National Seminar cum Workshop on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies Organized by the Department of English (MKBU)
Inaugural Ceremony:
Plenary Session by Dr. Dushyant Nimavat:
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1.1 Introduction and Context
Prof. Nimavat opened his address by
acknowledging that his role was both easier and more difficult — easier because
the audience was still settling in, and more difficult because the subject of
Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) is profound and complex. He clarified that he
was not an expert but had studied IKS intensively over two years as part of a
project on integrating Indian knowledge systems into higher education in India.
He stressed that the session was not
intended to argue about the superiority of any knowledge system. He invited
constructive debate (vāda) but discouraged unproductive argument (vivāda).
1.2 The Western Educational Legacy
and Its Impact
Prof. Nimavat observed that at the time of
India's independence in 1947, there was a significant opportunity to reimagine
the educational framework suited to India's heritage, but the country largely
continued with the inherited British model — what he described as a 'rote
system.'
He recommended the book The Beautiful Tree
by Prof. Dharampal, an ethnographic work based on official documents submitted
by British viceroys to the Empire. These documents contain detailed
observations about the Indian education system. Prof. Dharampal argued that
India's education system had actually enriched British education, not the other
way around.
1.3 Why Indian Knowledge System as
Research Methodology?
Prof. Nimavat made a case for IKS as a
legitimate alternative research methodology, citing the following reasons:
• IKS is more than 2,000 years old and is inherently research-oriented.
• Only approximately 12% of ancient Indian manuscripts
are currently available, and even this limited corpus is intellectually rich.
• Western research methodology has become a singular,
static lens that may not adequately address non-Western texts and contexts.
• Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies argues
that the word 'research' itself is experienced as an abusive term by indigenous
communities, as it assumes Western frameworks exclusively.
• Scopus and Web of Science, while benchmarks of academic
publishing, privilege a particular format and style — often prioritising
structure and visualisation over the intellectual depth of a paper.
He emphasised that IKS should not replace
Western methodology but serve as a supplementary and complementary lens,
enriching research by offering new perspectives.
1.4 National Education Policy 2020
and IKS
Prof. Nimavat clarified that NEP 2020
stands for National Education Policy (not New Education Policy) and that it
mandates 5% integration of IKS across existing curricula — not the creation of
entirely new courses in IKS. However, many institutions have responded by
developing standalone IKS programmes, which misses the intent of the policy. He
congratulated the host institution for taking a more integrative approach.
He also addressed a widespread
misconception that NEP 2020 is anti-English. No such provision exists in the
policy. He argued that English can play a vital and complementary role in
engaging with IKS in a global context.
1.5 The Eurocentric Blind Spot in
Research
Western theories often misread non-Western
texts because they carry cultural references specific to Western societies.
Applying Western frameworks — such as feminism — to regional Indian literature
(e.g., Gujarati literature) can create gaps and blind spots where the cultural
context does not align. Generalisation in research, especially when derived
from these frameworks, must be approached with caution.
He noted an epistemological divide: while
Western epistemology privileges reason and logic, Indian epistemology
emphasises experience, emotion (rasa), and multiple modes of knowing. These are
not incompatible but require a dialogic framework.
1.6 The Six Pramāṇas: A Framework
for Valid Knowledge
Prof. Nimavat introduced the six pramāṇas — the classical Indian framework for valid sources of knowledge — and mapped them onto contemporary research methodology:
1.7 Key Indian Aesthetic and
Philosophical Frameworks for Research
Prof. Nimavat outlined several major Indian
frameworks that can serve as research methodologies in literary and humanities
scholarship:
Rasa
Theory
Originally from Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra, Rasa
Theory provides a framework for understanding emotion, aesthetics, and literary
meaning. It can be applied to postcolonial fiction and other literary genres.
Dhvani
Theory (9th Century)
Propounded in the 9th century, Dhvani
theory holds that the most valued literary meaning is neither literal (vācya)
nor indicated (lakṣaṇā) but suggested (vyañjanā). This theory of layers of
meaning — literal, indicated, and suggested — is a rich interpretive
methodology applicable to poetry, fiction, and drama.
Alaṅkāra
Śāstra
India has a rich tradition of rhetorical
and figurative analysis that dates to the 7th century or earlier, predating
many comparable Western theories. It can inform literary criticism across
genres.
Vāda
Tradition
The tradition of structured philosophical
debate in three forms:
• Vāda — Truth-seeking debate: open-minded discussion
where contradictory positions are considered and, if sound, accepted. Unlike
Western research, which requires adopting a fixed stance, vāda allows for the
synthesis of contradictory ideas.
•
Jalpa — Competitive debate: rigorous argument between
scholars, useful for bringing out contradictory ideas and pushing the limits of
a subject.
•
Vitaṇḍā — Destructive criticism: generally avoided, but
the framework's existence shows the comprehensive nature of IKS epistemology.
1.8 A Pramāṇa-Based Dialogic Model
Prof. Nimavat proposed a dialogic model
where Western and Indian research methodologies enter into conversation rather
than opposition. He noted that:
•
Western research methodology offers a concrete,
structured framework that has benefitted especially science and technology.
•
IKS offers interpretive depth, plurality of
perspectives, and richer epistemological tools for humanities and literary
research.
•
Combining both creates multifaceted, multi-disciplinary
research that cannot emerge from either tradition alone.
He proposed that at the undergraduate
level, the pramāṇa framework could be introduced as a foundation to help
students understand how knowledge was validated in ancient India before they
engage with IKS at the postgraduate level.
1.9 Challenges in Applying IKS
Methodology
•
IKS does not constitute a 'static' methodology as in
the Western tradition; ideas are scattered across many texts and traditions.
•
Institutional resistance is real. At research degree
committees, IKS-based proposals are sometimes outright rejected on the grounds
that the methodology has not been 'validated.'
•
Multi-disciplinary demands: bringing in an IKS lens
requires collaboration across fields, making single-author research more
complex.
•
The requirement for evidence: grandiose claims about
the supremacy of ancient Indian knowledge, without evidence, have impeded
serious academic engagement.
•
Loss of manuscripts: India does not possess as large a
collection of its own manuscripts as some Western museums and archives do.
Libraries like the Ashmolean in Oxford hold thousands of Indian manuscripts
that have not yet been explored.
1.10 Q&A Highlights
A participant raised the question of the
shared roots between Western and Indian knowledge systems, noting that thinkers
such as Jung, Lacan, and the phenomenologists had drawn inspiration from Indian
and Chinese philosophy, connections that were subsequently obscured. Prof.
Nimavat agreed that these links are worth researching and that archival
evidence exists but remains largely unexplored. He cautioned against making
unsubstantiated claims and encouraged systematic, evidence-based research into
these intellectual genealogies.
Another question addressed the role of
digital archiving in preserving IKS. Prof. Nimavat affirmed that scientific
digital archiving is beneficial, but noted the risk of inaccurate or
contradictory material being archived without critical oversight. He also
pointed to the challenge that scholars in English studies may lack the Sanskrit
proficiency needed to verify the quality of translations they rely upon.
Plenary Session by Dr. Kalyani Vallath:
2.1 Introduction
Dr. Kalyani Vallath opened her session by
connecting with the previous speaker's emphasis on integration rather than
compartmentalisation. Having grown up in a family of Sanskrit professors and
having taught English literature throughout her career, she sought to bring
together Dravidian and Sanskrit aesthetic traditions with English literary
studies.
She acknowledged that, like most scholars
trained in the Western academic tradition, she had not been given the
opportunity to engage formally with Indian knowledge systems during her
education. However, personal family background and years of reading had brought
her to Tiṇai aesthetics, which forms the core of classical Tamil poetics.
The primary inspiration for her engagement
with Tiṇai was the poet and folklorist A.K. Ramanujan, whose translations of
classical Tamil poetry — published as The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil
Love Poems — opened this tradition to a global readership.
2.2 Classical Tamil: Historical and
Literary Context
Tamil is one of the classical languages of
India, spoken by approximately 31 million Indians and by significant
communities in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Burma, parts of Africa, Fiji, and the West
Indies. It is among the oldest surviving literary languages in the world.
Early classical Tamil literature is
preserved in eight anthologies of lyrics (aham and puram), ten long poems, and
the grammar known as the Tolkāppiyam (meaning 'the old composition').
The
Sangam Academies
Later Tamil literature came to be known as
Sangam literature. The word sangam (from Sanskrit sabhā or a Prakrit/Buddhist
term) refers to an academy or fraternity. According to a 7th-century
commentator, there were three great Sangam academies, each lasting thousands of
years and including gods, sages, and kings among their member-poets.
The Sangam corpus comprises 2,389 poems
ranging in length from four to over 800 lines. Of the 461 known poets, some are
identified only by striking epithets or metaphors — a tradition comparable to
the practice of naming Carnatic composers by their compositions rather than
their personal names.
Classification
of Sangam Poetry
Sangam poetry is classified into two broad
categories:
•
Aham (Interior) — Poetry of love and inner experience.
Love here functions as an objective correlative, encompassing union,
separation, longing, betrayal, chastity, and reunion.
•
Puram (Exterior) — Public and social poetry about
kings, heroes, war, grief, and the world.
The
Tolkāppiyam
The Tolkāppiyam is the most important
expository text for early Tamil poetry. It is divided into three parts: sounds,
words, and meaning. Interestingly, scholarly tradition holds that the grammar
precedes the Sangam poems, yet neither appears to derive from the other — both
emerge from a living and continuing literary tradition that preceded them.
2.3 The Tiṇai System: A
Comprehensive Ecological Poetics
The Tiṇai system, articulated in the
Tolkāppiyam and exemplified in Sangam poetry, organises literary experience
into five landscape-emotion correspondences. Each tiṇai is defined by a cluster
of associations: a flower or plant, a landscape, a time of day or season, and
an emotional state.
Dr. Vallath's central argument is that Tiṇai
is not merely a descriptive classification of ancient poems, but a theory of
how human emotion is ecologically grounded — and that comparable
landscape-emotion mappings recur across Sanskrit literature, indigenous
traditions, romantic poetry, modernist literature, cinema, and music worldwide.
2.4 The Five Tiṇais in Detail
Kuṟiñci
– Secret Union
Kuṟiñci is the mountain landscape,
associated with the rare flower that blooms once in twelve years. The emotional
register is that of secret love and clandestine union. Lovers meet at night in
mountainous terrain, isolated from social surveillance. The vertical elevation
of the mountain creates a liminal, transcendent space.
Literary parallels: Kālidāsa's
Kumārasambhava opens with a breathtaking description of the Himalayas as a
space that is simultaneously aesthetic and erotic — housing Shiva's austerity and
Pārvatī's desire. In Vikramorvaśīya, Purūravas wanders through wilderness in
obsessive longing after Urvaśī disappears, the rugged terrain mirroring his
emotional extremity.
In Indian cinema, mountainous landscapes
are consistently used as spaces of private or transgressive love: Roja (Tamil
and Hindi), Kashmir Ki Kali, and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge's Ladakh sequences
are cited examples.
Mullai –
Separation with Hope
Mullai is the jasmine flower of the forest,
associated with patient waiting. The woman waits for her lover's return with
trust and without anger. Cyclic time and domestic stability are the hallmarks
of this tiṇai — before trust is broken and the mood shifts towards Neytal or
Pālai.
This recalls the hermitage environment in
Abhijñānaśākuntala, where Śakuntalā's forest home embodies innocence and
restrained desire. Her jasmine plant, which she calls Vanajotsna (Moonlight of
the Forest), is treated as a sister. Rural and pastoral settings in cinema
similarly depict this emotional suspension: Raja Hindustani and Dilip Kumar's
songs from village settings are cited.
Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard is offered as an English literary example of pastoral reflection and
melancholy waiting.
Marutam
– Domestic Conflict and Betrayal
Marutam is the landscape of fertile
agricultural plains and riverine agricultural society. The emotional register
is one of betrayal and domestic tension: the man visits another woman while the
woman at home tends the fields. The village setting is the scene of social
surveillance, property relations, and moral regulation.
Literary parallels: Kamala Markandaya's
Nectar in a Sieve, Tagore's Chokher Bali, and other works depicting village
life and domestic disruption. Agricultural village life serves as the setting
for realism and moral complexity in marutam poems.
Neytal –
Longing Without Hope
Neytal is associated with the water lily
near coastal shores. The emotion is one of deep longing with no expectation of
return. The lover has gone far away, perhaps across the ocean, and there is no
word from him. The sea becomes a space of desolation — similar to a desert —
because it separates, takes people away, and often does not return them.
From A.K. Ramanujan's translation: 'My
lover capable of terrible lies / at night lay close to me in a dream that lied
like truth. / I woke up, still deceived... / I grow lean in loneliness / like a
water lily gnawed by a beetle.'
Literary parallels: Amitav Ghosh's Ibis
Trilogy (exile and oceanic separation), the French Lieutenant's Woman (Sarah
Woodruff waiting on the Cobb at Lyme Regis), Life of Pi (oceanic desolation),
and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale (a woman waiting for her absent husband across
the sea).
Pālai –
Crisis, Desolation and Abandonment
Pālai is not an independent tiṇai with a
distinct landscape but arises from other tiṇais when drought, heat, and
desolation transform them. It is associated with dangerous journeys through
arid wastelands, and the emotion is that of complete separation and crisis —
what Sanskrit theory calls vipralambha śṛṅgāra (the śṛṅgāra of separation).
Literary parallels: T.S. Eliot's The Waste
Land (a spiritually exhausted landscape stripped of cultural coherence), Albert
Camus's The Outsider (the harsh Algerian sun), The Plague, Picasso's Guernica, and
all dystopian narratives. The Rāmāyaṇa's Daṇḍakāraṇya forest is identified as a
Pālai landscape — dense, dangerous, and transformative.
Homer's Penelope waiting for Odysseus is
offered as a cross-cultural parallel of pīrital (the Pālai emotion of separation).
2.5 Tiṇai and Rasa Theory: The
Inner-Outer Continuum
Dr. Vallath drew connections between the Tiṇai
system and Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra. In Rasa theory, aesthetic emotion (rasa)
arises through vibhāva (determinants including environmental conditions),
anubhāva (consequents — how emotion is expressed), and vyabhicāri bhāva
(transient states). Landscape, season, time of day, and flora are vibhāvas —
they are not backdrop but constituent of emotional experience.
In Jayadeva's Gītā Govinda, the soft Malaya
breeze, the blossoming vines, and the lush spring atmosphere serve as catalytic
determinants that intensify śṛṅgāra and prepare the emotional ground for the
union of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Spring becomes synonymous with desire, renewal, and
union.
A participant raised the question of
whether Rasa might function as the inner experiential counterpart to Tiṇai's
outer ecological mapping. Dr. Vallath responded that in both systems there is
no strict dichotomy between inner and outer: the external becomes internalised
and the internal is expressed through external forms. The connection is one of
harmony, not opposition — resembling the Taoist relationship of yin and yang.
2.6 Tiṇai in Performance Traditions
In Indian classical performance, the
ecological logic of Tiṇai is internalised and conveyed through the body. The
dancer's body becomes a site where landscape and emotion converge:
•
In Bharatanāṭyam (particularly in padam and javali
forms), facial expression, eye movement, mudrās (hand gestures), and posture
communicate landscape, season, and emotional register without physical props or
backdrops.
•
The eight types of nāyikā (heroine) in Bharatanāṭyam
all correspond in various ways to the emotional states of the five tiṇais.
•
In Kathakali (Kerala), forests, battlefields, palaces,
and journeys are conveyed entirely through embodied action — a similar
performative ecology.
•
In Elizabethan theatre, where there were no sets or
backdrops, playwrights conveyed landscape through speech. In Macbeth alone,
there are approximately 40 speeches referring to the landscape. Night dominates
the play, constituting a mood of menace — analogous to a Marutam turning to
Pālai.
2.7 Cross-Cultural Parallels and
Comparative Frameworks
Great
Chain of Being
Dr. Vallath drew a comparison between the
Tiṇai system and the Western concept of the Great Chain of Being — the
interconnection of all existence from the divine to the mineral. Like Tiṇai,
this assumes an ecological universe in which environment, culture, economy, and
affect are inseparable. She also noted parallels with Ben Jonson's Comedy of
Humours (the four humours as constitutive of human character in relation to
natural elements).
Romanticism
Romantic poetry elevates nature as a
spiritual and metaphysical force. However, Tiṇai differs: where Romanticism
constructs an extension of individual interior feeling (Wordsworth's pathetic
fallacy, Shelley's transcendence, Byron's sublimity), Tiṇai operates as a
communal semiotic system — a shared cultural grammar of landscape and emotion,
not a private subjective perception.
Thomas
Hardy and Naturalism
In Hardy's Wessex novels, settings such as
Egdon Heath function as autonomous agencies shaping human destiny. Eustacia Vye
in The Return of the Native cannot be extricated from her landscape — the heath
resembles a Pālai environment. Similarly, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude
the Obscure, the setting generates a tragic determinism. This eventually became
the naturalism of Émile Zola.
Symbolism
The French Symbolist poets (Baudelaire,
Mallarmé, Verlaine, Valéry) theorised correspondences — the deep symbolic and
spiritual relationships between physical objects and human sensations. This is
comparable to Tiṇai's landscape-emotion correspondences, and also to
phenomenological bracketing, which involves shutting out the external world to
attend to the world with subjective consciousness — a practice analogous to
meditative absorption.
Northrop
Frye's Archetypal Schema
Dr. Vallath drew a parallel between the Tiṇai
system and Northrop Frye's anatomy of literary archetypes, derived from myth
and natural cycles. Frye privileges mythic universals and cyclical temporality,
while Tiṇai privileges localised geography. Both, however, identify structural
correspondences between natural patterns and literary-emotional experience.
Ecocriticism
and the Anthropocene
Contemporary ecocriticism examines how
culture, memory, and subjectivity are rooted in environments, and how the
relationship between the human and the non-human is constructed in literature.
Dr. Vallath argued that Tiṇai constitutes an early and sophisticated articulation
of what modern ecocriticism is only now theorising — and that integrating the
Tiṇai framework into ecocritical and comparative literary studies would produce
a more holistic and meaningful perspective.
2.8 Tiṇai and Indigenous Knowledge
Systems
Dr. Vallath noted strong resonances between
Tiṇai and indigenous and Adivasi knowledge systems, in which landscape is
inseparable from identity. Mountains, rivers, forests, and deserts are
understood as living presences — not backdrop but participants in human life.
Oral narratives in these traditions function as histories, maps, ecological
guides, and ethical frameworks. Like Tiṇai, they position humans as
participants within a sentient environment, bound by reciprocal
responsibilities.
2.9 Research Questions and Central
Argument
Dr. Vallath's session was organised around
the following research questions:
•
Can the Tiṇai system be understood as a comprehensive
ecological poetics whose principles extend beyond classical Tamil literature?
•
How does landscape function as a structural determinant
of emotion — across cultures and literary traditions?
•
Do similar environment-affect correspondences appear in
non-Tamil traditions?
•
What happens to these correspondences under modernity
and urbanisation? Do they persist in transformed forms?
Her central argument: Tiṇai is not merely a
descriptive classification of ancient poems but a theory of how human emotion
is ecologically grounded. Modernity disrupts but does not erase these
correspondences — they persist in transformed forms across cinema, music, and
literature globally. Tiṇai therefore offers a powerful framework for global
comparative poetics and environmental humanities.
2.10 Q&A Highlights
A participant asked about the apparent
closeness of Neytal (seashore) and Pālai (desert), given the obvious difference
in landscape. Dr. Vallath explained that the sea, like the desert, is a space
of desolation — it takes people away, facilitates separation, and may never
return those who have gone. The sea is a transitional space, like a desert,
connecting the agricultural inland to the arid waste.
On translation: a participant asked whether
translation can convey the ecological and emotional depth of texts like
Kālidāsa's or the Sangam poems. Dr. Vallath acknowledged that translated texts
are not the same as originals, particularly where rhythm and sound are integral
to meaning. However, a skilled translator — like Ramanujan — can recreate the
spirit of the original and add interpretive dimensions of their own, making
translation an act of critical dialogue with the source.
On genre: a participant asked whether
Sangam literature includes novels or plays. Dr. Vallath clarified that Sangam
literature is almost entirely poetry — lyric poems and long poems. The novel is
a Western form. Short prose tales exist in Indian traditions but Sangam is
specifically poetic.
Plenary Session by Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay:
3.1 Opening: Setting the Context
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay opened by
acknowledging the complexity of the three key terms that define the session's
focus: IKS (Indian Knowledge Systems), English literature, and pedagogical
approaches. He noted the heterogeneous composition of the audience —
undergraduates, postgraduates, PhD scholars, and teacher-scholars — and
calibrated his address accordingly.
He began with a metaphor: when we break a
bone, we go to the hospital and rely on an X-ray machine to diagnose the
fracture. The X-ray is a lens — a tool installed externally — but what is
actually installed in our minds is something entirely different. This friction
between the external diagnostic tool and our internal operating system is the
central tension at the heart of integrating IKS into English studies.
3.2 The Colonial Foundation of
English Education in India
Dr. Chattopadhyay situated the discussion
historically by referencing Lord Macaulay's infamous Minute on Education
(1835), which he identified as the genesis point for modern English education
in the Indian subcontinent. This was not, he argued, a neutral or benevolent
act of spreading literacy — it was a highly calculated mechanism of colonial
control.
Drawing on his personal experience of
receiving the prestigious Hornby Trust Scholarship (2009) to study at the
University of Leeds, he described how he told British dignitaries at a
reception that they were 'repaying their colonial debt.' This, he said, is what
scholarship programmes fundamentally represent — not generosity, but restitution.
He referenced Olusegun Mukherjee's book
This Gift of English: Education and the Formation of Alternative Hegemonies in
India (2009), which argues that English education in India was driven by two
goals:
•
Primary goal — to equip the colonised population with
the practical skills needed to serve as clerks and administrators for the East
India Company.
•
Secondary goal — to fundamentally restructure the
social and intellectual fabric of Indian society to ensure long-term
subservience by making Indians 'English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and
in intellect' (Macaulay's own words).
He also cited Gauri Viswanathan's Masks of
Conquest as a parallel landmark study on the ideological functions of English
literary education in colonial India.
The literature classroom, Dr. Chattopadhyay
observed, was not merely a place to admire the rhyme scheme of Wordsworth's
poems or read about daffodils that Indian students had never seen. It was a
highly calibrated mechanism of colonial control that systematically erased indigenous
intellectual traditions while substituting a foreign worldview as the universal
standard of knowledge.
3.3 Paulo Freire's Banking Model of
Education
Central to Dr. Chattopadhyay's pedagogical
argument is Paulo Freire's concept of the 'banking model of education,' drawn
from Freire's landmark work Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
In the banking model:
•
Students are treated as empty bank accounts — blank
slates devoid of any inherent knowledge or cultural wealth.
•
The teacher is the 'wealthy depositor' of knowledge,
who deposits facts, dates, accepted interpretations, and values into students'
minds.
•
Students are expected to store these deposits and
withdraw them correctly on examination day.
•
The teacher knows everything; the student knows
nothing. The teacher talks, the student listens.
This model, Dr. Chattopadhyay argued,
produces profound psychological and social damage. It creates horizontal
alienation between learners and their own environment, families, and cultural
roots. A student from a tribal community in Jharkhand, for instance, whose
mother tongue is Santali, learns nothing of that language or its culture in the
classroom. Her cultural heritage — food habits, family rituals, oral traditions
— is entirely absent from the educational space, and by this absence it is
rendered worthless. Students are stripped of their selfhood and their history,
and become what he described as 'safe, predictable, normal citizens who are
highly unlikely to resist the regime's power because they literally do not have
the conceptual vocabulary to do so.'
He was candid about the risk of the current
IKS integration effort falling into the same trap: if the integration of IKS
into English curricula is carried out in a top-down, transmission-based manner
— depositing ancient Sanskrit facts into modern brains instead of British
literary facts — it simply replicates the banking model with different content.
That, he warned, must be avoided at all costs.
3.4 What Is IKS? A Conceptual
Clarification
Dr. Chattopadhyay opened the discussion to
the audience, inviting students to offer their understanding of the term
'Indian Knowledge System.' Responses included ideas about traditional knowledge
transmitted orally and then in writing, knowledge preserved from ancient times,
and the use of IKS as a set of conceptual lenses through which to re-examine
existing knowledge.
He then introduced a series of important
conceptual distinctions:
3.5 The Dialogic Method: Saṃvāda as
Pedagogy
Dr. Chattopadhyay proposed Saṃvāda — the
classical Indian method of constructive dialogue and open discourse — as the
pedagogical antidote to the banking model. Saṃvāda is found throughout Indian
intellectual tradition, most prominently in the Sāmaveda and exemplified most
powerfully in the Bhagavad Gītā.
The Bhagavad Gītā, he pointed out, is not
structured as a sermon or monologue. It is a profound, agonising dialogue
between Arjuna — who is in a state of moral and existential crisis on the
battlefield — and his guide and mentor, Lord Krishna. Critically, Arjuna does
not simply accept Krishna's teachings. He argues. He pushes back. He asks
difficult ethical questions. He achieves clarity not through submission but
through a rigorous process of question, counter-argument, and philosophical
debate.
When Saṃvāda is used as a teaching method,
the entire power dynamic of the classroom shifts:
•
It becomes a learner-centric model. The teacher does
not know everything; the student also knows.
•
Students are not empty vessels. Their questions,
doubts, and cultural backgrounds form an active and vital component of how the
class operates.
•
Students are encouraged to use their own heritage and
paramparā to develop critical consciousness.
•
The alienation between learners and their own cultures
is addressed: by actively debating texts rooted in their own traditions,
learners develop a sense of ownership and pride in their heritage.
•
This process constitutes what Dr. Chattopadhyay called
decolonisation of the mind — not a political slogan but a concrete pedagogical
goal.
He connected Saṃvāda directly to Mikhail
Bakhtin's concept of dialogism — the dialogic method as opposed to the
monologic — affirming that the structural core of IKS is entirely aligned with
Freire's proposed solution to the banking model.
3.6 Nyāya and Vedānta as Tools for
Textual Analysis
Nyāya:
The Logic of the Text
Nyāya is the Indian school of logic and
epistemology. Dr. Chattopadhyay proposed using its central tool — anumāna
(inference) — as a method for literary analysis.
He offered a concrete example: a character
in a novel looks out of a window while it is raining and then suddenly decides
to resign from his job. A passive reader simply summarises the plot. But a
student applying the Nyāya framework acts as a forensic logician — using the
rules of inference to determine the unseen emotional, psychological, or
environmental causes that necessarily led to that action.
If you
see smoke on a distant hill, you can infer with certainty that there is fire,
even though you cannot see the flames. This is anumāna.
The student looks at the 'smoke' in the
text — the surface action — and uses the framework of Nyāya to prove the
existence of the 'fire' — the internal motivation or the off-page context. The
rain outside the window may be a projection of an internal storm. Nyāya gives
students rigorously logical tools for textual interpretation, grounding
literary analysis in inference, observation, and reasoned deduction.
Vedānta:
The Metaphysics of Character
Where Nyāya provides logic for plot
analysis, Vedānta provides the ontological and metaphysical framework for
understanding character. Vedānta's three core concepts are:
•
Ātman — the soul or true self of the individual.
•
Brahman — the ultimate, unchanging reality of the universe.
•
Māyā — the illusion of the material world; the
deceptive and transient nature of ego, career, societal expectations, and
material attachments.
Dr. Chattopadhyay demonstrated how Vedānta
transforms the interpretation of a text. A character undergoing a midlife
identity crisis, when read through a Freudian or psychoanalytic lens, becomes a
case study of ego wrestling with the id — childhood trauma, family dynamics,
societal repression. But when read through a Vedāntic lens, the same
character's depression is elevated to a cosmic scale: it becomes an existential
struggle between Māyā (the agonising illusions of the material world — career,
status, relationships) and Ātman (the suffocated true self trying to realise
its connection to ultimate reality, Brahman).
The stakes are entirely different. The
Vedāntic reading does not replace the psychoanalytic one; it enriches it,
offering a dimension of meaning that Western critical theory simply cannot
provide.
3.7 Rasa Theory and Dhvani: The
Emotional and Aesthetic Dimensions
Rasa
Theory
After Nyāya (logic of plot) and Vedānta
(metaphysics of character), the third dimension of textual experience is
emotional and aesthetic — the realm of Rasa Theory, drawn from Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra.
Rasa literally means flavour or juice, but
as an aesthetic concept it refers to the conscious, deliberate experience and
relishing of aesthetic emotion. Dr. Chattopadhyay contrasted this sharply with
Aristotle's concept of catharsis:
|
Aristotelian
Catharsis (Western) |
Rasa Theory
(Indian) |
|
Witnessing tragedy purges
dangerous emotions (pity and fear) from the audience. |
Aesthetic emotion is
consciously experienced, deliberately released, and relished — not purged. |
|
Art acts as a psychological
laxative — one experiences negative emotion safely in order to expel it. |
Art offers a rich taxonomy
of emotional experience to be savoured, understood, and inhabited. |
|
Binary: pleasure or pain. |
Nine principal rasas
(nava-rasas): Śṛṅgāra (love/beauty), Hāsya (comedy), Karuṇā
(compassion/sorrow), Raudra (fury), Vīra (heroism), Bhayānaka (terror),
Bībhatsa (disgust), Adbhuta (wonder), Śānta (tranquillity). |
Dr. Chattopadhyay cited the Bengali concept
of abhimāna as an example of an emotional nuance that Rasa theory captures but
Western theory entirely misses. Abhimāna is a feeling of wounded affection — a
state of being hurt, saddened, and disturbed while still holding soft feelings
for the person who caused the hurt; neither anger nor hatred, but something
quite specific and distinct. There is no single English equivalent. Rasa
theory's capacity to map such fine gradations of emotion makes it an
extraordinarily powerful tool for literary analysis.
Dhvani
Theory
Ānandavardhana's Dhvani theory argues that
the deepest and most beautiful layers of meaning in a poem or story are almost
never explicitly stated by the literal words on the page. Dhvani literally
means resonance, suggestion, or implication.
•
The literal meaning is surfacial.
•
The indicated meaning (lakṣaṇā) is between the lines.
•
The suggested meaning (vyañjanā) — the dhvani — is the
true power of the text. It is not said; it is evoked.
Dr. Chattopadhyay proposed a highly
generative comparative exercise: placing Ānandavardhana's Dhvani theory
alongside Derrida's deconstruction in the same syllabus.
•
Derridean deconstruction examines the inherent
instabilities, ambiguities, and contradictions in any text. Language is always
slippery; a word has meaning only in relation to what it is not.
•
Dhvani shows how a single word or phonetic sound can
suggest a whole universe of unstated emotion, proving that language is
inherently layered and multi-dimensional.
Placing these two frameworks side by side
does something important: it shatters the colonial myth that highly complex
linguistic theory originated in Paris in the 1960s. It levels the intellectual
playing field and validates that Indian classical literary theory is not
historical trivia but a robust, globally relevant analytical framework.
3.8 A Proposed Framework for IKS
Integration Across Levels
Dr. Chattopadhyay proposed a structured
framework for integrating IKS into English literature curricula across all levels.
Integration, he emphasised, must be methodological — not tokenistic. It is not
about removing British poets from the reading list and replacing them with
Indian ones. It is about epistemic reorientation.
Undergraduate
(BA) Level
•
Literary Theory and Criticism paper: introduce a module
on Indian Poetics and Alaṅkāra Śāstra, where students compare Dhvani with
Western symbolism and Rasa with affect theories. Short story analysis using
both Rasa theory and reader-response criticism.
•
Language and Communication course (AEC): a module on
classical Indian rhetoric drawn from Nāṭyaśāstra and Alaṅkāra Śāstra. Students
may deliver a speech as a Mahābhārata character (e.g., Bhīṣma on duty, or Yudhiṣṭhira
on truth), applying the narrative structures muka (beginning), pratimukha
(development), and upasaṃhāra (conclusion) from Nāṭyaśāstra.
•
Skill Enhancement Courses (SEC): study and analysis of
Śṛṅgāra and Bhakti poetry. Multidisciplinary elective (MDC) courses
incorporating similar content.
Postgraduate
(MA) Level
•
All of the above, but in greater depth.
•
Applying IKS frameworks — Rasa theory, Dhvani, Nyāya
inference — to canonical English texts and global literatures, creating
comparative analytical frameworks.
•
Analysing films using Rasa theory as a full pedagogical
exercise.
Research
(PhD) Level
•
Research Methodology paper: introduction of Indian
epistemological frameworks — pramāṇas, anumāna, śabda, and others — as valid
research tools alongside Western methodologies.
•
Rasa and Dhvani theory as frameworks for literary research
methodology.
•
Guru-Śiṣya Paramparā (the teacher-student tradition) as
a subject of academic study. Dr. Chattopadhyay suggested that a well-framed
case study of a scholar-mentor's intellectual development could constitute a
valid and original PhD — a form of research that is uncommon in India but
deeply rooted in Indian academic tradition.
Pedagogical
Strategies Across All Levels
•
Comparative analysis — placing IKS concepts alongside
Western critical theories.
•
Storytelling, creative writing, and performance-based
workshops.
•
Concept mapping — visual and cognitive mapping of IKS
frameworks.
•
Contextual application — applying IKS frameworks to
contemporary texts, cinema, and cultural phenomena.
•
Saṃvāda-based role plays, debates, and dialogic
classroom methods.
•
Reflective and experiential learning — analysing films
and texts using Rasa theory.
3.9 Cautions and Challenges
Dr. Chattopadhyay was candid about the
risks and challenges of the IKS integration project:
•
Danger of replication: integrating IKS in a top-down,
transmission-based manner would simply recreate the banking model with
different content. The method of integration is as important as the content
being integrated.
•
Danger of tokenism: IKS integration that amounts to
superficial inclusion — a few names or terms added to an existing syllabus —
lacks substantive engagement and does more harm than good by suggesting that
the work has been done when it has not.
•
Tension between epistemological frameworks: Indian and
Western traditions operate with distinct assumptions about knowledge, truth,
and interpretation. Navigating these differences requires careful pedagogical
mediation and methodological rigour.
•
Long-term risk: Dr. Chattopadhyay acknowledged a
personal concern — that if the integration is carried out poorly, a student
twenty or thirty years hence might feel that engagement with IKS caused them to
miss essential knowledge that limited their career. The integration must be
genuinely enriching, not substitutive.
•
Need for critical reflection: the integration must be
'inclusive, dynamic, and rooted in cosmopolitan interdisciplinarity' — not a
retreat into nationalist essentialism or a romanticisation of the ancient.
3.10 Q&A Highlights
A participant asked whether IKS integration
into English studies risks being a curricular gesture rather than a genuine
pedagogical transformation, and how its impact could be evaluated. Dr.
Chattopadhyay agreed that this risk exists and suggested that action research —
systematic, classroom-based inquiry by teachers into the impact of their own
pedagogical interventions — is the most appropriate tool for evaluating
real-world outcomes.
A participant raised a practical concern:
will IKS-integrated English studies be taken seriously by Western universities
when Indian students apply for doctoral programmes abroad? Dr. Chattopadhyay's
response was striking: Western academia is more receptive to this work than we
might expect. He noted that Oxford University Press (USA) published a major
Handbook on Tantra Studies in 2025. The more significant problem, he observed,
is that most serious scholarship on Indian cultural, philosophical, and
literary traditions has historically been produced by Western scholars rather
than by Indians themselves. He cited the fact that most canonical English
translations of the Bhagavad Gītā were made by Western scholars — an irony that
underscores the urgency of Indians reclaiming their own intellectual heritage.
A participant raised the question of how to
situate Swami Vivekananda (a Vedāntic spiritual reformer) and contemporary
literary critics using Marxist frameworks when both are critiquing Indian
society from different ideological positions. Dr. Chattopadhyay responded that
the Saṃvāda method is precisely the vehicle for this kind of engagement: rather
than positioning these two thinkers as incompatible, students could debate
Vivekananda's Rāja Yoga and its spiritual premises against a Marxist reading of
contemporary society, using the dialogic method to hold both positions in
productive tension. He also clarified common misconceptions about Vivekananda's
teaching: the yoga that is popular in the West (haṭha yoga as physical
exercise) is quite different from the Rāja Yoga that Vivekananda advocated, which
is concerned with the awakening of the kuṇḍalinī and the control of the mind
through spiritual discipline — an entirely different register.
3.11 Concluding Remarks
Dr. Chattopadhyay concluded by articulating
a vision for what a successfully integrated curriculum would look like: one
that is inclusive, dynamic, and rooted in cosmopolitan interdisciplinarity. It
would not treat IKS as an untouchable or archaic body of knowledge, nor would
it treat Western theory as the sole arbiter of intellectual legitimacy.
Instead, it would enable students to move fluidly between Nyāya and
deconstruction, between Rasa and affect theory, between Dhvani and Derrida —
not because these frameworks are identical, but because together they offer a
richer, more complete, and more honest account of literary and human
experience.
The integration of IKS has the potential to transform English studies into a more inclusive, dynamic, and intellectually vibrant field, capable of engaging with the complexities of a pluralistic world — provided we do not treat it as a highly compartmentalised exercise or regard other knowledge systems as something untouchable. We have to be inclusive in our approach.
Plenary Session by Prof. Ashok Sachdeva:
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Plenary Session by Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya:
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Plenary Session by Prof. Sachin Ketkar:
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Plenary Session by Dr. Amrita Das:
