The 5th century Indian philosopher, Bhartṛhari said
"Mind
acquires critical acumen by interacting with other traditions. What
does he know who knows only his own tradition? "
Vak̄yapadıȳa II.484
That was confident India, the centre of knowledge for the world. But
today, sadly, we have to say,
"WHAT DOES HE KNOW WHO DOES
NOT KNOW HIS OWN TRADITION ?"
The challenges of contemporary global civilization are many and there are voices asking for alternatives, searching for systems of thought that promote harmony and mutuality rather than conflict and difference. In a world struggling to harmonize the individual with the collective, the modern with the traditional, the economical with the ecological and the sacred with the secular, we need our education systems to be (re)anchored in a philosophy and praxis of oneness. There is a universally felt need for a new system of values and thought that has the possibility of creating a world of peace and cooperation.
Bhārata as the cradle of global civilization with a distinct vision, philosophy and praxis of education - founded as it is on plurality and togetherness provides a template for full human blossoming. These civilizational values are both centred in and also a product of India's Knowledge Systems (IKS). India’s knowledge as contained in what is perhaps the world’s largest body of intellectual texts, is primarily and essentially empirical and not restricted to ‘theories in the text’ but closely interwoven with the lived lives of people. As such from the beginning, thought about both what is observable and what can only be experienced has produced in the process of cogitation a large number of philosophical and imagination-based vidyās and also hard sciences dealing with the material reality, the earth and the cosmos.
Responding to the call, we now evidently need to re-craft our education systems that will herald a brighter and a happier future for the world. This education will need to incorporate the domains of knowledge and traditions of texts and thinkers of India's rich intellectual heritage. Bringing Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) in the 'centre stage of education' and anchoring education in and facilitating an intimate engagement with IKS for mainstream academia is the need of the hour.
“The historic meeting points of patron-sage Swami Vivekananda with scientists Nikola Tesla, Herman Helmholtz, and Lord Kelvin in Chicago 1893; and further meetings between world poet and Nobel laureate Gurudev Rabindranath Thakur and scientist Werner Heisenberg (1929 in Kolkata) and Sir Albert Einstein (1930 in Berlin) are the important precursors to the reclamation of Indian Knowledge Systems. Furthermore, a making of the American Institute of Integral Studies, the Esalen Institute in California, and the triple contributions coming from Sir Arnold Toynbee, Professor Alan Watts and renowned Trans-personal psychologist Abraham Maslow, soon after Dr. Haridas Chowdhury introduced the works of Sri Aurobindo to the west - are the latest landmarks. Eventually, in 2004, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research, had accepted the non-linear causal pattern behind India’s age-old concept of space-time-causation and change (kārya-kāraṇa-vāda of the vedas and pratyut-samutpāda of Buddhism) in the form of a dancing Cosmic Puruṣa i,e Śiva Naṭarāja, which stands for a deeper non-local reality behind our surface existence”.
Prof. Joy Sen, First Chair, CoE-IKS