Lacking Faith in Schools

The push for a so called Hindu school in Harrow by the I Foundation has been paraded as the government's commitment to faith schools for all communities. Just as there have been long established Catholic, Church of England and Jewish schools, and more recently provision for Muslim and Sikh state funded schools, so then under this policy, Hindus will also be "benefiting". But one has got to ask why is a special faith school needed when Hindus excel anyway, in both state funded schools and private schools? Is it really necessary for Hindus to now be segregated from the rest of the population so that they can do better? Surely such a policy is doomed to only increase the educational apartheid? The need of the hour for the Hindu community in Britain is not more politically correct segregation, but for addressing the distortions and misrepresentation of Hinduism in the mainstream media and academia where old colonial prejudices, perceptions and theories are often repackaged and presented as modern-day scholarship on Hinduism.

The next point which the government continues to ignore is that the I Foundation is part of ISKCON, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness also known as the Hare Krishna movement. The founder of ISKCON, Srila Prabhupada, has clearly stated numerous times that ISKCON is not a Hindu sect and the group's ideology in fact represents a narrow minded and fundamentalist set of beliefs which has often been in conflict and has caused friction with other Hindus sects and mainstream Hindu beliefs. The group has also been sued and eventually found guilty in several cases of child abuse in the US. While this is no reflection on its UK branch, it does raise serious concerns about the irresponsibility on part of the government.

If it was a mainstream Hindu school encompassing the wider aspects of pluralistic Hindu philosophy and thought, then there might be some justification for pushing ahead with this project. But when it is led by a highly sectarian group it should be of great concern to the Hindu community. It is of even more concern to HHR that prominent supporters of this school project have been linked to organisations which are the very opposite of the tolerance and open mindedness which the Hindu tradition has always been known for.

In the end we can only wonder if the government has even done its basic homework and schooling before spending so much of the taxpayers' money?