Debating Knowledge Systems

The world order is based on relativism, while the natural rhythm of the world is in relativity. Relativity generates uniformity and poise, but relativism finds judgments on differentiation. Since the inception of cognitive revolution, possibly more than 30000 years ago, the Order Making has been the quest of human kind. The “Tree of Knowledge Mutation Theory’ tells that humans have a unique capacity of language forming. The method is driven by gossips appetitive, behind each other’s back. This has generated the process of relativism. Relativism has been the root of self and the other. It is the intentionality of the human agency that transcends the borders. There is consensus on it that great avatars and prophets have been the agencies for the pious project of humankind, from time to time. Religions or cults afterwards were used for legitimizing power and domination.

The present debate about the Indian knowledge system, some suggesting it as alternative to the inadequate western knowledge system, while a few argue, it as supplement to the project of multiple-modernity. In any case, it needs comprehensive scholarly understanding. Not the way, a mediocrity-political noise to be heard and juxtaposed in the campuses and in the institutions for political polarization. It is a holistic vision and should be understood in derivative discourse of journey of India. Re-finding of India should not be a project to fragment time in the selective pieces of history, but it has to be a project of continued exploration of unknown episteme that has not been accounted in human history.

There is a profound message in two simple sentences of late Professor Uberoi; ‘to know India is good, but to know India only is not good’. This means, one should study India thoroughly, and at the same time, should have complete understanding about the world, about other civilizations or countries as well. This is not for comparisons but understanding the episteme of continuum. This cannot be an imposed work, but has to be a passionate research for oder-making for better human existence. It is presumed that the transformation of science and technology is so rapid and mind boggling, with AI, that the historical data and its mutations shall augur a new cognitive mindset, which would make history a digital capsule of total understanding of past. AI will make its own golden era of history, through the best possible episteme of existence. It would end the human curiosity to rely on gossips and dialogues, which overcome our existential fear and augment our urge for submission and domination. Arguably, it would be a rebirth of new world, which will make the mockery of the notion of the golden eras.

Data will not say what our saints and Rishis had in their minds, nor would it say what Gazali intended, and Iqbal wished; it would say what has been recorded in texts and stands to scrutiny of evolving scientific knowledge. History has footnotes for all those authors and translators - Greek, Indian, Chinese and Arab - who have worked for its evolution, regardless in its pride. Alberuni, who stayed in India for 1017 to 1030, ‘Kitab al-Hind’ that provided a comprehensive account of knowledge system in India, covering phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax of grammar. It is where transfer of knowledge at different times of history from different places got registered. It was recaptured with further inventions to form the basis of Scientific Revolution in Europe. Since then, especially, in the present century it is progressing with amazing speed, unraveling startling secrets of cosmos.

This is all being digitalized and even assembled in such a way that it all makes one capsule, hardly holding any brief for the past. How important it is to move ahead with the present stage rather than spend resources and time in digging primordial, and inducing false notions of pride? Our strength is in philosophy and literature that has remained unexplored, in whatsoever form and in whatever language, which we need to explore. That too should be through competent and linguistically empowered scholars, who are passionate for research. That could happen if the basic institutions are enriched and strengthened with meritocracy. It cannot be time gap arrangement of selection by a ‘wishful list’.

The corporate funding for research and mushrooming of NGOs without transparency and accountability shall only create culture of grabbing and sycophancy. This has encouraged broker culture, in uglier form than the ‘middle- man’ of yesteryears. What we think ordinary is in fact a profound understanding to regain the institutional vitality, where merit is intrinsic with morality. This is where our stakeholders have huge responsibility, both formal and informal agencies to address the question; what really we want our children to be? Should they be materially sufficient, competitive and running in the process of aggressive exclusion or persons empowered with rational-ethical knowledge and aware about their potential and limitations? The studies conducted recently on children show us that children at formative stage are not bothered for material goods, but worried to have sound relationships.

In view of nuclear families and less number of children, the children have lost the idea of kinships and networking of safe relationships. This was not our worry. We would take it for granted, some fifty years ago. Our traditional lived knowledge system was for making ‘Social’, irrespective of religion, caste and class compositions in the society. The end of ideologies has given space to political religion, which is for fragmentation, with disruptive mindset filled with uncertainties. If the institutional structures are bound to fail, only home can be the saving site for the future of our children. The parents and the grandparents have important role to keep goodness of society paramount in the socialization of the children, rather than making them fearful and competitive animals. Market makes materiality a competitive reality based on purchasing power. It would be making a person, devoid of morality, worried all the time. Only cultural and spiritual capital can fill the lag. It comes from our knowledge system. Home is its repertoire and parents are its custodians. It has to be blended with the primary institutions.

This is not expected from the private schools, which have time bound target agenda; so state schools are to be empowered and enriched with human and material resources to care for children not as human resource, but conscious beings with heart and head. The knowledge system in the past had given us an enlightened happy educated middle class, which had come from the government primary, secondary schools and the state run colleges. The home had intrinsic relationship with these schools, for teachers had firm faith in the goodness of human values infused from the lived religion and day to day social interactions. We have grown on that knowledge system, which has made us ethically responsible, professionally rational and good in conduct. This generation is alienated from parents, tuned to technology, while the generation before it was handed over to the political religious regulations. Both the generations, unlike ours are living in illusions and disillusionments. For, they remain disconnected from homes and primary schools.

Home is to be empowered, relationships are to be nourished. Home generates cultural, spiritual invisible capital that becomes a force to save you from uncertainties in the adulthood. Home remains important. Thomas Edison’s story tells us how mother plays a very important role in the transformation of a child. But mothers need to be rightly educated, so that they make parents’ role communicative, and infuse sense of security with care and compassion. We need it more than before to set the social boundaries and empowerment of children accordingly, so that our children retain their smiles, even during the testing times. Informal free conversations of preserving social can blend our formal education. At the point, it remains haunting with the spilt in moral and materiality. Eid and Navreah coming together has profound message to deliver.

Prof. Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus professor in Sociology at Banaras Hindu University.