Decolonizing the Mind: A Deep Dive into the IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop at MKBU
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU) | Department of English
"Why do we always borrow the conceptual frameworks of the West to understand the literature of the East, or even the literature of the world?"
— Prof. Dushyant Nimawat, Plenary Session, IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop
As an MA English Literature student at Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU), I have attended my fair share of lectures, symposiums, and academic gatherings. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the intellectual experience that was the recent "IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop." For two intense days, the very foundations of how we read, interpret, and teach literature were put under the microscope, examined, and reshaped by the ideas of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS).
Being part of this event was not just an academic requirement for me. It was a personal journey. As a student volunteer who helped coordinate materials and manage logistics, I had the unusual privilege of experiencing the seminar from multiple angles. I felt the energy in the hallways, witnessed quiet but heated debates during coffee breaks, and felt genuine pride watching our department's hard work come together into a smooth, meaningful event.
IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop at MKBU
In this blog post, I want to take you through the seminar session by session, sharing the ideas delivered by our speakers. Whether you are a fellow student, a researcher, or simply someone interested in literature and Indian philosophy, I hope this reflection gives you a sense of what those two days were like.
I. Session 1: The Inauguration and Shifting the Paradigm
Video: Inauguration & Plenary Sessions
The atmosphere in the university auditorium on the first morning was charged. Students, professors, and visiting scholars mingled with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation. As the inaugural lamp was lit, there was a shared sense that we were about to engage with something different. We were not just there to discuss literature. We were there to think carefully about our epistemological roots.
Planery session one : Prof. Dushyant Nimawat
1.1 Prof. Dushyant Nimawat: IKS as a Research Methodology
The academic conversation was opened by Prof. Dushyant Nimawat, whose plenary talk felt less like a standard lecture and more like an honest intellectual challenge. For decades, literary research at the university level has been heavily reliant on Eurocentric methodologies. We read texts through the lenses of Marxism, Psychoanalysis, or Post-structuralism. Prof. Nimawat asked us to look inward, proposing Indian Knowledge Systems as a rigorous and genuinely relevant methodology for contemporary literary inquiry.
He introduced us to the idea of applying Nyaya (the ancient Indian school of logic and epistemology) and Pramanas (the means of obtaining valid knowledge, such as perception, inference, and reliable testimony) to our reading of texts.
"Why do we always borrow the conceptual frameworks of the West to understand the literature of the East, or even the literature of the world?"
— Prof. Dushyant Nimawat
This question stayed with the room long after he said it. Prof. Nimawat showed how Rasa theory the ancient Indian aesthetic framework covering emotional flavors like Shringara (love) or Raudra (fury) can be used not just to read classical Sanskrit drama, but to analyse modern English novels, poetry, and even cinema. As an English MA student, realising I have an indigenous toolkit to bring to Shakespeare or Dickens felt genuinely useful. It was like finding a key that had been in my house all along.
1.2 Dr. Kalyani Vallath: Dravidian Poetics and the Global Ecocritic
Dr. Kalyani Vallath presenting on Dravidian Poetics and Tinai Aesthetics
Dr. Kalyani Vallath followed and took us from the philosophical territory of logic into the ecologically rich world of ancient Tamil literature. Her focus was on Dravidian poetics, specifically the Tinai aesthetics of the Sangam period.
Before this session, my understanding of ecocriticism was largely shaped by Western environmentalism and the Romantic poets. Dr. Vallath changed that. She explained how the Tinai concept maps human emotions onto specific geographical landscapes, including mountains, forests, agricultural lands, coastal regions, and deserts.
🌿 THE TINAI LANDSCAPE AESTHETICS
🏔️ Kurinji (Mountains)
Associated with the secret union of lovers. The mountain landscape mirrors the intensity and elevation of romantic feeling.
🌳 Mullai (Forests)
Connected to patient waiting and endurance. The deep forest evokes constancy and the slow passage of time.
🌾 Marutam (Agricultural Lands)
Linked to lovers' quarrels and domestic life. The cultivated, contested land mirrors interpersonal conflict and reconciliation.
Dr. Vallath showed that in ancient Indian thought, human psychology and the natural world were never treated as separate. The internal landscape of the mind mirrors the external environment. She positioned Tinai aesthetics as a pre-modern form of ecocriticism with global relevance. Sitting in the audience and taking notes, I started to see that indigenous ecological frameworks can offer a far more integrated way of reading nature writing than the fragmented, often human-centred approaches we sometimes get from Western theory.
II. Session 2: The Practical Application of IKS in Research
Video: Paper Presentation — Session 1
After the plenary talks, the afternoon moved into the first round of paper presentations. This is where the seminar became most interesting for me as a student, because I was watching peers and early-career researchers actually apply the theories we had just heard. Translating high theory into textual analysis is one of the hardest things an MA program asks you to do, and this session showed it being done well.
2.1 The Trickster, the Curriculum, and Oral Traditions
🎭 PAPER PRESENTATIONS — SESSION 1
Bhumi Gohil — Krishna as the Trickster Hero
Explored Lord Krishna as a "trickster hero", connecting Krishna's divine play (Lila) and convention-breaking actions in the Mahabharata and the Puranas to universal archetypal criticism — a clear demonstration of how universal archetypes can be understood through our own cultural narratives.
Asha Kurana — IKS in School Curricula
Argued for the need to blend IKS into school curricula, making a case for decolonising the mind not at the university level but at primary and secondary stages. She argued that introducing concepts of Indian logic, ethics (Dharma), and aesthetics early on would produce more culturally grounded, critically thinking students.
Dr. Balaji Shel — Lepcha Oral Traditions and Tinai Poetics
Offered a comparison between Lepcha oral traditions from the indigenous communities of Sikkim and the Himalayas, and the Tinai poetics discussed by Dr. Vallath. A comparative framework entirely free of Western influence — by finding the shared ecological and emotional threads, Dr. Shel showed that India itself contains a wide, underexplored universe of comparative literature.
III. Session 3: Bridging the East and the West
Video: Paper Presentation — Session 2
As the first day came to a close, the energy in the room had not faded. The second session of paper presentations focused on the comparative framework — specifically how Western canonical texts and Indian epistemology can be read together. As English literature students in India, this is the tension we navigate every day, and these presentations offered some useful ways to think through it.
3.1 Epistemology, Non-Duality, and Divine Intervention
📜 PAPER PRESENTATIONS — SESSION 2
Jyoti Agarwal — Raja Rao's Indian Epistemology
A close reading of Raja Rao's Indian epistemology, looking beyond Kanthapura's Gandhian themes to analyse how Rao shaped the English language to carry the rhythm, philosophy, and worldview of Sanskrit and vernacular Indian traditions.
Omi Joshi — Wordsworth and Upanishadic Non-Duality
Compared William Wordsworth's pantheism with the Upanishadic concept of non-duality (Advaita). The "sense sublime" in Tintern Abbey maps closely onto the ancient Indian realisation of Brahman and Atman — reading British Romanticism through the Upanishads changes how we approach those poems.
Shristi and Anandini — Flood Memory and Tinai Poetics
Explored "flood memory" through Tinai poetics, looking at how catastrophic climate events are remembered, mythologised, and processed in coastal literary traditions — connecting the ancient Neithal (coastal) landscape aesthetics to modern climate fiction and disaster narratives.
Priti Taresha — Robinson Crusoe and the Bhagavad Gita
Took Robinson Crusoe and compared its use of divine intervention to the concept in the Bhagavad Gita. By placing Crusoe's spiritual experiences on the island next to Arjuna's crisis on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Priti showed that IKS is not limited to reading Indian texts — it can open up the most familiar Western classics in new ways.
IV. Session 4: Decolonizing the Classroom
Video: Plenary Talk — Day 2
Day two began with a clear sense of direction. We had spent the first day looking at theories and seeing them applied through paper presentations. Now the question was how to actually teach them. Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay's plenary talk was, for many of us, the most urgent and practically useful lecture of the entire seminar. His focus was on the pedagogical approaches needed to bring IKS into English literature curricula in a real and sustainable way.
4.1 Moving from Banking to Samvada
Dr. Chattopadhyay began with a sharp critique of the colonial "banking model" of education. For those unfamiliar with Paulo Freire's term, the banking model treats students as empty vessels into which the teacher deposits information. This model, deeply embedded in the colonial history of Indian education, produces passivity, rote memorisation, and a strict hierarchy between educator and student.
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay delivering the plenary on decolonizing the classroom
"If we are teaching Indian Knowledge Systems using a colonial, authoritarian method, we are defeating the purpose before we even begin."
— Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay
His alternative was the indigenous Indian pedagogical model of Samvada (dialogue or debate). Dr. Chattopadhyay reminded us that the most important philosophical texts of India — from the Upanishads to the Bhagavad Gita — are not monologues. They are question-and-answer exchanges, conversations between seekers and guides such as Nachiketa and Yama, or Arjuna and Krishna.
🎓 THE SAMVADA MODEL OF PEDAGOGY
The Power of Inquiry
In the Samvada model, the student's doubt is not a sign of disrespect. It is the starting point of learning.
Collaborative Truth-Seeking
The classroom becomes a shared space where understanding is built together, rather than handed down from the podium.
Experiential Learning
Literature stops being words to memorise and becomes something that demands active, dialogic engagement.
V. Session 5: The Global Resonance of Indian Philosophy and the Politics of Translation
Video: Plenary Sessions — Day 2
The afternoon of the second day brought three distinct plenary talks that moved across continents, historical periods, and languages. Coming after the morning's session on pedagogy, this felt like the widest stretch of the entire seminar — showing how broad a scope IKS can hold within an English Studies context.
5.1 Dr. Ashok Sachdev: The Oriental Influence on the Occident
Dr. Ashok Sachdev traced the influence of Indian philosophy on British and American literature — an angle we do not often get in standard literary curricula. As literature students, we are regularly taught how the West influenced the East during colonialism. Dr. Sachdev reversed that lens.
Dr. Ashok Sachdev tracing the Oriental influence on Western literary tradition
🌏 INDIAN PHILOSOPHY IN WESTERN LITERATURE
| Western Author / Work | Indian Influence |
|---|---|
| T.S. Eliot — The Waste Land | The poem ends with the thunder's command from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata — closing with "Shantih shantih shantih" |
| W.B. Yeats | Interest in Indian mysticism, collaboration with Shri Purohit Swami; Hindu cyclical time shaped his concept of the "Gyres" |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists | Drew directly on Vedantic thought in the idea of the "Over-Soul" |
5.2 Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya: Panini, Narratives, and the Colonial Shift
Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya on Panini, narrative knowledge, and the colonial shift in language education
Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya delivered a historically detailed lecture on language education, knowledge production, and grammar. He took us back to Panini, the ancient Indian grammarian, explaining how the Ashtadhyayi is not just a rulebook but a sophisticated, mathematical framework for understanding human cognition and how language is generated.
Prof. Bhattacharya explored how narratives in IKS are themselves a form of knowledge production. Stories in the Indian tradition (Katha) are not simply entertainment — they carry complex ethical (Dharmic) and philosophical content across generations. He then contrasted this with what happened during the Fort William College era in the early 19th century, when the British colonial administration categorised, standardised, and ultimately redirected Indian languages to serve the administrative needs of the Empire — showing exactly why and how we lost touch with our own linguistic heritage.
5.3 Prof. Sachin Ketkar: Translation as Refraction
Prof. Sachin Ketkar presenting on Translation Studies through an IKS lens
The final talk of this session was by Prof. Sachin Ketkar, focused on Translation Studies through an IKS lens. Prof. Ketkar pushed back against the Western fixation on finding "perfect equivalence" or "fidelity" in translation, arguing instead for viewing translation not as a perfect mirror but as interpretation and refraction.
🔄 TRANSLATION AS ANUVAD — THREE KEY IDEAS
Anuvad — "To Speak After"
The Sanskrit word for translation, Anuvad, means "to speak after" or "to follow." The word itself implies a continuation of dialogue, a retelling, rather than a mechanical copy.
The Myth of Equivalence
Looking for an exact equivalent between English and an Indian language tends to fail because the underlying cultural and philosophical contexts are fundamentally different.
Translation as Survival
When we treat translation as refraction, the text can adapt and survive in a new linguistic environment — much like a living thing adjusting to a new habitat. This removes the guilt of the "imperfect" translation.
VI. Session 6: Feminist Reclamations and the Valediction
Video: Plenary Session and Valedictory Ceremony
The second day ended where all good seminars should: with a synthesis rather than just a summary. We were tired, our notebooks were full, but our minds were still going. The closing academic session drew together Western critical theory and Indian spiritual tradition in a way that made the whole two days feel coherent.
6.1 Dr. Amrita Das: Luce Irigaray and the Divine Femininity of India
Dr. Amrita Das delivered the final plenary talk, and it was one of the strongest of the entire seminar. Her focus was reclaiming the vocabulary of divine femininity in the Indian context, bringing together Indian spiritual texts with the French feminist theory of Luce Irigaray.
Irigaray's critique of Western philosophy is that it is built around the male perspective, reducing women to a negative space or a reflection of the male subject. Dr. Das took this theoretical framework and applied it to India. Rather than finding the same gap, she found a rich, pre-existing vocabulary for female power in the concept of Shakti (the primordial cosmic energy associated with the feminine).
"While Western feminists often have to invent a new language to express the feminine divine, Indian women have possessed this vocabulary for millennia. We just need to reclaim it from patriarchal distortions."
— Dr. Amrita Das
🌸 INDIGENOUS FRAMEWORKS FOR FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM
Goddess Traditions
India's rich goddess traditions offer a pre-existing vocabulary for female divine power that Western feminism has had to construct from scratch.
Female Mystics — Akka Mahadevi and Mirabai
The history of female mystics in India represents a tradition of autonomous spiritual agency centuries before Western feminist frameworks emerged.
Prakriti — Nature as Creative Energy
The philosophical concept of Prakriti (nature and creative energy) offers a strong indigenous framework for feminist literary criticism — Indian Knowledge Systems here are sharp tools for thinking about gender, power, and identity in the present.
6.2 The Valedictory Ceremony: A Collective Effort
After Dr. Das's talk, the academic session gave way to the valedictory ceremony. The energy in the room shifted from concentrated attention to something warmer and more relaxed.
As a volunteer standing near the back of the auditorium, looking out over my peers, professors, and visiting scholars, I felt genuinely proud. Organising a national-level seminar takes weeks of preparation. We had coordinated travel schedules, printed brochures, arranged accommodations, and kept the audio-visual equipment from becoming a source of panic at critical moments. Seeing it all run well was satisfying in a very practical way.
The distribution of certificates was more than a formality. When my peers walked up to collect their presentation certificates, the applause from our cohort was loud. We were not just clapping for their hard work. We were clapping for the nerve it takes to stand in front of senior academics and argue for new ways of reading literature.
VII. Final Reflections: The Seed of Decolonization
Looking back on those two days at Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, I keep coming back to a simple fact: the "IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop" changed how I think about my own degree. Not in a vague, inspirational way. In a practical, what-do-I-do-with-this-now way.
For years, as Indian students of English literature, we have been intellectually bilingual. We speak our native languages, live in an Indian cultural context, and see the world through an Indian philosophical lens. But the moment we step into the classroom, we have been trained to set that aside and reach for Western frameworks instead. Most of us do it automatically, without even noticing. This seminar made that habit visible. And once you see it, you cannot quite unsee it.
🕉️ WHAT WE TOOK AWAY — THE FIVE KEY TOOLS
| IKS Concept | What It Offers |
|---|---|
| Rasa Theory | Can analyse Shakespeare with the same rigour as Post-structuralism |
| Tinai Landscapes | Offer a more integrated ecocriticism than much of what Western environmentalism produces |
| Samvada | The classroom can shift from the colonial banking model to dialogic learning, if teachers are willing |
| Anuvad | Translation is an act of continuation rather than imperfect copying |
| Shakti | Gives feminist criticism a vocabulary that does not have to be borrowed or improvised |
Walking out of the auditorium into the Bhavnagar afternoon, I had a certificate in one hand and a notebook that was almost completely full in the other. The speakers planted ideas that will take time to properly work through. What I do with them in my dissertation, in whatever classroom I eventually teach in, and in my own reading practice is now the actual work.
The seminar is over. The harder part is just beginning. I am grateful to MKBU, the speakers, and every peer and volunteer who made those two days possible. Whatever comes next in this conversation about IKS and English Studies, I am glad we are finally having it.
"The seminar is over. The harder part is just beginning."
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This blog reflects on the IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop held at the Department of English, MKBU. A two-day journey from Eurocentric literary methodology towards the rich, integrated world of Indian Knowledge Systems — exploring Rasa, Tinai, Samvada, Anuvad, and Shakti as living critical tools for the contemporary student of literature.
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