The goal of school education is to teach what is most beneficial to students.
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There are good reasons to include Indian knowledge systems (IKS) in school education. IKS can foster a sense of identity and connectedness, promoting greater self-respect and empowerment. They help convey that we are as capable of thinking clearly as anyone else in the world. Moreover, some IKS content may be more beneficial
for students than what is offered by other knowledge systems globally.
IKS have been present in school curricula and textbooks since the early days of Independence. The current dispensation is pushing to expand its presence, which is commendable, but it is essential to keep certain principles in mind while doing so.
IKS is a broad umbrella term, encompassing a wide range of knowledge—from the Muslim Gujjars of Kashmir to Sanskrit canons, Tamil Buddhist epics, and Kuki lore. It covers various disciplines, including epistemology, ethics, physics, and mathematics. Further, there are many schools of thought within each. For example, darshan, or philosophy, includes both orthodox schools (Vedanta, Nyaya, Samkhya, etc.) and heterodox ones (Buddhism, Jainism, etc.). These schools often differ significantly; for instance, certain versions of Buddhism argue that the self is not a single, unified entity, the pursuit of which is worthless, which aligns with many contemporary social scientists and psychologists. In contrast, Vedanta recommends the opposite, advocating for the integration
of the self and its union with the paramatma. With so many perspectives, how do we choose which ones to teach and why? We must establish credible ways of choosing between them and avoid simply teaching what is most familiar.
How to choose?
At the most general level, we should perhaps use the following criteria for identifying suitable knowledge: (a) methodological naturalism, viz. that we explain everything through material processes, not through super-natural processes. (b) The use of reason and evidence that comes from experiencing the world should be given primacy. Generally, the parts of IKS that claim validity due to special contact with the divine should be avoided. These vary too much, and there is no way of justifying why this or that should be taught.
The goal of school education is to teach what is most beneficial to students. This should guide our selection from IKS. Where necessary, we should supplement IKS with knowledge from other systems that have valuable content missing from IKS. For example, the tridosha theory of disease is widely held in IKS, where an imbalance between vatta, pitta, and kapha is said to be responsible for illness. The germ theory of disease is different from this and adds considerably to how we understand and treat our illnesses. It says that there are microbes like bacteria and viruses that are responsible for many illnesses. The germ theory of disease is what identified the causes of the Covid pandemic and helped to overcome it. We must not talk of the tridosha theory in a way that prevents students from paying attention to the germ theory of disease or which cancels it out.
It is not wise to just have content from IKS without a comparison with other systems to check if better understandings are present elsewhere. Our approach should be comparative and seek the best understanding, not valorising one system alone. We do not want to hobble our children, but to help them excel.
Moreover, we should guard against the narrative that India was always the best in the past. This belief is good for the ego but not good for intellectual growth. It is better to say that we come from a great tradition, which is one among several other great traditions, and these have always been learning from each other.
Our selection of IKS content must align with the larger goals of education. Every national education policy after Independence, including the NEP 2020, has emphasised the need for children to learn critical thinking and not just absorb ideas from the past. Earlier we had both ways of teaching—a more common one that emphasised respectful acceptance of tradition and a less common one that emphasised questioning and asking what is more relevant or correct. A reverent acceptance of tradition may have worked in societies that were seeing slow change. In societies where change is as rapid as ours, children need to be discerning and reflective. This calls for methods of teaching that encourage children to participate and to question.
It is important to promote IKS. It is also important
to do it thoughtfully and
not blindly.
(The writer teaches at Azim Premji University. Views expressed are personal)