Indian knowledge system panacea to world's challenges, says Dharmendra Pradhan
May 16, 2022
New Delhi [India], May 16 : Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday launched a textbook on 'Introduction to Indian Knowledge Systems: Concepts and Applications'.
Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar, along with Higher Education Secretary K Sanjay Murthy, attended the programme.
Pradhan expressed his happiness that the authors have given an academic framework to Indian Knowledge System in this book. Pradhan spoke about the global footprint of Indian knowledge, culture, philosophy and spirituality.
He also spoke about the ancient Indian civilisation and how it has positively impacted the world.
Speaking about Vedas, Upanishads and other Indian texts, he said that our ancient heritage is full of treasures which need to be preserved, documented and propagated. He also spoke about various examples of science-based practices and knowledge from ancient India which we can find relevant still in the modern world.
The Minister said that the Indian education system is being decolonised under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While we adopt the good things from our ancient past, we must also be mindful of the problems in our society and build a future which created synergy between knowledge from the past and contemporary issues. Solutions to many of world's problems lie in the Indian Knowledge System, he added.
This book sought to fill in the gap for offering a required course on IKS, recently mandated by AICTE. Moreover, the New Education Policy (NEP) has also provided a clear trajectory for imparting IKS in the higher education curriculum, necessitating a book of this kind in several higher education institutions in the country in the days to come. Although the book has been primarily developed for use by the Engineering institutions, the structure and the contents lend themselves easily to address the requirement in other University systems (Liberal Arts, Medicine, Science and Management) for such a book.
The newly released IKS textbook will enable the students to bridge the divide between traditional and modern education systems by providing students with an opportunity to reconnect with the past, build a holistic scientific temper and utilize it for carrying out multidisciplinary research and innovation.
The textbook curriculum is developed by Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore in association with VYASA Yoga Institute, Bengaluru, and Chinmaya Vishwa Vidyapeeth, Ernakulam. It is written by Prof. B Mahadevan, IIM Bangalore and co-authored by Assoc Prof. Vinayak Rajat Bhat, Chanakya University, Bengaluru, and Nagendra Pavana R N, with the school of Vedic Knowledge Systems at Chinmaya Vishwa Vidyapeeth, Ernakulam.
Established in October 2020, the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) is an innovative cell under the Ministry of Education (MoE) at AICTE, New Delhi. It seeks to promote interdisciplinary research on all aspects of IKS, preserve and disseminate IKS for further research and societal applications, and actively engage in spreading the rich heritage of our country and traditional knowledge in the field of Arts and literature, Agriculture, Basic Sciences, Engineering & Technology, Architecture, Management, Economics, etc.
