Service Learning, Sustainability, and Social Justice from Hindu Perspective

Prof. Pankaj Jain, FLAME University, India;    

Abstract: Although service learning is being increasingly embraced by American academy, both the theory and method of service learning is rarely considered from non-Western perspective. As is well known, the Western Enlightenment effectively dichotomized the researcher/subject from researched/object and service learning in many ways strives to bridge this divide. How do the cultures, which never had such a dichotomy, in the first place view the idea of service learning? Similarly, how do teachers and researchers to conduct service learning in communities whose worldviews are based on non-Western cultures such as Hinduism or Native American traditions, both with a long history of tenuous relations with the West? Can service learning emerge as a bridge incorporating different ways of thinking, living, and theorizing? My paper will address such questions based on the examples from Hindu perspectives. I will also cite examples from one of my recent courses in which my students worked with Hindu communities in North Texas.

Keywords: Education, Service Learning, India, Non-Western Methods