Higher education in a multicultural society

K.N. Panikkar
The Hindu, 8 February

Value education should be primarily secular without, however, discarding the humanist elements in religious traditions.

THE UNESCO International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century headed by Jacques Delors has identified "learning to be" and "learning to live together" as two among the four pillars of education. They connote some of the fundamental values education tries to impart in any society. "Learning to be" addresses the question of development of the inner capacity of the individual, which will prepare him or her to meet social and political responsibilities. "Learning to live together" would involve the creation of a harmonious life, transcending sectarian loyalties and differences. There is no education without values, but in all societies values are a mixed bag. They are so because of differing ideological needs. Yet there are certain universal values all societies cherish and disseminate. Education is an effective agency of value dissemination, particularly in the context of a globalised world. As such, the values in education are a combination of the universal and the particular, both subject to changes according to the differing patterns of human experience. The values of higher education in India as obtained at the time of its liberation from colonial rule in 1947 and developed thereafter were shaped by the influences of these two dimensions.

The search for the creation of new values in education has a fairly long history, reaching back to the period of early colonial rule. The Indian intelligentsia during the colonial period had sought to evolve a system of education qualitatively different from the colonial and the traditional. The alternative did not entirely reject them. It was an effort to reconcile tradition with modernity in which tradition was identified as the dominant literate culture and its religion and modernity as the culture of the capitalist West filtered through colonialism. The beginning of the quest for such reconciliation can be traced to the intellectual engagements in the early part of the 19th century. The genesis of modern ideas of education in India is generally attributed to the colonial system but in reality they emerged in opposition to it. The Indian intelligentsia tried to evolve an alternative that was neither colonial nor traditional, although it borrowed ideas from both. Given the colonial hegemony, however, the alternative was stillborn, remaining mainly at the level of ideas without much of an impact on practice. As a result, the modern educated intelligentsia was nurtured on the social and political values the colonial system tried to disseminate, which continued to be an influential factor even after Independence.

The thinking on education as reflected in the recommendations of various commissions and policy statements from 1948 to 1992 underlined an increasing tendency to adopt secular values.

Unfortunately, this tendency to orient value education on secular-democratic lines received a setback thereafter when Hindu communal forces controlled the governments at the Centre and in some States. During this period, two tendencies acquired prominence. First, to promote religion-centred education by defining value education mainly in religious terms. Secondly, to discard the critical approach to the tradition-modernity relationship and to privilege traditional values over all others.

The implication of this historical experience — the incorporation of secular values and their attempted reversal — is a useful guide in the formulation of value education. These two tendencies represented two different conceptions of Indian society. The former implied a plural society struggling to become multi-cultural whereas the latter implied an attempt to turn a plural society into a mono-cultural one. India being a multi-religious society with a variety of cultural practices, one of the aims of value education should be to promote the former and discourage the latter. If so, value education has to be primarily secular without, however, discarding the humanist elements in religious traditions. Such an approach would lead to two sets of values. The first, universal moral values such as truth, honesty, and compassion; and, the second, values such as secularism, democracy, and equality. These two sets of values are generally considered mutually exclusive, but are not really so, as secularism essentially creates a moral universe.

Pillars of secularism

The three pillars of secularism, to borrow the terminology used in the UNESCO report, are religious universalism, humanism, and rationality. In a multi-religious society universalism is one of the ideological bases of secularism. It would help to create harmony among religions by emphasising the commonly shared religious truth, which could lead to mutual respect of religions. Without respecting the religious rights of different denominations, a multi-religious society can hardly have a peaceful existence. One of the travails of Indian society since colonial times has been religious strife which, among other things, is a result of the absence of mutual respect. Faith in religious universalism, which is central to secularism, alone can bring about a harmonious relation between religions. Therefore, the core belief of universalism that all religions are essentially the same and differences are only in their external manifestations is a necessary value to cultivate in a multi-religious society.

In all considerations of values in education, the multi-cultural and multi-religious character of Indian society figures prominently. The solution to the tensions arising out of this is sought through the dissemination of secularism as a value of education. This naturally brings into focus the place of religion in education. The overwhelming consensus has been in favour of education about religions distinct from religious education. The distinction is extremely important as the former would reinforce universalism and the latter would strengthen particularism. India is generally considered a multi-cultural society. If equality is central to multiculturalism, such an appellation is of doubtful validity. India is at best a plural society, which tolerates the existence of different cultures.

Cultural equality in practice is yet a far cry. It is in this context that the inculcation of secular values becomes crucial as it would contribute to the transition from the plural to the multicultural. The cultural homogenisation the Hindu communal forces try to bring about would adversely affect this process. The tendency to privilege an invented monoculture of the past tends to undermine the possible realisation of multiculturalism. In this context, therefore, imbibing secularism as a value in education assumes great importance. In recent times, both cultural homogenisation as well as privileging the invented monoculture of the past gained ascendancy in the realm of higher education.

In all discussions on educational values, there is a tendency to differentiate the secular values from the moral and the ethical. The assumption is that secular and moral values are distinct and unrelated. A strict division between the two is unreal, not only because they are interrelated in practice but also because most of the moral and ethical values are also embedded in the latter.

One of the foundations of secularism, for instance, is humanism, which incorporates almost all moral and ethical values derived from religious teachings. This is not to argue that values derived from religious teachings need not be part of education, but to suggest that religion is not the only possible source for the incorporation of moral values such as compassion, love, mutual respect. It is possible to inculcate such values from secular sources also. The purpose of education could be variously interpreted, ranging from the mundane to the spiritual. That it helps to understand the meaning of life, to realise the creative potential of human beings, and to locate oneself in society is beyond dispute. Today when Indian society is entering a new phase of global participation, a variety of tensions are likely to emerge. One among them is related to the place of traditional values in a fast changing social, cultural, and intellectual climate. That they cannot be discarded is generally acknowledged. It is equally true that there is no place for revival. The solution is creative integration of the values of both for which the inculcation of secular values in higher education, which provides a sphere for critical interrogation, could pave the way.

The writer is a historian who is currently Chairman of the Higher Education Commission of Kerala. This article is based on a presentation at the Indo-China seminar on Higher Education in New Delhi on January 20-21, 2007.