepts of God and ultimate reality, providing insights and teaching ideas for Religious Education lessons.

The Hindu Concept of God – Jim Robinson

Summary explaining how Hindu traditions understand the divine as both one ultimate reality (Brahman) and many deities who express its different qualities, allowing diverse ways of relating to and realising the sacred.

Humanism, Ultimate Reality, God and Gods – Sara Passmore

How humanists understand ultimate reality—rejecting supernatural gods, grounding meaning and morality in human experience, and turning to science and reason to explain the natural world.

Islam and God – Aliya Azam

Summary explaining Islamic beliefs about God as absolutely one, unique and indivisible, transcendent and beyond human comprehension, with any association of partners rejected as shirk.

Judaism and G-d – David Hampshire

Summary explaining how Jewish thought focuses less on defining God’s essence and more on covenant, scripture and lived responsibility.

The nature of God in Sikhi – Ranvir Singh

Summary of Sikh belief in one formless, timeless and all‑pervading God, known through the Guru and realised by remembering the divine Name.

How can sacred texts inspire action and what does it mean to work without reward? Gandhi and the Gita

Dr Kevin O'Grady | 01 March, 2020

Planning to teach about Hinduism, Gandhi, sacred texts and their authority and influence, ethics or British imperial history? Let’s look at some very recent research by Karline McLain of Bucknell University, USA that spans all of these areas. We’re first reminded how the Bhagavad Gita is a scripture in which the god Krishna imparts lessons to the warrior prince Arjuna about sacred duty (dharma) and the path to spiritual liberation (moksha). By the 19th century it had come to be regarded as a core text, even the core text, of Hinduism. Under British rule, it was sometimes interpreted as a call for armed resistance, but Gandhi read a nonviolent message into it. The research then shows how there is more to know about Gandhi and the Gita. Here are some of the main findings.
  • Firstly, it is clear that Gandhi sought to find the meaning of the Gita in practice, and through life in a community.
  • For Gandhi, the battlefield scene of the Gita was an allegory of the duel between good and evil in the heart.
  • For good to win, the heart should be disciplined; people must be prepared to sacrifice themselves for what is true and right.
  • For over 40 years, when Gandhi was not in prisons, he was living on back-to-the-land communities (ashrams) that he founded in South Africa and India. They tried to live out the Gita’s message.
  • In 1906 Gandhi took a vow of celibacy, to practice the Gita’s principle of self-sacrifice; he would lessen his attachments to his possession of a wife and four sons and treat all ashram members as co-equals.
  • On the morning of the Salt March in 1930, Gandhi insisted that only ashram members prepared to be killed, and who had taken vows of celibacy, should join him. They were allowed to take no food or drink, only a copy each of the Gita.
Do read the research (it’s free and very rich; access details are given at the end). You can certainly use it in classroom teaching. Different ways to do so will present themselves, but here are some suggestions. 1.Introduce the Gita to the class. Focus down on some of the most read verses, e.g. 47: “Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for a reward, but never cease to do thy work.” (The Bhagavad Gita [trans. Juan Mascaro] Penguin 1962, p.52.) With this verse – arguably the essence of the Gita – organise students in small groups, to come up with examples of people who deliberately work without seeking rewards. When some of these examples are fed back in plenary, discuss why these people do this, whether it can even be possible to do so, why it is held up to be good and whether it is a good rule. 2.Tell the story of the Salt March to the class. The relevant clip from Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film ‘Gandhi’ may help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW3uk95VGes 3.The film clip adds a visual element to the research, but the research adds depth and detail to the film clip. Draw on it to set up a follow-up role play task. Back in their groups, students act out the meeting on the morning of the Salt March. One plays Gandhi, insisting that only those ready to be killed should join him, only those who have taken vows of celibacy, none are allowed to bring food or drink, and all are required to bring a copy of the Gita. The others play ashram members, asking questions they imagine would have been asked at the time. As the role play is debriefed, students can be asked about how the ashram members would have felt and why they chose the questions they asked in role. Finally, the class as a whole can discuss whether the Salt March case counts as an example of working without reward. 4.Different homework or extension tasks could follow. Students could carry out their own research into life and ethics in Gandhian ashrams, drawing comparisons with communities of which they are members themselves and evaluating how people benefit from different kinds of community membership. This research could be presented at the start of the next lesson. 5.Alternatively, students could follow up the Salt March investigation made in class, by writing a newspaper article for (say) American readers at the time – they could imagine themselves as the American journalist shown in the YouTube clip, accompanying Gandhi on the Salt March. They could use the knowledge and understanding gained through the various classroom activities to report what happened, why it did, how Gandhi prepared the ashram members, the motivations and emotions of all involved and to explain how the events were linked to the Gita’s teaching of work without reward.   The original article is Karline McLain, Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams, Religions 2019: 10 (11), 619. Religions is a freely available online research journal. The article is available there, open-access at doi:10.3390/rel10110619 We’ve reported the research in RE:ONLINE at Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams

About

Dr Kevin O'Grady is Lead Consultant for Research at Culham St Gabriel's Trust.

See all posts by Dr Kevin O'Grady