New Delhi: The Madhya Pradesh government’s order this month making it mandatory for colleges to place in their libraries a set of 88 books, including those written by leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has triggered a political row.
According to the state government, the books will serve as reference material and will be part of ‘Bharatiya Gyan Parampara Prakoshths’ — cells for familiarising students with Indian knowledge systems, which are recommended to be set up in colleges under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The opposition Congress has come down heavily against the move and said that colleges should not be turned into centres of conflict over “political ideology”.
Last week, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi had sparked a controversy after it introduced a mandatory course titled ‘Introduction to Consciousness and Wellbeing’ that includes topics like “reincarnation” for first-year engineering students. In its rationale, the institute said the course was introduced by its Indian knowledge systems (IKS) department in accordance with the directions of the ministry of education.
Members of All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN), a collective of scientists, Monday issued an online statement alleging “misuse of the IKS mandate” across higher education institutions. It added that academics were doing a disservice to education by introducing “pseudoscientific claims in IKS courses”.
There are numerous examples where educational institutions have either introduced courses or their faculty have launched research into topics such as “Vedic architecture to create a healthy indoor environment” and “development of quality bio fertiliser from cow dung” as part of the incorporation of the study of Indian knowledge systems.
ThePrint explains what the IKS initiative is about, its genesis and what has been done under it so far.
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An education system ‘rooted in Indian ethos’
Ever since the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, it has been pushing to “decolonise” India’s education system. The effort was formalised when the new National Education Policy was launched in July 2020, envisioning an education system “rooted in [the] Indian ethos”.
“Indian culture and philosophy have had a strong influence on the world. These rich legacies to world heritage must not only be nurtured and preserved for posterity but also researched, enhanced, and put to new uses through our education system,” the policy says.
It recommends incorporating elements of India’s traditional knowledge in the curriculum in an “accurate and scientific manner” in areas including mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, yoga, architecture, medicine, agriculture, engineering, linguistics, literature, sports and games, as well as in governance, polity, conservation.
In October 2020, the Ministry of Education launched an IKS division called Bhāratīya Jñāna Paramparā Vibhāga. Housed in the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in New Delhi, the division aims to promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on aspects of indigenous knowledge.
According to the website of the IKS division, its main objective is to “go beyond merely acknowledging the existence of Indian knowledge systems and to rejuvenate and mainstream it by integrating it into the fabric of our education research ecosystem for the contemporary world”.
It further seeks to “bridge the gap between traditional Indian knowledge systems and contemporary knowledge systems”.
Currently, the division conducts internship programmes for undergraduate students, faculty development programmes, workshops, research programmes, text mining and documentation projects, and many outreach activities in partnership with other institutions.
The division has also initiated an IKS Wiki portal to provide information on topics related to India’s traditional knowledge and culture to the general public in regional languages.
Ganti S. Murthy, national coordinator of the IKS division, told ThePrint the division does not work as a regulatory body and rather works in coordination with various higher education institutes to implement NEP 2020 recommendations.
“The NEP 2020 talks about rootedness in India, and it says that we should be aware of the civilisational progress we have made in all disciplines. Therefore, the division was formed,” he added.
“We are not even an advisory body. We are just working on the NEP recommendations of incorporating IKS in the education system in different forms. We don’t recommend any books under this. Besides, education is a state subject and we cannot comment on anything the states are doing on their own,” Murthy said, speaking about the Madhya Pradesh government’s order.
‘Prana-based Vedic solutions for minimising suicidal ideation’
In 2021, the government’s IKS division launched the ‘Bharatiya Gyan Samwardhan Yojana’, a programme under which it invites research proposals on IKS-related topics. So far, it has funded 88 research projects, with 27 of them being undertaken by faculty members from different IITs.
The research projects include topics such as ‘Prana-based Vedic solutions for minimising suicidal ideation’, ‘Orientation of temples of South India and their astronomical associations’, ‘Impact of Indian classical raga on human cognitive function’, ‘Automated question-answering system for Ramayana’, ‘Production of coloured cotton using ancient chemical formulations taken from the Sanskrit text Vishvavallabha’; ‘Impact of Satvik food on gut-microbiome diversity, and ‘Weather patterns in Kerala through planetary positions’.
According to officials at the division, these projects were picked for funding after a rigorous selection process held in various phases. Each chosen research project receives up to Rs 20 lakh over two years.
IKS centres and Bhasha Kendras
As many as 27 research centres, 17 teacher training centres, and seven language centres or Bhasha Kendras are currently functioning in higher education institutions in collaboration with the IKS division of the government. These centres have also been set up after a selection process and they receive funding of Rs 8-10 lakh from the IKS division, according to its website.
The research centres, which develop courses and conduct research in different domains of the Indian knowledge systems, are operating at IIT Mandi, IIT Madras, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT BHU, Institute for Science and Spirituality, Delhi, and Chanakya University, among others.
“Our IKS centre has a funded project to create courses for higher education with the particular aim of training teachers who handle chemistry at the college level. These courses are under way and will be completed shortly,” a professor at IIT BHU, associated with the division, told ThePrint.
The seven Bhasha Kendras prepare short booklets on IKS-related literature and manuscripts in languages including Sanskrit, Gujarati, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil, officials at the IKS division said.
The existing IKS centres currently offer 38 courses in online and hybrid mode on topics such as Concepts of Drug Design in Ayurveda, Functional Introduction to Ayurveda Food Science And Nutrition, Conservation of Natural Resources Used in Indian Medicine, Bhagavad Gita: A Guide for Holistic Wellbeing, Yogasutra. The courses are available for both students and faculty.
UGC and NCERT push for IKS courses
Last year, India’s higher education regulator, the University Grants Commission (UGC), issued guidelines on incorporating IKS in curricula as part of implementation of NEP 2020. Following the directive, many universities, including the University of Delhi, formed committees to work on this.
Similarly, the NCERT, too, formed a 19-member panel last year to ensure the incorporation of IKS elements in new school textbooks being developed under NEP 2020.
A section of academia has expressed concern over the push for the study of IKS in the curricula.
Tanvier Aeijaz, associate professor of political science at Delhi University’s Ramjas College, believes the idea is to add “texts related to a particular religion and particular ideology into the education system in different ways”.
“The idea is to completely erase mediaeval history and Dalit history from the education system. Neither is there any discussion with academia about what exactly they mean by Indian knowledge systems, nor have we been consulted on what shall be introduced as Indian knowledge. It is nothing but a way to promote Right-wing ideology and push books written by people sharing the same ideology,” he told ThePrint.
A senior professor of ancient history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, not wishing to be named, echoed this view.
“The IKS initiative is nothing but introducing content related to one particular ideology in textbooks. The government wants students to read the past of the country so that they don’t critically analyse the existing problems and question the government on issues like unemployment and inflation,” the professor said.
View of science collective
Members of AIPSN have said in their statement that the introduction of IKS in curricula has mostly been marred by “shoddy” and “biased implementation”.
“The NCERT introduced revised books for Class 6 this year. The new social science book, for the most part, seems to privilege Sanskrit-based traditions over others. In the guise of countering the racist Western origin of scientific outlook, NEP proponents tend to take a reverse racist position, claiming that ‘everything was known in ancient India’,” they write.
The AIPSN statement asserts that the situation is worse at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Citing the UGC guideline documents on introduction of IKS in curricula, it says that “the goals set in these documents are impossibly impractical”.
“As an example, one of these documents lists a detailed syllabus for a possible IKS course on history of Indian mathematics and astronomy. But, most of our faculty members in higher educational institutions have no prior experience or training to teach that course and are unfamiliar with the materials covered therein,” it adds.
The AIPSN members further raise concern over IKS courses, writing: “Many of these sub-standard, pseudoscientific courses are being forced down students’ throats by making them mandatory. Perhaps the designers of such courses are aware of the ridiculous nature of their claims and are afraid of facing rejection from students, if these courses are made elective.”
The statement requested higher education institutions to only incorporate well-researched scientific sources and implored faculty members in institutions running “questionable IKS courses” to stand up for the truth and “stop such courses using the mechanisms within the institutions”.
Declining to comment directly on the statement, Murthy said it was important to be open to study and research various fields.
“Even when quantum physics was developed, it was called pseudoscientific. Imagine if the scientists would have stopped working on it back then because some people called it pseudoscientific… Therefore, it is important to be open for study and investigation. Just because a course at IIT Mandi mentions something on reincarnation, we should not be closing our doors on it. We cannot become dogmatic,” he said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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