ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I suggested that the insights generated by Foucault’s work on the technique of enclosure might be of uncertain analytical value in thinking about nonEuropean contexts. The discussion in this chapter will attempt to reinforce that conclusion. For this chapter too is about how the enclosure may have differentiating rather than homogenising effects. The discussion attempts to analyse that discourse of Indian modernity that seeks to differentiate the ‘secular-modern’ citizenry from its ‘communal-backward’ antithesis. A modification to Foucault’s profound insights into the functioning of disciplinary regimes is in order-one which research specifically engaged with colonial and post-colonised issues might be able to offer. The issue of religion and how to deal with the multiplicity of religious voices which characterises Indian society has had a prominent and continuing life in the discourse of the Doon School from its earliest days. It was most often manifested in the question of whether the School curriculum should include religious instruction and whether it should arrange for (or encourage) religious worship. The search for the ‘correct’ religious attitude, and indeed the problematic of faith-interpreted primarily in terms of its perceived movement from the private to the public sphere-was (and continues to be) part of a wider, national, dialogue on the post-colonial ‘modern’ mind.
