Learning Outcome
National Seminar & Workshop on
IKS and English Studies
Participating in the National Seminar on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies was one of the most intellectually transformative academic experiences I have encountered so far. Spread across two vibrant days — 23 and 24 March 2026 — the seminar brought together eminent scholars whose plenary sessions opened entirely new ways of thinking about literature, language, translation, feminism, and the decolonisation of English Studies in India.
Prof. Dushyant Nimavat
IKS as an Alternative Research Methodology
Prof. Nimavat opened the academic discussions by arguing that Indian Knowledge Systems must be treated as a plural and diverse body of knowledge, not as a single unified system. He insisted the discourse around IKS must move away from debates of cultural superiority and instead become a rigorous, evidence-based academic inquiry.
One of his most powerful historical arguments was a reference to Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree, which demonstrates that pre-colonial India had a rich and sophisticated educational system — one largely undermined by colonial narratives rather than genuine intellectual critique.
A key takeaway was his critique of Western literary theories: applying frameworks such as feminism or psychoanalytic criticism to Indian and regional texts without accounting for cultural specificity leads to misinterpretation. He connected this critique directly to the goals of NEP 2020, which encourages integrating Indian intellectual heritage into mainstream education.
- IKS should complement, not replace, Western research methodologies.
- Post-independence India missed the opportunity to redesign its educational framework on indigenous lines.
- Cultural specificity is essential when applying literary theory to non-Western texts.
- Researchers must investigate claims about pre-colonial India critically, through evidence.
Dr. Kalyani Vallath
The Thinai System: Dravidian Poetics as Global Literary Theory
Dr. Vallath introduced the audience to the richness of classical Tamil poetics, specifically the Tolkappiyam and Sangam literature, and made a compelling case for their integration into English literary studies. Her central argument: knowledge should never be compartmentalised; Indian literary and cultural traditions must be studied as interconnected wholes.
She explained the Thinai system — an ancient framework that maps landscape, emotion, ecology, and human experience onto literary form. Tamil literature organises experience into two spheres: Akam (inner/personal world) and Puram (outer/public world).
Dr. Vallath demonstrated that these frameworks are not confined to ancient Tamil texts. She drew comparisons with Rasa Theory, Romanticism, Symbolism, Modernism, Ecocriticism, and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, arguing that the Thinai system can serve as a powerful ecological and comparative literary theory contributing meaningfully to global poetics and environmental humanities.
- Dravidian literary aesthetics offer sophisticated models for ecological and emotional literary mapping.
- Thinai bridges ancient Indian poetics and contemporary Ecocriticism.
- Indian aesthetic traditions are as analytically rigorous as Western literary theories.
- Comparative literary analysis gains depth when Indian frameworks are brought into dialogue with Western ones.
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay
Rethinking English Studies: IKS as Pedagogical Framework
Dr. Chattopadhyay focused on the historical and structural problem of English Studies in India. Since English education was introduced under Macaulay's colonial educational policy with the explicit aim of producing Indians who would think and act in accordance with British values, the discipline has remained disproportionately dependent on Eurocentric theories and texts.
He critiqued this model using Paulo Freire's concept of the "banking model of education" — a passive system in which teachers deposit knowledge into students rather than fostering critical inquiry. His proposed alternative was not cosmetic: IKS must function as actual alternative analytical and pedagogical frameworks, not merely decorative additions to a syllabus.
Importantly, he championed a dialogic pedagogy inspired by the question-and-answer structure of the Bhagavad Gita — one that replaces rote memorization with active debate, questioning, and engagement.
- English Studies in India is still shaped by colonial intellectual foundations.
- IKS frameworks — Nyaya, Vedanta, Rasa, Dhvani — are valid and rigorous critical tools.
- Curriculum redesign must include comparative study of Indian and Western theories.
- Integration of IKS must be intellectually rigorous, not symbolic tokenism.
Dr. Ashok Sachdeva
Indian Philosophy and Its Influence on British & American Literature
Dr. Sachdeva made a sweeping and persuasive argument: Indian philosophical concepts — Vedanta, Maya, Karma, Moksha, Detachment, Reincarnation, and Spiritual Unity — exercised a profound and direct influence on British and American literary traditions. This influence became prominent during the Oriental Renaissance, when Sanskrit texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads were translated into English and became available to Western scholars.
He demonstrated these influences through specific writers: William Wordsworth's spiritual view of nature reflects Vedantic and yogic ideas; Shelley's poetry echoes Maya and Karma; T. S. Eliot drew deeply on Indian philosophy in The Waste Land and Four Quartets; and W. B. Yeats absorbed ideas of reincarnation and cyclic time. American transcendentalists — Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman — were similarly shaped by Indian thought.
- Indian philosophy is not peripheral but foundational to British and American literary thought.
- The Oriental Renaissance was a pivotal moment of East-West intellectual exchange.
- Comparative readings of Indian and Western literary figures reveal shared philosophical concerns.
- IKS frameworks can enrich the study of canonical Western texts, not just Indian ones.
Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya
Language, Knowledge, and the Holistic Indian Pedagogical Tradition
Prof. Bhattacharya challenged a foundational assumption of modern education: that language is primarily a tool of communication. In Indian traditions, he argued, language was always a producer of knowledge. Knowledge emerged through the interpretation of language; meaning and language were inseparable.
He rejected the idea that Indian intellectual tradition experienced any historical "break." Instead, knowledge flowed continuously (dhara/parampara), from ancient Sanskrit through Bhakti literature into regional literary cultures. He placed Sanskrit at the centre of this tradition, noting that even regional literary cultures developed in dialogue with it.
He then traced how colonial institutions, especially Fort William College, reduced language to a practical administrative tool, separating theoretical and practical learning, discouraging multilingualism and translation, and disconnecting language from knowledge and culture. Traditional Indian language education — holistic, multilingual, interpretive, and knowledge-centred — was systematically undermined.
- In Indian tradition, language and knowledge are co-constitutive — not separable.
- Panini's grammar is a sophisticated, socially aware, generative system.
- Narratives and literary texts were central to language education in pre-colonial India.
- Colonial language education weakened multilingualism and the knowledge-producing function of language.
Prof. Sachin Ketkar
Translation as Knowledge Creation: Rethinking Equivalence
Prof. Ketkar opened with a disarming observation: most Indians cannot access foundational IKS texts — the Vedas, Upanishads, Panini — in their original languages. Translation, therefore, is not optional but existential for the survival and transmission of Indian intellectual traditions.
His central theoretical contribution was a critique of the myth of exact equivalence. Many cultural terms — dharma, guru, jalebi, sari — have no exact equivalents even across Indian languages. The insistence on finding perfect equivalence, he argued, is itself a colonial inheritance, not an indigenous Indian understanding of translation.
He concluded that translation is not a secondary or inferior copy of an original but an act of semiotic transformation, cultural production, and knowledge creation. Meaning is always shaped by time, community, and interpretation — which is precisely why the study of multiple translations of the same text is intellectually richer than seeking a single "correct" reading.
- Translation is central to preserving and transmitting Indian Knowledge Systems.
- The demand for exact equivalence is a colonial assumption, not an indigenous one.
- Every translation reflects the ideological and cultural position of the translator.
- Studying how meaning shifts across translations is a productive scholarly methodology.
Dr. Amrita Das
Reclaiming Divine Femininity Through Irigaray and Hindu Goddess Traditions
Dr. Das's lecture was among the most intellectually audacious of the seminar. Her paper — "Reclaiming the Divine Femininity of Indian Women through the French Theoretical Lens of Luce Irigaray" — demonstrated how Hindu goddess traditions can be read through postmodern feminist theory to construct a robust framework for women's subjectivity and empowerment.
She pointed out a significant contrast: while Western religious traditions largely lack a strong feminine divine presence, Hinduism offers rich representations of female divinity through goddess worship. Drawing on Irigaray's ideas of divine femininity, self-love, breathing, and maternal genealogy, she argued that the spiritual power embedded in Hindu goddess worship enables women to reclaim personal and cultural autonomy.
Her conclusion was powerful: the Hindu goddess tradition offers an alternative feminist framework in which women are not passive figures but spiritually and culturally empowered beings. Through Irigaray's lens, divine femininity enables a rethinking of women's identity, body, and transcendence beyond patriarchal structures.
- Hindu goddess traditions provide a rich, non-Western feminist theoretical resource.
- IKS and Western theory (here, Irigaray) can be productively brought into dialogue.
- Contemporary women writers actively use mythology to assert female subjectivity.
- Breathing, air, and maternal genealogy function as metaphors for women's transcendence in both systems.
What This Seminar Taught Me
Across both days, a single, powerful argument emerged from every session: Indian Knowledge Systems are not relics of the past but living, generative intellectual frameworks capable of enriching every dimension of literary and linguistic study — from research methodology and classroom pedagogy to feminist theory, translation studies, and comparative poetics.
What struck me most was the courage of these scholars to challenge the intellectual complacency of our discipline — the unquestioned assumption that Western theory is the default language of literary analysis. The seminar made clear that the study of English literature in India need not be an act of cultural ventriloquism. It can, and must, be an act of creative intellectual sovereignty.
I left this seminar with not only new frameworks — Thinai, Dhvani, Rasa, Nyaya, Translation as knowledge creation — but also with a renewed sense of purpose as a scholar. If IKS is to make a lasting contribution to English Studies, it will require precisely the kind of rigorous, comparative, and intellectually honest engagement that every speaker in this seminar modelled.
Understood IKS as plural, diverse, and complementary to Western research — not superior or inferior, but different and necessary.
Gained working knowledge of Thinai, Rasa, Dhvani, Nyaya, and Vedanta as tools for literary criticism and pedagogical design.
Recognised translation not as equivalence-finding but as an ideologically situated act of knowledge creation and cultural production.
Developed a critical awareness of how colonial education systems continue to shape English Studies in India — and what decolonisation might actually mean in practice.
Discovered the profound influence of Indian philosophy — Vedanta, Karma, Moksha — on British and American literary traditions, from Wordsworth and Eliot to Emerson and Whitman.
Found a new feminist framework in the dialogue between Hindu goddess traditions and Irigaray's postmodern feminism — broadening the scope of gender studies in literature.
