Challenging classroom and social discourses of religious difference and Othering in central India

TY - CONF

T1 - Challenging classroom and social discourses of religious difference and Othering in central India

AU - Yunus, Reva

PY - 2024/8

Y1 - 2024/8

N2 - Locating schoolboys’ friendships and peer-relations within the broader context of (post)colonial Hindu nationalism, socioeconomic inequalities, and dominant youth masculinities, this paper explores the intersections of education, society and citizenship in contemporary urban India. Inspired by Henry Giroux’s Gramscian take on critical pedagogy, the paper considers cultural practices inside and beyond the classroom to have both political and pedagogical force and offers insights into the subversive potential of teenage boys’ views and practices. Drawing upon ethnographic work completed in a state school in the central Indian city of Indore and interviews with boys aged 13-17years, the paper unpacks the significance of Hindu and Muslim pupils’ silence as well as their views and practices around the contentious issue of religious difference. First, the paper focuses on socioeconomically marginalised boys’ experience of peer-relations inside and outside the classroom to show how local and national politics centring on Hindu nationalism seek to divide, rank, and order citizens on the basis of religion. Second, the paper shows how dominant narratives constructing Muslims as meat-eaters and cow-killers, and justifying vigilante violence against them, are sometimes confronted with subversive views and practices, such as friendships across caste and religion, that directly and indirectly challenge these narratives and divisions. Third, the paper argues that these subversive views and practices are pedagogically and politically significant despite sometimes being generated in the context of boys’ social life outside the classroom. This is so because even a few boys’ willingness to challenge dominant understandings of masculinity, morality, and religious difference holds out important possibilities for reimagining classroom social relations and pedagogy in the service of a social democratic transformation.

AB - Locating schoolboys’ friendships and peer-relations within the broader context of (post)colonial Hindu nationalism, socioeconomic inequalities, and dominant youth masculinities, this paper explores the intersections of education, society and citizenship in contemporary urban India. Inspired by Henry Giroux’s Gramscian take on critical pedagogy, the paper considers cultural practices inside and beyond the classroom to have both political and pedagogical force and offers insights into the subversive potential of teenage boys’ views and practices. Drawing upon ethnographic work completed in a state school in the central Indian city of Indore and interviews with boys aged 13-17years, the paper unpacks the significance of Hindu and Muslim pupils’ silence as well as their views and practices around the contentious issue of religious difference. First, the paper focuses on socioeconomically marginalised boys’ experience of peer-relations inside and outside the classroom to show how local and national politics centring on Hindu nationalism seek to divide, rank, and order citizens on the basis of religion. Second, the paper shows how dominant narratives constructing Muslims as meat-eaters and cow-killers, and justifying vigilante violence against them, are sometimes confronted with subversive views and practices, such as friendships across caste and religion, that directly and indirectly challenge these narratives and divisions. Third, the paper argues that these subversive views and practices are pedagogically and politically significant despite sometimes being generated in the context of boys’ social life outside the classroom. This is so because even a few boys’ willingness to challenge dominant understandings of masculinity, morality, and religious difference holds out important possibilities for reimagining classroom social relations and pedagogy in the service of a social democratic transformation.

M3 - Abstract

T2 - BAICE Conference 2024

Y2 - 3 September 2024 through 5 September 2024

ER -