National Seminar on IKS and English Studies- Learning Outcome
About the Seminar
The National Seminar–cum–Workshop on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies, organised by the Department of English at Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University and supported by the Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (KCG), was held on 23–24 March 2026. The event brought together eminent scholars to explore how India's classical intellectual traditions — from Nyaya epistemology and Rasa theory to Tolkappiyam poetics and Indic translation frameworks — can be meaningfully woven into the teaching, research, and curriculum design of English Studies.
In the context of the National Education Policy 2020, which encourages approximately 5% IKS integration in UG and PG programmes, this seminar provided a focused academic platform to move beyond symbolic inclusion toward genuine intellectual dialogue — positioning IKS and English Studies as equal participants in the broader domain of global literary scholarship.
"The intention is not to approach Indian Knowledge Systems through narratives of cultural grievance, nor to engage in uncritical glorification of tradition. Instead, the seminar seeks to position IKS and English Studies as equal participants in the broader domain of World Literature."
What follows is a session-by-session account of the seminar's proceedings, with each plenary and presentation embedded from the official live stream, followed by a personal note on what I learnt and how it has shaped my thinking.
Inaugural Ceremony & Plenary Sessions
Inaugural Address by Dr. Dilip Barad
Live stream · Inaugural Session · IKSES26
The inaugural session established the intellectual and ethical tone for the entire seminar. Dr. Dilip Barad, Head of the Department of English at MKBU, opened with a clarification that set the seminar apart from the many shallow "IKS integration" exercises that have proliferated since NEP 2020: the integration of Indian Knowledge Systems into English Studies, he argued, should not be understood as a rejection of English, nor as a reaction against colonial history. Instead, it calls for a genuinely balanced academic approach in which diverse knowledge traditions coexist and mutually enrich one another.
He challenged binary framings of "Eastern" versus "Western" thought, arguing that knowledge is interconnected and continuously evolving. English, he noted, is no longer a foreign entity in India; it has become part of Indian cultural and academic expression, shaped by local contexts and lived experiences. This framework of intellectual inclusivity, rather than ideological assertion, informed the discussions throughout the event.
The inaugural session recalibrated my understanding of what "integrating IKS" actually means. I had come in with an unarticulated assumption that it would involve replacing Western theory with Indian alternatives — a kind of academic nationalism. Dr. Barad's framing cleared that away immediately. The goal is dialogue, not displacement. This helped me approach every subsequent session with an open comparative lens rather than a defensive or adversarial one, and it made me a far more receptive listener throughout the two days.
Plenary by Prof. (Dr.) Dushyant Nimavat
Live stream · Plenary — Dr. Dushyant Nimavat
Dr. Dushyant Nimavat's plenary provided a foundational framework for understanding IKS as a plural, dynamic, and critically engaging field rather than a singular or static tradition. He challenged the tendency to treat IKS as a unified body of knowledge, stressing instead that it consists of diverse intellectual traditions, regional practices, and philosophical schools that have evolved over centuries.
A key argument was that Indian intellectual traditions already possess sophisticated research frameworks that need no apology. Drawing on Nyaya philosophy, he explained concepts such as Pratyaksha (direct perception), Anumana (inference), and Arthapatti (postulation) as systematic modes of inquiry that can meaningfully contribute to literary studies. Close reading, for instance, can be understood through Pratyaksha; deeper interpretative moves align with Anumana. Referring also to Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree and Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies, he made the case for developing indigenous research tools to challenge Western epistemological dominance — not by rejecting it, but by expanding the methodological toolkit available to scholars.
I learnt that Indian philosophical traditions are not merely cultural heritage to be celebrated — they are functioning epistemological systems with practical research applications. Understanding Nyaya's categories of valid knowledge directly expanded my sense of what "evidence" and "interpretation" can mean in literary analysis. It has since prompted me to reconsider how I frame my own close-reading arguments: am I relying on perception alone (Pratyaksha), or am I constructing a genuinely inferential case (Anumana)?
Plenary by Dr. Kalyani Vallath
Live stream · Plenary — Dr. Kalyani Vallath
Dr. Kalyani Vallath's session was a compelling exploration of Dravidian Knowledge Systems — particularly classical Tamil poetics — and their relevance to contemporary literary and cultural studies. The central focus was the Thinai system found in the Tolkappiyam and Sangam literature, an ancient poetic framework that connects landscape, ecology, emotion, and human experience.
She explained the distinction between Akam (the inner, personal domain) and Puram (the outer, public domain), and walked through the five primary Thinai landscapes — Kurinji, Mullai, Marudam, Neithal, and Palai — each associated with particular emotional conditions such as union, waiting, conflict, longing, and separation. Crucially, she demonstrated the framework's universality and adaptability: Thinai is not confined to ancient Tamil poetry but can be applied to Sanskrit literature, Western literary traditions, modern poetry, cinema, and contemporary ecocriticism. The session included a comparative analysis between Thinai and Rasa theory, Romanticism, Symbolism, Modernism, and the archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye, and a striking reading of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native through a Thinai lens.
Dr. Vallath's session permanently changed how I read the relationship between setting and emotion in literature. Before this session, I understood landscape in fiction as "background" or, at best, a symbolic device. The Thinai system showed me it can be a structural, epistemological category — a way of knowing and ordering experience. This has directly helped me in my reading of both Indian and Western texts: I now ask not just what the setting symbolizes, but what emotional and ecological world it constitutes.
Paper Presentation Session — 1
Live stream · Paper Presentations — Session 1 · as per the published schedule
The first paper presentation session brought together scholars from across India, each identifying specific intersections between IKS and their respective research areas. Papers spanned topics from indigenous research methodologies and language philosophy to the application of Indian aesthetic frameworks in analysing postcolonial poetry and regional literatures. The session demonstrated the sheer disciplinary range that IKS integration can meaningfully address within English Studies.
One particularly memorable contribution examined the concept of Dhvani (resonance, or suggestion) in classical Sanskrit poetics as a tool for reading literary ambiguity — arguing that Dhvani theory anticipates and in some ways deepens what Western critics call "the hermeneutics of the text." Another paper explored the applicability of Panchatantra-style narrative frames to contemporary curriculum design, showing how the didactic structure of Indian storytelling traditions could inform pedagogical approaches to literature teaching.
Attending these paper presentations taught me that IKS integration is not a task reserved for specialists in Sanskrit or classical languages — it is something scholars at every stage of their careers can engage in seriously. Seeing peers and early-career researchers present original work that drew on IKS frameworks gave me both intellectual models to emulate and practical confidence that this kind of interdisciplinary inquiry is achievable and valued.
Plenary by Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay
Live stream · Plenary — Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay's lecture focused on the urgent need to rethink English Studies in India through meaningful IKS integration. He traced the historical legacy of Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education and its role in shaping a predominantly Eurocentric academic structure, drawing on Paulo Freire's critique of the "banking model" of education — the passive reception of knowledge rather than active intellectual participation.
He discussed several important Indian traditions — Nyaya, Vedanta, Rasa theory, and Dhvani theory — and compared them directly with Western approaches: psychoanalysis, reader-response criticism, and deconstruction. His comparison was not competitive but genuinely analytical: each tradition, he showed, addresses a distinct aspect of the reading and interpretative process. He also proposed a dialogic model of teaching inspired by the structure of the Bhagavad Gita — a pedagogy of questioning, debate, and active engagement — as an antidote to rote-learning classrooms.
Dr. Chattopadhyay's session fundamentally shifted how I understand the purpose of literary education. His point that many classrooms continue to prioritize memorization over genuine engagement made me reflect honestly on my own study habits. The dialogic, questioning model he proposed — rooted in the structure of the Gita's discourse — has since encouraged me to approach texts not as fixed objects to be decoded but as conversations to participate in. That shift in posture has made a noticeable difference in the quality of my seminar discussions.
Paper Presentation Session — 2
Live stream · Paper Presentations — Session 2 · as per the published schedule
The second paper presentation session moved into translation studies, feminist rereadings of myth, and cross-cultural comparisons in archetypal theory. Several papers explored how indigenous frameworks can be used as primary critical lenses rather than supplementary ones — a subtle but important methodological distinction. One paper's comparative reading of Arjuna and Hamlet through the concept of Dharma and existential paralysis stood out for its clarity and originality.
Another presentation explored the resonances between Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism and the mythological matrices of the Puranas — arguing that the universality scholars have attributed to Frye's framework may itself reflect an incomplete mapping of world literary traditions. By bringing Puranic narrative patterns into the conversation, the paper opened productive questions about whose archetypes have counted as universal.
The Hamlet–Arjuna comparison struck me with particular force. I had studied Hamlet many times, always within the Western existentialist or psychoanalytic frame. Hearing the comparison made through the lens of Dharma — Arjuna receiving philosophical guidance and ultimately acting, Hamlet lacking such a framework and remaining paralysed — gave me a genuinely new interpretative angle on a text I thought I already knew well. It showed me that a text I considered "fully understood" could reveal new dimensions when read through a different cultural epistemology.
Plenary Sessions & Valedictory
Plenary by Prof. (Dr.) Ashok Sachdeva
Live stream · Plenary — Prof. (Dr.) Ashok Sachdeva
Prof. Ashok Sachdeva's lecture offered a compelling reframing of intellectual history — challenging the conventional assumption that influence flows primarily from West to East. He situated his argument in the context of the Oriental Renaissance, the period during which translations of Indian texts became accessible to European and American scholars, and demonstrated how Vedanta, Maya, Karma, Moksha, and cyclical understandings of time entered Western literary discourse as genuine philosophical forces.
He traced these influences through British Romantic poetry — Wordsworth's Vedantic sense of unity between self and cosmos, Shelley's echo of Maya in his poetry of transience — and into modernism, analysing T.S. Eliot's use of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in The Waste Land and Four Quartets. The session's most memorable moment was a careful comparison between Hamlet and Arjuna: both princes confronting existential and moral paralysis, but one receiving guidance through philosophy and ultimately acting, while the other remains trapped in indecision. Prof. Sachdeva used this comparison to argue that Indian philosophy offers genuinely different interpretative possibilities for Western texts.
This session permanently expanded my literary-historical imagination. I had studied Eliot's use of Indian texts as a specialist footnote to modernism; Prof. Sachdeva made me see it as central to understanding what modernism was actually attempting intellectually and spiritually. More broadly, the session gave me a confident basis for arguing that IKS is not a supplementary topic in English Studies — it is already embedded in the literary tradition we study. I no longer need to justify its inclusion from outside the canon; the canon already contains it.
Plenary by Prof. (Dr.) Atanu Bhattacharya
Live stream · Plenary — Prof. (Dr.) Atanu Bhattacharya
Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya's plenary offered a profound reconsideration of language and its role within Indian Knowledge Systems. His central argument challenged the modern tendency to view language as a mere tool for communication. Within traditional Indian intellectual traditions, he argued, language functions as a medium for generating, transmitting, interpreting, and preserving knowledge — it is not a container for thought but generative of it.
He emphasized the continuity (dhara or parampara) of Indian knowledge across centuries, tracing its evolution through classical Sanskrit to Bhakti literature and regional literary cultures. A major section of the lecture examined Panini's Ashtadhyayi — not as a mere grammatical manual but as a sophisticated generative model that anticipates aspects of Chomskyan linguistics while remaining more holistically embedded in cultural and interpretative context. The colonial disruption effected by institutions like Fort William College, which reduced language to a utilitarian and administrative tool, was analyzed as a structural break that severed language from knowledge production.
Prof. Bhattacharya's session transformed my understanding of what it means to study language. I had always thought of grammar as prescriptive or descriptive — rules to follow or observe. The idea that language, in the Indian tradition, is understood as constitutive of knowledge rather than merely expressive of it has since influenced how I read literary texts: I pay closer attention to the structuring role of language itself, not just what is being "said." It has also helped me understand why translation — the subject of the next session — is such a high-stakes intellectual act.
Plenary by Prof. (Dr.) Sachin Ketkar
Live stream · Plenary — Prof. (Dr.) Sachin Ketkar
Prof. Sachin Ketkar's lecture focused on translation as both a practical necessity and an intellectual practice central to the survival and development of IKS. His central argument was a critique of the widespread assumption that translation must achieve exact equivalence. Drawing on the impossibility of translating culturally embedded terms such as dharma, guru, or even jalebi with precision, he argued that this expectation reflects a colonial rather than indigenous understanding of language.
Translation, he proposed, should be understood as an act of interpretation, semiotic transformation, and cultural production. Examining Sri Aurobindo's spiritual re-readings of the Vedas and A.K. Ramanujan's modernist-inflected translations of classical Tamil poetry, he demonstrated how different translational choices produce genuinely different texts — and how meaning is always shaped by the translator's historical moment, literary sensibility, and cultural context. No translation presents the original's fixed or final intention; rather, translation is the space where meaning is continuously negotiated, transformed, and recreated.
This session dissolved my long-held anxiety about whether translated texts are "trustworthy." Prof. Ketkar reframed the question: instead of asking whether a translation is accurate, the more productive question is what interpretative choices a translation enacts and what meanings it makes available. This has directly improved my engagement with translated Indian texts in coursework — I now read translations as interpretations in their own right, not imperfect substitutes for originals I cannot access. That shift has made the entire domain of classical Indian literature feel open rather than closed to me.
Plenary by Dr. Amrita Das
Live stream · Plenary — Dr. Amrita Das & Valedictory / Certificate Distribution
Dr. Amrita Das's lecture offered a nuanced interdisciplinary exploration of divine femininity in Indian traditions through the theoretical lens of Luce Irigaray. Her aim was not to flatten one tradition into the other but to create a genuine dialogue between Western feminist philosophy and Indian spiritual traditions, in order to develop a more culturally grounded understanding of women's identity, agency, and embodiment.
She examined the richness of Hindu goddess traditions — where female divinity is central, multifaceted, and empowering — as a contrast to the relative absence of strong feminine divine representations in many Western religious frameworks. Drawing on Irigaray's concepts of self-love, embodiment, breath, and maternal genealogy, she connected them with the Indian concept of Prana — breath as life force, autonomy, and spiritual consciousness — as a metaphor for women's selfhood and liberation. Contemporary literary texts such as Nikita Gill's The Girl and the Goddess and Smriti Dewan's Urmila: The Forgotten Princess were analysed as examples of how modern women writers reinterpret mythological traditions to foreground female agency and construct new feminist expression.
Dr. Das's session showed me that feminist theory need not be a Western import into Indian literary studies — that India's own traditions contain rich and sophisticated frameworks for understanding female power, identity, and agency. Her use of Irigaray as a dialogue partner rather than a master-framework modelled an intellectually honest comparative method I want to practise in my own work. Practically, it has opened new possibilities for my reading of women characters in Indian fiction: rather than applying Western feminist categories directly, I now consider what frameworks the texts themselves are drawing on or pushing back against.
Closing Reflection
Two days of concentrated engagement at IKSES26 left me with a fundamentally expanded sense of what English Studies in India can be. Across every session, the scholars who spoke modelled the kind of intellectual generosity that genuine comparative inquiry requires: a willingness to take both traditions seriously on their own terms, to resist the temptation of easy synthesis, and to sit with productive dissonance when two frameworks genuinely differ.
I came into the seminar thinking of IKS as a policy requirement to navigate. I left thinking of it as an intellectual opportunity I had been missing. The Nyaya categories, Thinai eco-aesthetics, Rasa theory, Dhvani, Panini's generative grammar, and Indic translation frameworks are not supplements to my literary education — they are foundational tools that can deepen and sometimes correct what I already know.
"Through this initiative, the seminar seeks to foster a constructive dialogue between classical Indian knowledge traditions and global literary scholarship, opening new possibilities for curriculum development, theoretical innovation, and interdisciplinary research in English Studies."
For those who were unable to attend, all session recordings are embedded above with timestamps linking directly to each talk. The official seminar website — sites.google.com/view/webinar-eng-mkbu/ikses26 — carries additional resources including the full schedule, list of attendees, and the photo album. The organisers are also preparing an edited academic volume from selected presentations, which promises to be a valuable resource for English departments navigating IKS integration under NEP 2020.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment