Indian Knowledge Systems for Education in the Evolutionary Crisis

Name: Bharatiya Jnana Pranali: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Crisis | Raghava Krishna on Education Reform
Uploaded: 2023-05-23T14:30:08+00:00
Duration: 40 min 11 s
Channel: Sangam Talks
Description: Summary and key takeaways on Indian Knowledge Systems for Education in the Evolutionary Crisis, covering The Evolutionary Crisis Humanity has built complex

Sangam Talks

May 23, 2023

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40 min video

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2 min read

YouTube video ID: x94Z117AFTg

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Humanity has built complex, unsustainable systems that it can no longer manage without an inner change. The crisis is described as an “evolutionary crisis” in which a choice of destiny is concealed. Sri Aurobindo’s 1945 observation warns that the analytical, competitive mindset clashes with an intuitive, integrative mode of knowing. The current economic growth model extracts resources, ignores ecological damage, and fails to promote human well‑being. Sustainable Development Goals have not delivered progress after seven years because they lack a fundamental shift in metaphysics and behavior. The required “evolutionary leap” is therefore internal, focusing on consciousness and awareness.

Indian Knowledge Systems and Academic Disciplines

Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) are presented as a metaphysical foundation for modern education and holistic well‑being—Yogakshema. The lecture highlights several disciplines where IKS can be integrated:

Social Sciences need a meta‑theory rooted in an Indic lens.
Ayurveda and integrative medicine draw on centuries of holistic health knowledge.
History is being reclaimed outside academia; universities must translate this work into formal courses and textbooks, citing scholars such as Vikram Sampath and Sai Deepak.
Law should contrast principles like Apoorishaya with contemporary intellectual‑property regimes.
Management and leadership must be built on Indian theories of development rather than consumption‑driven models.

Indian aesthetics, especially the Natya Shastra, is identified as a critical area for curriculum development.

The Teacher’s Responsibility

Teachers are framed as the primary upholders of ethics and truth, the “purveyors of truth” who shape destiny. They must transcend “cannibalistic” worldviews and reclaim their role as instruments of yoga. Internal growth and heightened consciousness are described as the next stage of evolution, and educators are urged to embody kindness, discernment, and moral conviction—qualities that AI cannot replicate. The lecture stresses that education currently fails to build resilience, leading to loneliness and reliance on prescription drugs.

Technology and Pedagogy

Technology is positioned as a tool, not a replacement, for teachers. It can scale the Gurukula model by delivering customized, learner‑centric journeys—what the lecture calls “techno‑pedagogies.” These tools support the teacher’s mission, allowing personalized learning at scale while preserving the human elements of kindness and moral discernment. The speaker asserts that the teacher must be “better than the chatbot AI.”

Mechanisms Behind the Vision

The Evolutionary Theory of Consciousness proposes that humanity has moved from random chemical processes to complex life, and now to a self‑reflexive ego. The next stage is an internal leap toward an integrative, intuitive consciousness.

The Role of the Teacher acts as the “instrument” of yoga, balancing analytical knowledge with the transcendent principles of IKS to guide students through the crisis.

Techno‑Pedagogy leverages digital platforms to extend the Gurukula tradition, ensuring that technology amplifies, rather than diminishes, the teacher’s unique human capacities.

Takeaways

Humanity faces an evolutionary crisis that demands an internal leap in consciousness rather than further external growth.
Integrating Indian Knowledge Systems into social sciences, medicine, history, law, and management can provide a holistic metaphysical foundation for education.
Teachers are positioned as ethical custodians and purveyors of truth, responsible for guiding students beyond competitive mindsets.
Technology should serve as a tool to scale the Gurukula model, delivering personalized learning while preserving the teacher’s human advantages.
The next stage of evolution emphasizes intuitive, integrative knowledge, with educators and IKS forming the core of this transformation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What role does technology play in scaling the Gurukula model according to the lecture?

Technology functions as a supportive tool that enables customized, learner‑centric journeys, allowing the Gurukula model to reach many students simultaneously. It amplifies the teacher’s capacity without replacing the human qualities of kindness and moral discernment.

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Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.

The Life Divine By Sri Aurobindo Recommended

This foundational text explores the evolutionary theory of consciousness and the metaphysical framework discussed in the lecture.

Amazon →

Complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda

Contains the core teachings on education as yoga and the development of human consciousness referenced in the talk.

Amazon →

The Religion Of Man Rabindranath Tagore

This book provides the philosophical basis for the human-centric and integrative education model advocated by the speaker.

Amazon →

Natya Shastra English Translation

The speaker identifies this as a critical text for developing Indian aesthetics and curriculum within the IKS framework.

Amazon →

Links may be affiliate links. We only include resources that are genuinely relevant to the topic.

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Full Transcript YouTube

I think coming off a moment of great
inspiration, how an idea can actually take shape,
become something that is functional and useful to
the multitude.
So, that is the spirit in which we
will have this conversation and that is in
fact the spirit of NEP also, if you
were to look at the core essence, it
is about a re-imagination of what education
means, especially from an indigenous lens.
So, while this comes up, what does all
of this sound like just when we think
about curriculum, content, ideas, any thoughts first off
of the mind?
Do we see that if this is happening
in psychology, any thoughts on what could be
an adjacent discipline where this is possible, architecture,
sports, all right, sports is an interesting one.
Any other possibilities that we are able to
imagine at this time, where if you were
to think about a two-year program or
a master's or let us say an undergrad
program of four years according to new vision,
what are the areas in which we can
actually think about some efforts or some kind
of direction, Indian aesthetics based on Natya Shastra,
that seems a very very important possibility, social
sciences is the most critical one, you got
to get there, absolutely, right, for that, in
fact, I will touch upon this a little
bit, I think there are two kinds of
work that needs to happen, one is the
meta theory itself, the meta philosophy of social
sciences and how would an Indic lens on
social sciences look like, would we call it
social science, is it separate, is it disparate,
I think there are a lot of essential
questions that we will bring up when we
think about it, but there is no question
that unless we are able to tackle that,
whatever else we are doing in adjacent disciplines,
it's not going to be enough, right, so
clearly it has an asymmetric kind of impact,
I will, it is not just an imagination
and it is an incredibly urgent intervention that
needs to be made, just a month ago
and I think this center, the IKS center
at IIT Kharagpur also did a two-day
seminar on Ayurveda and the whole idea of
integrative medicine, about synthesizing some of the things
that we can learn from the western sciences,
but the philosophy of medicine and the idea
of Purusha, the treatment of the whole, coming
from Ayurveda and Yoga is absolutely critical, there
is no question about it, that is actually
the most essential thing for well-being right
now and I will talk about it a
little bit in terms of crisis of ethics
that we have in research and science.
Any other disciplines that come to our mind
where the next work for IKS in terms
of building a theory, building a discipline, building
curriculum, building in courses.
So that entire, actually history is one area
where there is a lot of work happening
from outside of academy as well, the professor
Jaichand of course you know made a seminal
contribution with his book on the Aryan invasion
theory, but there is a lot of work
happening outside of academy as well on history,
if you look at Vikram Sampoji's work, if
you look at Sai Deepakji's works, there is
a tremendous amount of consciousness that has seeped
in in the last 4-5 years and
I think academia can take that forward and
translate that into specific courses and curriculum and
textbooks.
Management and leadership development, unless we have an
Indian theory of leadership development and a way
to actually translate that into a course and
a specific outcome based intervention, everything else that
we do is an act of leadership, so
it is important that you make that the
foundation.
Yes, brilliant, I think law is, again I
keep saying this but again the point is
that, that everything weaves into the next one,
there is no difference when you look at
from an indigristy, law cannot be different from
well-being, it cannot be different from leadership,
it cannot be different from social sciences, but
since we are in a certain structure, using
the fundamental integrative lens, we will still have
to apply that in specific areas like law.
Yeah, all aspects of law, what would be
the principle of Apoorishaya look, you know what
does that look like, when you contrast that
with the IPR law right now, these are
all, if we had to think about PhD
thesis, if you have to think about the
new emergent kind of questions that need to
be answered by IKS, once we excise our
thought in that direction, there are just any
number of topics that actually become research topic,
cool.
So, I think that was just some fodder
for thought, so this whole, the spirit of
today is all about imagination and how we
are able to think about new disciplines and
new frontiers using the, you know the vision
that we have had in the last 14
days, but let us examine this a little
bit more structured, in a more structured format,
particularly with the lens of NEP and what
does technology do to aid this process, right.
So, there are two questions, one is of
course the intent, the leadership, the manifestation of
that, but once you have that, you also
need to strategize, just the way HRG was
able to collaborate with 25 different scholars of
eminence to give us that curriculum, what are
the different kind of collaborations we need to
stitch and what are the new relationships that
teachers need to form, that is the basis
of what we are trying to imagine in
the next 30-40 minutes.
But I will begin once again by going
to a couple of statements which I think
capture our essential condition today.
This is Sri Aurobindo talking I think in
1945, says mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis
in which is concealed a choice of its
destiny, this is a very very potent statement,
I want us to reflect on this for
a minute.
It is going through an evolutionary crisis, I
will unpack that a little bit in terms
of why is he calling it an evolutionary
crisis, but he is also saying in that
evolutionary crisis is an opportunity, it is actually
a choice, it means that he is saying
the agency is with us, the crisis is
upon us and this was way back in
1945, in fact if anything it has been
exacerbated multifold today and I will you know
allude to a few examples of what this
means, but he is making a seminal observation
like he always did about the future because
he was his work was at that level,
his work was essentially about preparing planet and
the human consciousness for the next level of
evolution.
So he is talking about it from a
revolutionary perspective, what does this mean?
Any natural sciences faculty here?
Anybody from biology?
Ok.
So, if you anybody who studied evolutionary biology
or the theory of evolution, you would know
that you know if you were to just
speculate on what was it before creation, of
course the Indian mind has a certain speculation
and a theory about it, but from an
evolutionary perspective you know before there was life,
there was a random agglomeration of some materials
and some chemicals.
At some point in time the you know
the fundamental what we call the fundamental soup,
the chemical soup that can create life came
together and then that led to a single
cell unicellular organism.
The first cell was born and the first
cell decided to multiply, it became complex, it
became the architecture of life and then life
evolved into more and more complex forms.
This is the evolutionary theory as we understand
it, there is a lot more, I am
trying to distill it for essence, but he
is talking about this as an evolutionary crisis.
Now what has happened in this process of
evolution especially as we look at from you
know from the time of Homo sapiens onwards
when we started becoming self-aware a little
bit, this has been a journey of self
-awareness that is seeded by the formation of
a self-reflexive ego which separated our identity
from the rest of the creation.
So if you look at all the progress
from there, it is a progress on two
dimensions.
On one dimension you have this entire feeling
of you know us versus nature because you
are able to see yourself as separate, but
your racial memory, your DNA memory, your cultural
memory also points to that point of oneness
because you have come from that.
If you look at the human behavior and
if you look at civilizations built on certain
kinds of definitions, you will see this very
very starkly.
On one hand we started building tools, we
started building some kind of fences around us
because evolutionary race has not given humans a
physical advantage.
You are clearly not as fast as a
cheetah, you are not as powerful as an
elephant, you are not you know you do
not have the capacity to fly like birds,
we do not have any of these advantages.
Tagore writes about this when he talks about
religion of man and moving away from religion
of God in some senses, he speaks about
that at what point in time did evolution
decide that you do not need eyesight to
actually have a vision backwards because you can
be attacked from behind.
What is that evolutionary advantage by not having
that?
When did spine become erect?
What is that advantage that we had?
So these are some questions that scientists and
people who engage in evolutionary biology and evolutionary
theory have contended with, but in this journey
we have gone down these two paths.
On one path is this complexity that we
have to deal with as being separate and
distinct and on recognition of our individuated ego.
In that sense you are in some ways
against nature, but it is also in us
to be altruistic.
If you answer that question that Tagore has
posed why we did not have that, it
is because at some point in time we
also realized the power of collaboration.
It is at some point in time we
realized in a awareness section not just as
normal as being intuitive about it, but even
as our individuated egos we understood the power
of collaboration, the power of myth, the power
of being able to form larger associations, the
power of trust, the power of altruism.
That is what he points to as the
next stage of evolution.
Tagore does that and Sri Aurobindo is talking
about this in 1945 that what has happened
in this twin journey is that we have
made the world so complex.
On one hand you have your intuitive mind,
you have your intuitive knowledge systems, on the
other hand you have the analytical knowledge systems
and this seems to be a disjointed effort
and when you index on the idea of
individuated self and you go too much into
the analytical the tool making mode, you create
a civilization which is always ring fenced.
You are trying to gain an advantage that
is why the idea of competition, the idea
of creating systems which are self sustained within
themselves, but are not co-dependent on anything
else that is the structure that you give
eventually to your society and to the civilization
itself.
So, the crisis that he is talking about
it is that in that journey you made
the world so complex that you are no
longer in a position based on your own
evolutionary journey of your mind to deal with
it.
So, we have reached a point where we
have designed complex systems which we cannot deal
with ourselves, but he is not leaving it
at there.
It is not a fatalistic statement.
He is saying in this crisis is an
opportunity that is hidden, it is a choice.
What is the choice that he is talking
about?
The choice that he is talking about is
that the one index that we made which
is the analytical, the competitive, the you know
the outward going kind of exposition.
The other dimension is the next stage of
evolution which is an evolution in consciousness.
In fact, his entire life was about making
sure that we are capable of downloading that
consciousness.
So, the next evolution and this is what
he calls as super human or super man
whatever it is in different forms is that
there is going to be an evolutionary leap
and that evolutionary leap is going to be
internal.
And this if you are able to understand,
if you are able to identify with it,
the answer for why IKS becomes obvious.
If the next stage of evolution is going
to be an internal one, it is going
to be about consciousness, it is about contemplation,
it is about awareness, where is the tradition
of that knowledge?
Where are the examples, the best examples of
people who are embodied with that kind of
consciousness?
Where is that civilization which has the continuity
to manage both the intuitive mind and the
analytical mind?
Where is that tradition of knowledge?
What is that system of knowledge?
So, when we talk about Indian knowledge systems,
the philosophy of education, the philosophy and vision
of why we are here, it is because
there is an existential crisis.
I will try and locate some examples of
this.
We can, you know, we can create a
typology of what this crisis is, right.
So, he says the evolution of mind working
upon itself or life has developed the organization
of activity and use of matter which can
no longer be supported by human capacity without
an inner change.
So, we spoke about complexity in the morning,
complexity science, it is an evolving field.
Complexity science is about how do you deal
with the rate of change in the environment
around you.
Do we feel this in our own way?
Do we feel very very caught, you know,
there is an economic system, something happens somewhere
in the world and we say that there
are going to be job losses in India.
Think about a student joining academia today, taking
a four-year course.
Think about the kind of vulnerabilities that they
have to deal with.
Day in and day out that, you know,
that person is hearing that you do not
know what the world is going to be
in the next 4-5 years.
We are talking about chatbots, we are talking
about GPT 3.0, we are talking about
automation, we are talking about industrial revolution 4
.0. I was lucky, I was an average
student who got into the job market in
2001 based on very very normal kind of
results that you would get and I still
had the possibility of a career because there
was a rising tide that was lifting all
boats.
My empathy for the students today comes because
we have, my own generation has actually complicated
this process through the choices that we have
made and therefore, we also have the responsibility
to try and set it right.
So, what is this crisis that we are
talking about and how can we set it
right?
There are three crises, one is the crisis
of ethics.
Somebody spoke about, you mentioned that health and
well-being is an area of intervention.
I want us to reflect on what really
happened in the last 3 years, you know,
what we call the COVID pandemic.
We have walked into such a trap without
actually understanding the forces at play.
There is a lot of research now.
How many of you have taken the third
dose for example?
I am sure first two doses most of
us have, but by the time it was,
you know, it was time for the third
dose, we said hang on, it does not
seem right, why should I take it every
six months?
That was still science, that was still recommended,
booster dose was recommended.
Now, what is the structure which has broken
this trust?
Why are we not able to trust what
is being told to us through public institutions?
And in my discussion with you on the
art of governance, the very purpose of knowledge,
the sum total of all knowledge is Yogakshema,
is well-being.
This is the Indian philosophy.
Knowledge has to serve Yogakshema.
Has science served that in the last 3
years?
As academicians who have the responsibility of finding
truth and only abiding by truth, we have
to ask ourselves, have we bought out truth
in our full capacity?
We do not trust the media, we do
not trust the doctors, we cannot trust the
public institutions.
There is a crisis of trust and that
is because there is a crisis of ethics.
And in any society, who is responsible for
upholding the ethics?
It is the teacher.
The entire purpose of a teacher of learning
is to actually set the standard for the
society to follow, right.
Now this crisis if you understand, the crisis
of ethics in research, if you unpack it
a little bit more, you would see the
systemic, the architecture of mistrust.
Who is sponsoring research today?
In the western world, and I do not
know the statistic for India, in some ways
we do not even get the statistics.
So, we do not even understand if there
is a problem, we do not even probe
enough.
85 percent of all research, particularly medical research
is funded by institutions that are not public
interest institutions.
Think about the pharmaceutical industry.
If they sponsor the research, any public policy,
public policy 101 will tell you that incentives
play a huge role.
What is the incentive for an industry which
is benefiting from disease to sponsor research about
disease?
They will necessarily have to tell you that
there is a bigger danger, and posit themselves
as the solution.
It is not about individual morality, and it
is not about discounting science.
There are any number of honest scientists, clearly
they have done a brilliant job in trying
to get us some kind of solution.
It is not even for a minute to
belittle that.
But we also know in our own real
experience that science has not served humanity in
the last 3 years.
That is because it has a certain structure.
It could not speak the truth.
Do we feel it?
In fact, just today, if you look at
a lot of new revolutions that are coming
on, you will see that there was in
fact a first aid treatment that was decent,
that was good, that was available to us
at much cheaper rates without any of this
disruption.
If you have the philosophy of Ayurveda, if
you understand the philosophy of well-being from
an Indian knowledge system perspective, you would immediately
be able to see through this scam.
But you don't have the pedestal.
You don't have the ability to go out
and say, this is the way to think
about well-being.
Well-being is not about disease control alone.
It is about a holistic way to think
about mind, body, soul, society.
It is systems, it is soul, it is
society.
So we have a crisis of ethics because
structurally your research is sponsored by people in
whose interest it is not for you to
actually come out with truth.
So therefore, there is for the teachers to
reclaim their own position as the torchbearers of
truth, as the purveyors of truth, you need
to engage with IKs in that spirit.
So that's the first statement I would like
to make.
Second is, we have spoken about this, I
won't belabor, but what is the dominant, you
know, we talk about consumption-ridden solutions or
consumption-ridden problems.
Everything is framed as consumption-ridden, right?
We say sustainability is a challenge.
When did and how did sustainability become a
challenge?
What does it really mean?
In real terms, what does it mean?
It means that the rate of extraction from
nature and the rate of consumption is far
outstripping outpacing the rate of production by nature.
Nature needs, soil needs for example, a certain
kind of time for regeneration.
Look at your own human body, what happens
when you don't get sleep?
What is the process of sleep?
You regenerate, that's why when you get up
in the morning, you are once again ready
for the day ahead.
If you do not have that regeneration and
if you continue to extract, it obviously means
that you are not sustainable.
At some point, nature is going to give
up and nature giving up is not about
us, you know, we are really puny.
It just needs a little flip from the
nature and you know, all of these things
will be gone.
What was COVID?
It was just a small virus.
How many of us did it throw out
of gear, the entire world?
So when we talk about ecology, when we
talk about sustainability, we are not talking about
saving nature.
We are talking about being responsible to have
life for ourselves for our own next generation.
But the challenge here is, the psychological challenge
here is that we are all persuaded by
our own worldview to make choices and those
choices govern our consumption as well.
Now if your worldview comes from an idea
of the self that you only live once,
then the natural outcome of that is what
is called as FOMO, fear of missing out.
How many of you have heard this term?
All of us have heard, we are all
internet beings now, that we have all experienced
it very deeply.
We do, that is natural, it is not,
it is de facto.
So how do, if the challenge is that
you have to be able to delay gratification,
then the natural question for any of us
and this is nobody is speaking on this
like a saint, we are all part of
this, we are part of the problem, we
need to become part of the solution.
If the metaphysics is telling you, you only
live once, tell me what is the moral
logic for delaying gratification?
Why should you not consume?
Why should you not accumulate?
You can only delay gratification if there is
a deeper principle, if there is a transcendent
principle, is it not?
Which knowledge system supplies that metaphysics?
How do we avoid falling into this trap
of YOLO and FOMO?
You only live once, therefore you are perpetually
living of in fear of missing out.
If you only live once, then it is
logical, it is natural that you have to
maximize and maximize how would you do that?
By the means that culture is telling you
and what is the means that culture is
giving you?
It is consumption.
So the crisis in education and the necessity
of IKs is that there is a fundamental
crisis in meaning making and it was okay
if it was restricted to some parts of
the civilization as a global civilization while others
were you know able to work with nature
and let it heal, but we are a
globalized civilization now.
Any behavioral attitude or any taste, any preference,
any product that is created in one part
of the world very quickly traverses all through
the world today.
Think about our own consumption choices.
Five years ago those products might not even
have existed, but today they are essential part
of our life.
This rate of global spread is not sustainable.
So, on one hand you have a theory
that is about accumulation, on the other hand
you are creating technologies of distributing this desire
at much faster scales into societies which did
not have that and all of this is
aggregated under growth.
But growth does not actually account for your
well-being, growth does not actually account for
ecological damage.
There is now within the western world a
very very active movement for double materiality and
triple materiality calculation of growth.
It is not just about one dimension of
currency or one dimension of wealth, you need
to think about well-being, mental health, you
need to think about ecology.
All of these things have to be accounted
for in your calculation of growth.
The minute you calculate how much of nature
you have extracted to produce that product and
you deduct from the bottom line you would
see that the growth that we consider growth
today will fall down, but that is the
way to think about it.
On one hand you know you have this
whole idea of sustainable development goals and there
is going to be a lot of and
it is good because it gives all of
us an operational vocabulary to organize, at least
it brings to the idea, it brings to
the focus that there is a natural crisis
and we need to do something about it.
But sustainability development goals has sustainable economic growth,
I think it is SDG 8.
Economic growth model today is extractive that is
the generator function, it does not account for
the other kinds of damage.
So, how is it sustainable?
If your SDG itself involves a definition of
growth that does not account for all the
other damages that are you know being populated
as SDGs, you are just fooling yourself.
If you look at any NGO, if you
look at all the corporate work that happens
in sustainability, if you look at policy making,
everybody is singing the same tune SDG pe
kaam kar rahe hain.
SDG pe kya kaam kar rahe hain?
What does SDG mean?
What are the systemic factors that are generating
this crisis?
What about education?
What about human behavior?
What about metaphysics that informs human behavior?
There is no dialogue around this.
All you think you can do is you
organize a conference around this and you think
you can solve SDG, it is not going
to be solved.
It is data.
SDG replaced MDG about 7 years ago.
In the last 7 years and think about
this, 170 countries have come together, all of
them have pledged their goals, tremendous amount of
intellectual energy, capital, public attention, executive commitment,
everything has gone in.
In the last 5 years since we have
adopted SDG, we have not made progress on
even one of the goals.
In fact, we have negated, we have gone
in the opposite direction at a much faster
clip.
Compare SDG 15 data with 22 data, you
will see this.
Our crisis has increased.
What does it tell you?
It tells you that this framing is not
working.
It tells you that you are you are
just like the frog in the well and
it is the role of academia, it is
the role of teachers to get us all
out of that well.
This is why IKS is important because it
has a different metaphysics for meaning making which
is necessary for our own sustainability.
This is for our own kids, we are
not doing it for anybody else.
We are all simultaneously teachers and parents, right,
so we are doing it for them.
The last one is crisis of knowledge.
Crisis of knowledge because we do not know
what to do without.
So, yes we realize that there is a
problem, there is a paradox in talking about
economic growth and ecology in the same way
without actually changing anything, but we do not
know an alternate means.
That is a crisis of knowledge, that is
a crisis of epistemology, that is a crisis
of praxis.
That is why we are talking about IKS.
The urgency that all of us need to
have and the personal commitment that we need
to make is that this knowledge has the
source to address those problems and therefore, if
we engage with it, if you are able
to create courses, if you are able to
build new discipline thought on it, if you
are able to build leadership around it, it
is actually coming back to us as the
thing that we can put out there also
helping us.
So, that is the proposition that I wish
to make, you know when we think about
the vision of education, NEP, how do we
register that in IKS, it is that we
are at a evolutionary tipping point, we do
not have the intellectual means anymore to deal
with the complexity that we have ourselves created.
It needs a different kind of growth, that
growth is internal, that is going to come
from the principles of consciousness and awareness and
Bharatiya Jnana Parampara has the best meditation on
the on the subject of inner growth and
that is where education has to lead to.
So, what does it mean for faculty, I
have sort of you know alluded to this.
It is a greater responsibility.
It is not just about what it can
do to advance our own aspirations, our own
career, all of that are important.
You cannot divorce yourself from that, that is
existential reality, but like that trip to the
ashram, every teacher who is working on his
or her discipline also need to think about
the larger problems, that is to me my
understanding of a multidiscipline mind.
If NEP is talking about a multidiscipline mind
and talking about indigenous solutions to that, it
is asking us to take on a higher
responsibility and that is an act of commitment
first of all, beyond anything else, it is
an act of vision, it is an act
of internally establishing this goal and this role
for ourselves.
So, my earnest appeal to all teachers is
be the purveyors of truth.
Establish this vision in our hearts and minds
that we need to produce knowledge that can
help the humanity deal with the challenges that
we have created.
If academia does not do it, do not
expect that from politics, simply do not expect
that.
That is a far more competitive field, that
is a far more dangerous field, that is
a far more risky field, why will they
do it?
So, if we have not challenged, if we
have not written about what health is, if
we have not written about how certain other
treatments can be there, if we have not
used our own knowledge systems to say this
is effective, then do not expect that to
translate into a policy, do not expect the
pharma lobby to change, the change has to
begin with people who are producing knowledge, who
are responsible for producing knowledge, so that is
the context of NEP, faculty and so on
right.
So, I guess you know just sort of
summing it up is the fundamental principle that
must drive all other disciplines.
It should take all multi and transdisciplinary approaches
that NEP also talks about and integrate just
the way we have seen with DCBS, it
has to integrate all forms of knowledge available
to us and we need to understand what
the macro trends are, why has the world
become complex, why has the world become volatile,
why has you know why have we created
a world where we are pushing our children
into feeling of loneliness.
Loneliness is one of the global grand challenges
today, we are a 10 billion civilization and
lonely, lonely planet is a is a popular
channel, how?
And I cannot understand for the life of
me how this can be a concept in
India.
There is just so much to engage in
India, you just go out, you have everything
to actually consume your attention.
How can you be lonely?
It is because there is an inner void
and education is not able to fill that
void, there is an epidemic of drugs, prescription
drugs.
Anybody who studied the western society in the
last 15-20 years, if you look at
the campuses in Bharat today you will know,
at a formative stage when education is supposed
to give you resilience, immunity against all the
vagaries that life will inevitably throw at us,
it is pushing us into submission.
We have created environments here which do not
offer any means for our children to overcome
the natural compulsions.
In fact, we are encouraging those.
How is that education?
Are you not able to see the second
order effects of that?
One, why are we seeing increased divorces?
Why are we seeing the pressure on families?
Family is in our own tradition what we
call a civilization that is the bedrock of
a civilization and that is being attacked both
willfully and unwittingly.
That is the role of people who are
engaged in social sciences to come back to
what holds a civilization and this research has
to become, it has to come from an
IKS perspective because it is about the mind,
it is about being able to control our
natural tendencies and channelize them towards higher possibilities
and it is this system that has given
you and me that possibility.
So, the purpose is clear in terms of
what it means for faculty, these are just
words, what is important is the intent and
the ability to firstly allow ourselves to be
creative, to think beyond our immediate realm that
the environment gives us.
We are not just a physics professor, we
are not an assistant professor, we are not
you know taking two sessions and being happy
with that in a week.
We are the shapers of destiny, we are
the generators of that choice that Shri Aurobindo
is talking about.
He is saying we have a choice in
a moment of evolutionary crisis, I would say
the means to exercise that choice is teachers.
In fact, in the Indian conception the actual
education is yoga right, when you think about
what is education philosophy education, it is yoga
but yoga requires a far more stringent engagement.
It is not for everyone, we are not
capable, we are not at that stage and
there is also loss in prakriti and that
is why the role of shaping that has
actually shifted to education what we see as
separation in the academia today.
If you think about it, all education was
yoga, that's what Swami Vivekananda says, that's what
the whole idea of integral education is, that
is the Bharatiya vision of education is yoga.
It is the ability to use yourself as
the instrument, but that is not possible, we
are not in that frame, we are not
there is also been colonization, there has been
destruction and it is ok to have a
secular fair view of the world, but it
is important to recognize that only some of
those views of the world can protect us
in practicing our knowledge systems, some do not
and we have to have this clarity.
Some of the world views are cannibalistic and
we have to be able to say this
out with moral conviction.
As teachers, we have to say this, as
purveyors of truth, we have to say this,
right.
So, this is another important component of what
is the responsibility and what are the challenges
and how we can think about this.
In this, does technology have a role?
The technology comes only here, technology does not
come there.
In fact, like I said, in the separation
between the force that asks us to analyze
and compete with the environment and nature versus
the intuitive integrative nature, both of us are
within us, both of us are within us
every single day, every single moment in the
choice that we exercise.
This is the lower and the higher tendencies
that yoga talks about.
Either we succumb to the lower tendencies or
we rise up to the higher tendencies.
To be able to consistently do that is
yoga that is education, that is the philosophy
of education in the Indian vision, right.
And to be instruments of that in helping
other people do that is the role of
the educator or the teacher, right.
So, if you look at that, we have
created complexity through technology.
Can we create meaning through technology?
Can we create solutions through technology?
Can we create a more conscious human being
with the aid of technology?
That is a question that we should actually
reflect on.
And to that, technology should become friendly to
the faculty.
Why do we need technology?
Not because it can ever replace the guru,
it will in my opinion never replace the
guru although it increases the responsibility of the
guru.
If a young student today has the choice
between an AI, chatbot AI which is able
to give answers in a customized manner versus
a teacher that he or she needs to
go through, the teacher has to be better
than the chatbot AI.
And chatbot AI has the advantage of being
able to parse through all the data in
the world, the teacher does not.
We are limited.
So, we have something else that act of
kindness that Seshadri ji spoke about, that word
of kindness that is what will help kids
come back to teachers, that is what will
inspire students.
These things that AI is not capable of
in terms of kindness, in terms of you
know some kind of discerning power between what
is right and what is wrong, that is
where we have the advantage, but unless you
engage with technology you are going to lose
out in this race.
It is right because the student will go
to chatbot and say help me understand with
this problem and there are 10 different answers
customized.
So, in this context how do we imagine
the role of technology in education and what
does NEP have to say?
So, we have the possibilities of reimagining curriculum,
we have to engage with techno pedagogies right
which means how do you situate the learner
at the center and make the learning contextual,
relevant, interesting and fun and how do you
use technology as a means for that?
That is a question that we can you
know ask ourselves and can you create learning
journeys that are unique?
This is the Gurukula system.
If we can think about it, technology can
help us scale that Gurukula system in a
different way which is what is happening.
Today any programmer in India a student a
computer sciences student can get the lesson from
the best computer sciences teacher across the world,
it is all available.
So, they do not need to come to
you know bigger institutions, there is a different
purpose that institution serve.
One of the attempts that we are doing
to solve this crisis of ethics, to solve
this crisis of meaning, to try and address
this crisis of knowledge is to come up
with some solutions which are grounded in Indic
pedagogies.
That is one of the attempts Abhishek is
here, it is his imagination, his passion to
make that learning journey unique for everyone.
He is calling it the learner company which
just illustrates the learner centricity of his imagination
and in that what can we do?
These are just features, the features can be
anything.
What we need is a dialogue between faculty
who say this is my problem in the
classroom.
Please come to us and tell us these
are the challenges that we are having.
We understand what you are asking us to
do.
We also understand the responsibility that a teacher
has, it is clearly inspiring, but we have
certain challenges and how do we come together
as people within academia, as teachers and people
outside who are trying to provide solutions, how
do we come together to use technology and
put that in the service of learning?
That is the purpose right.
We already have some ideas about it, how
it can help the teacher.
The whole idea is to devote technology to
aid and enable the teacher.
That is the purpose of what he is
trying to come up with.
We will request you for some intervention, maybe
an engagement, you know some kind of feedback
from you on what would you like technology
to do for you and all of that
becomes the kind of roadmap that our product
can have and together we can build this.
So, I will stop here just you know
just summarizing that there is a crisis and
the crisis is one of philosophy.
Indian knowledge systems has that philosophy to deal
with complexity and that that reign to actually
use that is in the hands of teachers
and for that teachers need to come out
of the existing structures and modes of thought
and reaffirm their role as the seekers of
truth and the providers of truth.
And to do that you have an education
policy as a cover which can facilitate some
kind of creative visualization and you can make
technology your ally and we are willing to
partner with any faculty who wants to do
this and we will walk together on this
journey to create technology in service of the
teacher.
Thank you.

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