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Unlock these with Subscription Products you've access to Additional Subscription Benefits Need help with your subscription. Updated - June 23, 2026 02:27 pm IST ‘There are now Indian Knowledge System hubs at IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Gandhinagar, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Kanpur.
Those at Kanpur and Mandi in particular have emerged as ‘leaders’ in the “research” of “consciousness”, reincarnation, and “Vedic” biology. ’ | Photo Credit: iksindia.
org For a few decades now, a project called the ‘Indian Knowledge System’ (IKS) has sought to integrate traditional Indian wisdom into modern educational curricula.
There is a legitimate quest to reclaim India’s indigenous intellectual history and to elevate an informal cultural aspiration into a part of education — but the IKS of today is not it.
The real IKS might focus on the linguistics of Panini, the Nyaya school of logic, the Kerala school of mathematics, the development of Wootz steel, and so on.
But the IKS being institutionalised, including under IIT-Mandi director Laxmidhar Behera, is concerned with “Puranic science”, mythology as history, ritual as technology, and an open contempt for verifiability.
Published - June 23, 2026 06:30 am IST higher education / scientific institutions / universities and colleges Terms & conditions | Institutional Subscriber Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal.
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