Key Points

Addressing the inaugural annual conference on the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) in Delhi, he emphasises the importance of soft power for the rise of a nation-state.

"India's rise as a global power must be accompanied by the rise of its intellectual and cultural gravitas. This is very significant as the rise without this is not lasting, and the rise without this is not in harmony with our traditions. 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, and soft power is potent in the world we live in," Dhankhar said.

Reaffirming India's identity beyond the confines of post-colonial constructs, the Vice-President observed that India is not just a political construct formed in the mid-20th century. It is a civilizational continuum--a flowing river of consciousness, inquiry, and learning that has endured.

Critiquing the historical sidelining of indigenous wisdom, he said that while indigenous insights were dismissed as relics of the primitive past, it was not an error of interpretation.

"It was an architecture of erasure, destruction, and decimation. What is more tragic is that the selective remembrance continued even after independence. Western constructs were paraded as universal truths. To put it more bluntly, untruth was camouflaged as truth," he said.

"What should have been our fundamental priority was not even on the radar. How can you not be cognizant of your core values?" he questioned.

Reflecting on the historical ruptures in India's intellectual journey, the Vice-President said that the Islamic invasion of India caused the first interlude in the glorious journey of Bharatiya Vidya Parampara.

"Instead of embrace and assimilation, there was contempt and destruction. The British colonisation brought forth the second interlude, when the Indian Knowledge System was stunted, stymied, and subverted. Centres of learning changed their motives. The compass was moderated. The North Star was changed. From bearing Sages and Savants, it started producing clerks and yeomen. The needs of the East India Company to have brown babus replaced the need of the nation to have thinkers," he said "We stopped thinking, contemplating, writing, and philosophising. We started cramming, regurgitating, and swallowing. Grades, unfortunately, replaced critical thinking. The great Bharatiya Vidya Parampara and its allied institutions were systematically drained, destroyed, and decimated.", he mentioned.

Dhankar said that long before the Universities of Europe came into being, Bharat's universities had already established themselves as thriving centres of learning.

"Our ancient land was home to luminous centres of intellectual life--Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, Vallabhi, and Odantapuri. These were the towering citadels of knowledge. Their libraries were vast oceans of wisdom, housing tens of thousands of manuscripts," he said.

He added, "These were global universities, where seekers came from lands near and far, such as Korea, China, Tibet, and Persia. These were the spaces where the intellect of the world embraced the spirit of Bharat." Calling for a more holistic understanding of knowledge, the Vice-President said that knowledge resides beyond manuscripts. It lives in communities, in embodied practices, in the intergenerational transmission of wisdom. "A genuine Indian Knowledge Systems research ecosystem must honour both the written word and the lived experience--recognizing that insight emerges as much from context as it does from text," he said.

Calling for focused action to strengthen Indian Knowledge Systems, the Vice-President remarked, "Let us therefore turn our attention to tangible action because that is the need of the hour. The creation of digitized repositories of classical Indian texts is an urgent priority covering all classical languages such as Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali, and Prakrit, to name just a few."

He added, "These repositories should be made widely accessible, enabling scholars in India and researchers around the world to engage meaningfully with these sources. Equally essential is the development of training programs that empower young scholars with robust methodological tools, blending philosophy, computational analysis, ethnography, and comparative inquiry to deepen their engagement with the Indian knowledge system."

Quoting renowned scholar Max Muller, the Vice-President said, "If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant--I should point to India."

"Friends, it was nothing but the articulation of eternal truth," the Vice-President said.

Touching upon the dynamic relationship between tradition and innovation, the Vice-President stated that the wisdom of the past does not obstruct innovation--rather it inspires it.

"The metaphysical can speak to the material. Spiritual insight can coexist with scientific precision, but then you have to know what spiritual insight is."

"The Rigveda's hymns to the cosmos can find new relevance in the age of astrophysics. The Charaka Samhita can be read alongside global debates on public health ethics," he added.

"As we navigate a fractured world, we are stunned by global conflagration. So we are faced with a fractured world. Knowledge systems that have long reflected on the interplay between mind and matter, the individual and the cosmos, duty and consequence, become relevant and vital to shaping thoughtful, enduring responses.", he concluded.

- ANI