Reflections on the National Seminar on IKS and English Studies
Some academic events leave behind a certificate. A few leave behind questions. The National Seminar–Workshop on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies, organized by the Department of English at Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University in collaboration with the Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat, belonged firmly to the second kind.
Spread across two intellectually rich days, the seminar brought together scholars, researchers, and students to explore one central and long-overdue question: can Indian intellectual traditions stand as equal partners — not merely cultural footnotes — in the practice of literary criticism, pedagogy, translation, and research?
The answer, as I discovered over those two days, is a resounding yes.
"The seminar did not encourage rejection of Western theories. It promoted intellectual balance, plurality, and dialogue — and reminded us that meaningful scholarship begins not by choosing between 'East' and 'West,' but by learning to think critically across traditions."
Day One: Questioning the Frameworks We Inherit
Like many students of English literature, I had long approached texts through structuralism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, feminism, or deconstruction — frameworks so normalized in academic practice that I rarely paused to ask whether Indian intellectual traditions offered equally rigorous methodologies. The first day of the seminar challenged that assumption from its very opening sessions.
Prof. Dushyant Nimavat — IKS as Methodology
Prof. Nimavat argued that Indian Knowledge Systems should not be viewed as nostalgic cultural artifacts but as sophisticated epistemological frameworks for modern research. Drawing on Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree and Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies, he made a compelling case for indigenous research tools that complement — not replace — Western frameworks. He also connected IKS with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, situating the conversation within current educational reform.
His introduction of Nyaya philosophy as a practical interpretive tool was particularly illuminating. He presented three key concepts as analytical methods applicable to literary criticism:
- Pratyaksha (direct perception) — reading what is immediately present in the text
- Anumana (inference) — reading what is implied beyond what is stated
- Arthapatti (postulation) — deriving meaning from contextual necessity
What struck me most was the realization that Indian intellectual traditions already possess methods of reasoning, inference, and textual analysis comparable to any globally recognized critical theory. The problem was never their absence — it was our habit of overlooking them.
Dr. Kalyani Vallath — Ecology, Emotion, and the Thinai Tradition
Through classical Tamil poetics from the Tolkappiyam and Sangam literature, Dr. Vallath explored the Thinai system — an ancient framework that connects landscape, emotion, ecology, and human experience. The five Thinai landscapes (Kurinji, Mullai, Marudam, Neithal, and Palai) each represent a specific emotional condition: union, waiting, conflict, longing, and separation.
Nature in Thinai aesthetics is not symbolic decoration — it is inseparable from human emotional experience. Dr. Vallath demonstrated how this system connects powerfully with ecocriticism, Romanticism, Symbolism, and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism. It is a genuinely ecological literary theory, centuries ahead of its time, and one that has much to offer contemporary environmental humanities.
This session transformed how I understand literary landscapes. A river, a mountain, a coastline in a poem is never simply a setting — it is an emotional and philosophical presence.
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay — Rethinking Pedagogy and English Studies
Critiquing the colonial "banking model" of education — where teachers deposit knowledge into passive students — Dr. Chattopadhyay argued for a dialogic pedagogy inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, where learning emerges through questioning, debate, and active engagement.
He showed how several Indian frameworks can function alongside Western critical theories as equally valid intellectual tools:
- Nyaya — for logical reasoning and textual inference
- Vedanta — for metaphysical and existential interpretation of characters and narratives
- Rasa Theory — for analyzing emotions and aesthetic experience
- Dhvani Theory — for understanding implied meaning and suggestion in literary language
His central argument was that integrating IKS into English Studies should not be tokenism — it must be rigorous, curricular, and methodological. English departments, he suggested, should redesign curricula to include comparative study of Indian and Western theories, incorporate Indian poetics into literary criticism courses, and use IKS frameworks in research methodology and classroom discussion.
Day Two: Comparative Thought, Language, and Translation
The second day expanded the conversation into comparative literature, linguistics, translation studies, and feminist thought — each session adding a new dimension to what it means to do culturally rooted scholarship.
Prof. Ashok Sachdeva — Indian Philosophy in British and American Literature
Prof. Sachdeva demonstrated how Indian thought — Vedanta, Maya, Karma, reincarnation, spiritual unity — shaped major Western writers. From T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Four Quartets to W. B. Yeats's poetry of reincarnation and cyclic time, and from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to Walt Whitman, Indian philosophy functioned not as decorative inspiration but as a serious intellectual force in Western literary modernity.
His comparison of Hamlet and Arjuna was the most memorable moment of the session. Both are princes torn between action and duty, caught in moral and psychological crisis. But where Arjuna receives Krishna's philosophical guidance and resolves his dilemma, Hamlet — lacking such wisdom — remains trapped in uncertainty and meets a tragic end. Indian philosophy, Prof. Sachdeva showed, is not just relevant to Indian texts; it is a powerful framework for interpreting canonical Western literature as well.
Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya — Language as Knowledge
Prof. Bhattacharya argued that traditional Indian linguistics viewed language not merely as communication, but as a producer of knowledge. Through Panini's Ashtadhyayi — a generative, computational grammatical system remarkable in its sophistication — and Bhartrhari's philosophy of language, he demonstrated how deeply interconnected language, meaning, and knowledge were in Indian intellectual tradition.
Colonial education — particularly through institutions like Fort William College — severed this connection. Language was reduced to a utilitarian administrative tool, separated from culture, literature, and knowledge-making. His lecture challenged the modern habit of teaching language and literature as separate disciplines, and called for recovering a more integrated, knowledge-centred approach to language education.
Prof. Sachin Ketkar — Translation as Cultural Reinterpretation
Ketkar challenged the widespread idea that translation seeks perfect word-for-word equivalence — a notion he identified as a colonial inheritance, not an indigenous Indian understanding of the practice. Many terms — dharma, guru, Prakriti — have no exact equivalents even across Indian languages. The search for perfect equivalence, he argued, is itself a misguided project.
Through the concept of Anuvad — "speaking after" — he positioned translation as an act of interpretation, cultural production, and meaning-making. Sri Aurobindo's spiritually charged Vedic translations and A. K. Ramanujan's modernist adaptations of Tamil poetry illustrated how translation is always shaped by ideology, history, and literary sensibility. No translation presents the absolute intention of the original — and that is not a failure. It is the nature of meaning itself.
This session changed how I read translated texts. A translation is not a secondary copy of an original — it is an evolving intellectual and cultural dialogue.
Dr. Amrita Das — Reclaiming the Divine Feminine
The closing plenary examined Hindu goddess traditions — Shakti, Prakriti, divine femininity — through the feminist theory of French philosopher Luce Irigaray. Dr. Das argued that where Western religious traditions often lack a strong feminine divine presence, Hinduism offers rich symbolic and philosophical models of female agency and empowerment.
Through contemporary texts like Nikita Gill's The Girl and the Goddess and Smriti Dewan's Urmila: The Forgotten Princess, she showed how modern women writers actively reinterpret goddess traditions to explore female bonding, maternal lineage, and spiritual selfhood. Her lecture offered a more nuanced understanding of feminism — one that moves beyond imitation of Western models and recognizes the deep indigenous philosophical resources within Indian tradition itself.
What I Took Away
The seminar was not simply a collection of lectures — it was an intellectual reorientation. I entered with a mindset shaped largely by Western critical traditions. I left with a broader, more equitable understanding of how knowledge is made, transmitted, and interpreted across cultures. My key learning outcomes:
- Indian Knowledge Systems — Nyaya, Rasa, Vedanta, Dhvani, Thinai — are rigorous analytical frameworks, not supplementary cultural references.
- Applying IKS frameworks to literary analysis yields culturally rooted and often more illuminating readings of both Indian and Western texts.
- Translation is an interpretive, creative, and ideological act — not a mechanical exercise in equivalence.
- Language actively shapes thought and knowledge; it is not merely a vehicle for pre-existing ideas.
- Dialogic pedagogy, rooted in traditions of questioning and debate, is a powerful alternative to passive, rote-based learning.
- Ecological consciousness in literature has deep roots in Indian traditions — Thinai predates ecocriticism by millennia.
- Indian spirituality offers its own robust resources for feminist discourse, without requiring imitation of Western models.
- Student paper presentations proved that IKS is fully capable of functioning as a practical research methodology, not just abstract theory.
Closing Reflection
The real significance of those two days in Bhavnagar lies not in the lectures attended, but in the questions they continue to leave behind — questions about how we read, what frameworks we reach for first, and whose intellectual traditions we treat as universal.
The seminar reminded me that a scholar who can think across traditions is not choosing between East and West. They are choosing depth over convenience.
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