Opinion G N Devy writes: Replacing ‘western knowledge’ with ‘Indian knowledge’ could result in intellectual disaster

The two Sanskrit words vidya and gnyana, correctly represent the basic difference between the two traditions. In languages, the formation of a verb-based noun-phrase can be generated; but in cultural history, the process is near impossible. One tradition privileges “thought” or rationality, the other prioritises “intuition” or the inner ability to perceive. One admits proof and evidence, the other rests upon testimony and the truth of the word. One attempts to develop methods of bringing perception into the form of a logical statement, or theory; the other intensifies the organic link between a pre-existing ocean of wisdom and the consciousness that aspires to open up to it. In simple words, the two are different as material, as cultural deposits and as descriptions of the reality surrounding us. They may intersect, but can hardly fit together in any single arrangement of educating the next generation.

In Indian traditions of learning, memory had been a central interest from the earliest times, described by the term smriti (“remembering” as well as “the remembered”). The Bhagavad Gita contains a rather categorical pronouncement that weakening of smriti leads to destruction of the intellect — smriti-branshat buddhi-nash. In ancient theoretical compositions, special care was taken to aid and facilitate easy remembering of the text by introducing various accessible mnemonic tools, quite akin to the Greek mnemonics used by Cicero, in the Greek tradition.

The larger part of ancient Indian literature, of diverse philosophical schools, was preserved through memorisation with a very high standard of accuracy. There is no other civilisation that insisted on developing memory as the most central tool of learning with such obsessive interest as the South Asian civilisation.

The difference between the turn that the 17th century use of memory took in Europe, resulting in what was called in Europe “universal knowledge”, and the use of memory in the history of ideas in India was that the idea of a “science of knowledge, or a universal knowledge” did not find favour with those who held knowledge in the latter. The idea of knowledge as “knowing”, bringing intellect closer to intuition, together with the sophisticated use of memory for a flawless reproduction of the texts from the past, had resulted in “apprenticeship” becoming, as stated earlier, the most favoured mode of receiving and giving education not only in medicine, chemistry, sculpture, architecture, metallurgy, dance, music and crafts, in which skills constitute the major part of understanding, but also in the disciplines in which the ability for abstraction and raising new questions form the core, such as philosophy, poetry, mathematics and astronomy.

In combination with the social segregation that set in within Indian society more than 2,000 years ago, the internship mode of cultivating knowledge became a formidable hindrance to producing any genuinely “universal science”. While highly accurate memorisation continued to be the tool for storing developments in ideas, the access to such memorisation was restricted by the social status of a person. The result was that in pre-colonial times two broad streams of memory-based knowledge spectrums continued to coexist without much of a possibility for mutual exchange and cross-fertilisation: One, the spectrum of the memory traditions of those who had access to abstract symbols, including writing, and, two, the spectrum of the memory traditions of those who were prevented from attempting symbolic abstractions.

This kind of schooling changed after paper became available for use in India during the 13th century. However, the place of the oral was not entirely or substantially taken by the written. The two coexisted in an interdependent manner in the Indian production of knowledge. When paper became available, scholars used paper for writing. Previously, they had used tree bark. Manuscripts were copied meticulously by generations of students and every few hundred years they were renewed. But there were others who memorised this and continued handing down knowledge through speech. Therefore, manuscript was both writing and speech at the same time, and this continued in Indian history for centuries. When print technology arrived in this country, it was not available to every language that had extensive literature in it, nor did it reach every language that had numerous speakers. It only reached some languages spoken by communities from which people could be drawn as bureaucrats, or to work in the East India Company’s government colleges.

Languages were chosen for printing in India not on the basis of their literary capabilities or their antiquity, but on the basis of their expediency. Thus, the traditions of knowledge that had oral as well as written presentation continued to remain cut off from those knowledge traditions that had only the oral form. As a result, the split between the social sections which had easy access to letters and those that were denied that ease of access was aggravated at that precious moment of India’s transition from medieval times to modernity. Thus, the possibility of India devising a grand scheme of classifying all that was known in Indian traditions with the help of a single and unified symbolic grid tied firmly to “all Indian knowledge” — “all memory” — as happened a couple of centuries ago in Europe, could not become a viable possibility.

While Indians had been all along building houses, architecture got divided into “vernacular” and “architecture”. Languages, spoken as “languages”, came to be listed differently as “languages” and “dialect”. It is with the wound of a deeply divided “memory field” that India has been trying to internalise the idea of a “universal knowledge” over the last two centuries.

Now, if an ideology that nurtures the fantasy that “all knowledge” was developed in ancient India attempts to force educators to bring “Indian knowledge” to replace “western knowledge”, it is predictably going to result in the greatest intellectual disaster known in history. It can at best produce a generation of students that will hold anything in the western knowledge system with scorn. It will grow up thinking that “all knowledge” developed in ancient India lies hidden in some manuscript archive.

It may even start negating the presence of the great social divide that has kept most castes and all women out of knowledge transactions. At worst, trying to take India forward to the past will make India a continent of ignorance.

The writer is Obaid Siddiqi Chair Professor, NCBS-TIFR and Hon. Senior Fellow, Asiatic Society