In 2011, Soenke Biermann identified three main challenges to decolonial pedagogy within higher education that must be taken seriously to challenge traditional narratives and understandings of indigenous cultures. These challenges included: deconstructing colonial privilege, engaging with indigenous and non-indigenous theories and practices, as well as exploring epistemological equity (Biermann, 2011). In recent years, our college has developed and refined a pedagogical program that addresses these challenges with alacrity. In the spirit of Paolo’s Freire’s revolutionary perspectives on decolonial pedagogy (1972), our institution’s Interfaith Community-Advised Pedagogy has sought to reimagine traditional courses and curriculum designs within religious studies by inviting representatives of minority religious communities to co-teach a class on their respective religious tradition. This collaborative pedagogical method involves both the instructor and interfaith community members curating the course in a manner that reflects the authentic voices and concerns of a minority religious tradition in a specific geographic region. The purpose of the ICAP is to encourage the production of knowledge about religious traditions by promoting the voices of representatives of that tradition away from texts, vocabulary, and the tendency of compartmentalization so often associated with colonial views within the discipline of religious studies. Instead of relying upon a strategy of several guest lectures from a variety of speakers, ICAP recruits and compensates at least one member of a minority religious tradition to embed themselves within the course and become a consistent member of the classroom community. This continued presence provides more space and flexibility to address the challenges to decolonial pedagogy that Biermann examined (2011). Our paper will highlight how we (a prominent Sikh activist and a religious studies professor) utilized the Interfaith Community-Advised Pedagogy to highlight the struggle for Sikh sovereignty over and against traditional colonial perspectives through course design, community engagement, and class assessments.
For our course, we utilized ICAP to address deconstruction of colonial privilege through a scaffolded approach to course design; this began with the selection of texts that challenge the traditional colonial narratives of Sikhi by emphasizing texts and authors who are Sikh and who place a unique emphasis on Sikh sovereignty (Singh, 2021). This allowed for concepts and stories within Sikhi to be defined by those who identify as Sikh. When questions arose about Sikhi, we relied upon the knowledge of our interfaith community member to help us explore the concepts from within her community of knowledge. Furthermore, we collaborated on the creation of the syllabus by first prioritizing the lives of the Gurus as evidence of an emerging political and cultural empire in tension with socio-religious milieu of the time. We then transitioned the course to discuss belief systems, rituals, and examinations of the Adi Granth from the perspective of Sikh scholars as well as similarities and differences to such descriptions within a local gurdwara. Finally, we highlighted current struggles for Sikh sovereignty by detailing colonial perspectives on the tradition before and after Partition, and the emerging struggles of independence of Sikhi at home in Punjab, and abroad in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It should be noted that every step of syllabus development within ICAP framework included a dedication to coordinating meetings and frequent collaboration between both of us to guarantee that Sikhi was presented in a way that was relevant to the needs of the tradition at this time, thus focusing on how religion is a not a monolith, but a dynamic social phenomenon.
Regarding Biermann’s focus on engaging with indigenous and non-indigenous theories and practices (2011), the ICAP framework prioritizes sustained engagement with a community of religious practice throughout an entire semester. We relied on the insight and the connections of our Sikh interfaith fellow to coordinate and lead tours of the sacred space, as well as help the class gain entry for worship ceremonies and community celebrations at the gurdwara. This allowed students to see how the concepts they were learning about were reinforced through a community of practice. Similarly, we relied upon the expertise of the religious studies faculty to lead debriefing sessions after these visits for students to examine their own cultural biases. Next, the religious studies professor incorporated his training as an ethnographer to assist students analyze the symbols and practices within the gurdwara during Sunday services and Langar meals.
Finally, we addressed the challenge of epistemic equity (Biermann, 2011) in decolonial education through specific course assessments that were geared to the production and synthesis of knowledge about Sikhi by representatives of the tradition from the gurdwara we visited, as well as Sikh scholars and activists around the country (Dei, 2008). The ICAP framework involves an end-of-semester public event that is designed to educate representatives of our college and community leaders about a minority religious tradition by showcasing the voices of those who represent that cultural and religious group, in a space shared with that community. With the use of consent forms that ensured anonymity for the respondents, students interviewed representatives of Sikhi inside and outside our community to discuss their identities as within the tradition. Particularly, the interviews highlighted the struggles associated with discussions of sovereignty, religious oppression, intersectionality, and finally what they found joyful about their Sikh identities. The results of these interviews were then developed into mixed-media presentations based on the skills of the student presenters in which they also discussed why they chose to synthesize the information they learned through a particular means of expression (i.e., video, sculpture, poem, painting, etc.) as well as how their impressions of Sikhi evolved over the course of the semester.
Ultimately the ICAP method provided a remarkably useful means through which to not only educate students about Sikhi, but also about the existential importance of Sikh sovereignty from the perspectives of those who strive for it. This pedagogical method was an effective strategy to combat colonial perspectives of religious studies that can relegate (especially minority) religious traditions to discrete social phenomena with belief systems of a bygone eras.
Decolonizing pedagogy is a crucial endeavor for the discipline of religious studies to undertake to better understand and explore religious traditions that have long been understood through a colonial lens, such as Sikhi. Fortunately, Sikh scholars continue to provide indigenous perspectives on the dynamic development of Sikhi as a religious, cultural, and politically sovereign empire; yet a successful course focused on decolonizing pedagogy must do more than emphasize scholarship within a tradition. This paper focuses on the successful implementation of a recently developed decolonizing teaching method, Interfaith Community-Advised Pedagogy (ICAP), in which courses are co-taught between religious studies faculty and members of minority religious traditions to gain first-hand knowledge about how religions are lived. After we (a religious studies professor and Sikh activist) collaborated on the ICAP framework, our class was able to engage with indigenous scholarship, build rapport with a Sikh community, and effectively center Sikh sovereignty with students.