Philosophy & Religion

Journey to India
By Cindy Carroll

from the Tennessee Alumnus Magazine
Vol. 85 No.1 Winter 2005

   A jolt to the senses greeted a group of 12 UT Chattanooga students and two faculty members whose journey to India last semester afforded them the ultimate academic experience, living among the country’s people to better understand their culture.

   While an academic experience abroad is increasingly important for students, it is an unfortunate reality that most cannot justify the costs associated with foreign travel and study, says Dr. William Harman, head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Harman and Dr. Elizabeth Gailey, assistant professor of communication, co-wrote the grant for the trip and traveled with the students. The trip was three-quarters funded by the University of Chattanooga Foundation and scheduled through the university, making the trip appealing to students.

   Harman and Gailey designed the six-week course to benefit a group of intellectually adventurous students selected from the College of Arts and Sciences. “Most participants had never traveled outside the U.S., and two of our students had never been on an airplane before this trip. We expected them to return and educate others about India at the grass-roots level, describing their experiences not only to UTC classmates but to their friends, families, and local communities, as well,” Gailey says.

   Classes for the students were held at the American College in Madurai, a private Christian liberal-arts college founded in 1881. The American College offered modern classrooms, five dormitories, a fully equipped library with computer facilities (including Internet access), a cafeteria, and a study center where lectures by visiting scholars, workshops, and seminars were held.

   Beyond the classroom, field trips provided unforgettable encounters for the young people. Religion and philosophy major Ryan Powell traveled by auto rickshaw from Madurai to a sleepy hamlet 6 miles south, known for the massive temple carved into the side of a huge granite hill. The temple is also a shelter for sannyasins (wandering Hindu holy men).

   “My first meeting with the sannyasins was a little chaotic because there were so many of them on the street near the temple,” Powell says. “Just Dr. Harman, another student (Dustin Harris), and I went on the trip, but even three white faces attract enormous attention.”

   Powell quickly realized legitimate sannyasins were difficult to locate. “I spoke with two sannyasins and got a general idea of their lifestyle. I couldn’t get much in-depth information because we were sort of surrounded by homeless ‘holy men,’ and they were all crowding in to answer my questions. To tell the truth, a lot of them are just beggars wearing saffron robes and pretending to pursue spiritual goals. I asked them, through Dr. Harman’s translation, what their daily life was like. I got this answer: (1) Wake up; (2) Bathe in the temple tank; (3) Pray; (4) Beg for food/money; (5) Eat/sleep/smoke ganja (marijuana); (6) Pray more; (7) Eat/sleep/smoke ganja/sing.”

   In the seaside city of Cochin, communication student Janel Watson enjoyed a week of experiencing the local culture. “It started with a scavenger hunt on Tuesday to find three places of worship of three different religious traditions. That may sound simple, but what is hard to convey is the difficulty of venturing through any Indian town. Our effort was rewarded, though. I saw my first Jain temple and went inside my first Jewish synagogue. Both had impressive histories and ornate decorations. I actually became a Jain when the priest smeared some yellow paste on my forehead and asked that I come back often,” Watson says.

   When the students wrote papers for their coursework, their deep appreciation for the women of India became apparent. “In three weeks of observation, I have seen Indian women who maintain poise and beauty that Australian supermodels should envy. It’s less physical beauty, however, and more how they present themselves. Their bodies are worn from hard work. It is nearly impossible for me to tell the age of a woman here because it is so mutable, but their grace of movement is astounding,” Meredith Jagger said in her third dispatch for Next Generation Radio, a student radio-training project cosponsored by National Public Radio news.

   Although adjusting to the traffic, cuisine, and the pace of Indian life proved challenging initially, students came to understand and appreciate the diverse population, as in the case of Jeremy Henderson, who got to know an onshore fishing crew. “Each day we were in Keral I would go by to say hello and lift the net—which was counterweighted with more than a thousand pounds of stone—a few times,” Henderson says.

Top of next column

      Henderson said the trip opened his eyes to travel, so much so that he plans to go exploring after he graduates in the spring. He regards the India trip as a life-changing experience. “As I expected before the trip, my perspectives changed on friends, wealth, possessions, history—on everything, really. Even though I anticipated some change, I had no idea it would be as intense as it has become,” Henderson says.

   The trip inspired Jagger to add six more hours of religious studies during fall semester and probably to make religious studies a second minor. “I will likely travel internationally again next summer with a smaller group, if not with just one other person. My view of the United States has also been altered, but not hugely. I am more thankful for the opportunities afforded to me. But I still am unwilling to say that the United States, or the Western tradition, is better than the alternatives,” she says.

   Harman says the trip was intended to encourage wider-range thinking. “Americans have tended to turn in on themselves and to withdraw from global exploration out of an inchoate fear,” he says. “Yes, there is terrorism in the world. But there are plenty of places that are very safe. Indeed, except for the indescribable traffic, I usually feel safer in India than I do in the United States. Students need to understand that in this world of global interdependence, we cannot afford to hunker down and simply tend our own gardens.

   “Disengagement from the international vista can only mean narrowness, parochialism, and a loss of opportunities to determine the shape of the future world. A program like this sends this message with real clarity.”

International Perspective

   Since 1968, Dr. William Harman has traveled every year or two to India. Still, the UT Chattanooga philosophy department head finds that the country continues to reveal itself to him.

   “One of the reasons I find India so stimulating is because I know that every morning when I wake up, I am facing a day when I will learn something new. It could be a modest discovery, such as a new Tamil linguistic construction or a few additional vocabulary terms. Or it could be something big: an insight into the caste system or into the structure of temple worship,” Harman says. “Because the students were so vocal about what they saw, and about the questions they had, I was forced to look once again at many of those things I had long ago taken for granted.”

   When Harman and Dr. Elizabeth Gailey, assistant professor of communication, wrote the grant for the University of Chattanooga Foundation to fund the trip to India, they noted, “Under normal circumstances, if given a chance to travel, most of us cling to ‘the global West,’ usually Western Europe or the countries bordering North America. India forces global awareness in more clearly articulated ways.” They cited the tools India provides for study, such as the exploration of cultural diversity, linguistic multiplicity by way of India’s 15 official written languages, religiosity outside the context of the Judeo-Christian traditions, poverty and affluence, and population growth.

   Was the trip effective? Jeremy Henderson spoke for many of the students on the India trip: “It meant everything to have this opportunity. The financial support through the University of Chattanooga Foundation made it possible for students to do something that we might have never been able to afford,” he says.

   With the success of the trip to India, Harman hopes that international study will become a part of the basic summer curriculum for the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

   “We have faculty members interested in taking students to Japan, Greece, Oxford [England], Düsseldorf [Germany], and, of course, India.
Discussions have already begun, and our proposal is to mount an overseas summer program every other summer that will include one or two faculty members from other departments, who would not only teach but also learn from the experience of directing the program. This way, the program becomes a form of faculty development for adventurous academics who want to learn about a culture along with the students.”