Bharatiya Gyan Parampara and the State System: A study of the last 200 years of interaction

Abstract

This paper examines the interaction between Bharatiya Gyan Parampara and the State system during the last two hundred years. India had a tradition of knowledge transmission through Parampara, yet within a short period (from 19th century), many of these Paramparas were weakened. The paper tries to understand how this happened. The paper begins with examples given by Dharampal, especially the descriptions of medical practitioners by Dr. Buchanan and William Adam. Through these examples, the paper explains how knowledge in India was transmitted through family traditions. The study discusses Brahmin practitioners of Ayurveda, Vaidya communities, barber communities practising surgery, women midwives, and many other local practitioners. It shows that knowledge transmission was not dependent on textual knowledge. Rather, knowledge was often acquired through practice. Using these examples, the paper first explains the meaning of Parampara and how Gyan flows through Paramparas. From this point, the paper raises a set of research questions. The first question is: despite knowing many facts about Indian systems, why did Colonizers (British administrators) understand Colonized (Indians) differently? The second question is: how did this different understanding contribute to the weakening of Gyan Parampara? The third question is: if the same understanding still exists in the State system, can Gyan Parampara grow again under a state-led educational structure, even if it would be IKS-based education policy?  The methodology of this paper is interpretive and analytical. The major resources used in the paper are the works of Dharampal, especially Collected Writings III (The Beautiful Tree), the writings of Edward Said’s Orientalism, S. N. Balagangadhara’s Reconcepualizing India Studies and The Heathen in His Blindness. Primarily, this study comes under the Post-Colonial Research. The paper is divided into three major sections. Section A studies the coloniser’s understanding of the colonised. It finds out that Europeans understood Indian society through their own theological understanding. Drawing on Balagangadhara’s concept of ‘Hipkapi,’ the paper explains how Europeans grouped unrelated Indian practices and interpreted them as superstition. Western learning traditions focused on ‘Why,’ while Indian traditions focused more on ‘How’. Because of this difference, British administrators understood Indian education differently (Balagangadhara, 2012). Section B examines how this difference in understanding contributed to the uprooting of Gyan Parampara. How revenue-free land grants support Gurukulas. The section explored that the colonial State institutionalised a different understanding of education and imposed regulatory frameworks, curriculum structures, and textbook-centred learning upon Indian society, which was very different from Gyan Parampara. The paper develops the ‘Water Hyacinth Effect’ analogy to explain how the State appeared freestanding, but it may not be like that. In Section C, the paper analyses recent efforts such as the Indian Knowledge System under NEP 2020. It argues that although many initiatives are being taken to recover texts, fund research, and establish IKS institutions, the process still remains state-led. According to the study, Gyan Parampara was sustained by society itself rather than by the state. Therefore, merely creating state-led policies cannot revive a Parampara. Parampara survived through practice.