Vice-President of India, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar, today emphasised that India's ascent as a global power must be accompanied by a parallel rise in its intellectual and cultural strength to ensure it remains enduring and rooted in its civilizational ethos.
Speaking at the inaugural Annual Conference on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) in New Delhi, the Vice-President said, “The strength of a nation lies in the originality of its thought, the timelessness of its values, and the resilience of its intellectual traditions. That is the kind of soft power that endures in the modern world.”
Calling for India to move beyond post-colonial narratives, he asserted that India is not merely a 20th-century political formation but a “civilizational continuum—a flowing river of consciousness, inquiry, and learning.”
Criticising the historical marginalisation of indigenous knowledge, Shri Dhankhar said this erasure was not accidental but part of a deliberate effort, which tragically continued post-Independence. He added, “Western constructs were paraded as universal truths, camouflaging untruth as truth.”
Highlighting key historical disruptions in India’s intellectual tradition, he pointed to two major interludes: first, during the Islamic invasions, and later under British colonisation. “The British transformed India’s centres of learning to serve colonial needs, replacing thinkers with clerks,” he said, lamenting how critical thinking was replaced by rote learning.
Referring to ancient universities such as Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, Vallabhi, and Odantapuri, he described them as global hubs of scholarship that attracted learners from Korea, China, Tibet, and Persia. “These institutions were oceans of knowledge, long before Europe’s universities existed,” he noted.
The Vice-President called for a more holistic understanding of knowledge—recognising that it lives not only in manuscripts but also in communities, practices, and generational wisdom. He stressed the need for a robust IKS research ecosystem that respects both the written word and lived experiences.
He urged immediate steps to digitise classical Indian texts in languages such as Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali, and Prakrit, making them widely accessible to scholars globally. Additionally, he advocated for training young scholars in interdisciplinary methods, combining philosophy, data science, ethnography, and comparative studies.
Quoting Max Mller, he said: “If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts... I should point to India.”
Shri Dhankhar further underlined that tradition does not obstruct innovation, but inspires it. He drew parallels between ancient Indian texts and modern science—“The Rigveda’s hymns can resonate with astrophysics; the Charaka Samhita can inform modern public health debates,” he observed.
He concluded by saying that India’s knowledge systems, with their reflections on the cosmos, mind, duty, and consequence, offer powerful tools to address the challenges of a fractured global landscape.
The event was also attended by Union Minister Shri Sarbananda Sonowal, Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit (Vice Chancellor, JNU), Prof. M. S. Chaitra (Director, IKSHA), and other distinguished guests.