From Discipline to Dialogue: Corporal Punishment a Paradigm Shift in Authority Structures within Religious Seminaries

Abstract

The paper critically analyses the concept of corporal punishment in religious seminaries in Pakistan, especially focusing on District Multan, a part of Pakistan that was traditionally known as the hub of madrasas. Though these institutions remain fundamental in offering free education, accommodation and religious training to the needy children, they also perpetuate the systems of power, founded on coercion and threat. The paper is based on a qualitative approach to grounded theory to interact with various stakeholders, such as students, teachers, parents, community leaders, and child rights organizations representatives, to understand the experience of corporal punishment, its justification, and its opposition. The results have identified four overarching themes, namely: first, obedience in seminaries is fear-driven and leads to compliance rather than respect; second, corporal punishment is unacceptable and significantly ineffective in enhancing the learning process, as it destroys concentration, memory, motivation and creativity; third, cultural and religious justifications prove that punishment is moral and spiritual, and has been perpetuating through generations; and fourth, emerging voices of resistance insist that dialogue, empathy, and mutual trust are acceptable and effective ways of replacing coercive discipline. The paper explains these results based on theoretical concepts of Weberian coercive power, Foucaultian disciplinary power, and Bourdieuian symbolic violence, which explain how punishment is naturalized as normal despite its harmful psychological, social and educational effects. The discussion also contextualises the practice in the larger child rights and Islamic morality debate where corporal punishment goes against the Quranic values of mercy (rahma) and justice (adl). Finally, the article proposes a paradigm shift in the existing discipline through punishment to authority through dialogue that makes it both a pedagogical and ethical imperative to reform religious seminaries in Pakistan.