A New Way to Read Literature: My Experience with Indian Knowledge Systems
A deep, personal reflection on the National Seminar on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies, guided by Dr. Dilip Barad.
(For a comprehensive look at the seminar’s proceedings, you may click here for the full documentation.)
The Beginning: Looking Beyond Western Ideas
Imagine waking up every day, going to your closet, and putting on a pair of glasses that belong to someone else. The glasses are well-made, expensive, and famous, but the prescription does not match your eyes. When you look through them, the colors are slightly wrong, the edges are blurry, and the world just does not look the way you know it should. You can still navigate your day, but you are always working twice as hard to make sense of what you see.
For the longest time, my journey as an M.A. student studying English Literature in India felt exactly like wearing those borrowed glasses.
Since my first day of college, I have been taught to look at stories, novels, and poems using Western ideas. Whenever we opened a book by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, or even an Indian writer like R.K. Narayan, we were told to use Western tools to understand it. We used Marxism to talk about rich and poor people in the stories. We used Postcolonial theory to talk about empires and freedom. We used Western psychology to understand why characters acted the way they did.
These Western tools were all I knew. Do not get me wrong they are definitely helpful. They opened my mind to many big concepts. But as I sat in the library, reading books under the warm Gujarat sun, I often found myself staring out the window and wondering: Why do I always have to use foreign ideas to understand literature? India has thousands of years of philosophy, art, and deep thinking. Why can't I use ideas from my own culture to read a poem?
I carried this quiet question with me for years. It felt like a puzzle piece I could not find. That was, until our department hosted the recent national seminar on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and English Studies.
I was not just attending this event as a student; I was actively working behind the scenes. I was part of the certificate team, taking pride in contributing to the event by carefully writing and preparing the certificates for all the participants and speakers. But beyond my volunteer duties, experiencing this event completely shifted my perspective.
Walking into the university auditorium on the first day of the seminar, the air was filled with excitement. Students and teachers from all over had gathered. When the opening lamp was lit, I did not realize that the light from that small flame was about to completely change how I view my education, my culture, and the books I love.
Seminar Details Overview
Insights from the Inaugural Session The seminar started with a wonderful, eye-opening introduction by our guide and mentor, Dr. Dilip Barad.
IKS and English Studies National Seminar-Workshop at MKBU
When people hear the phrase "Indian Knowledge Systems," some might think it means rejecting everything from the outside world. Dr. Barad cleared up this big misunderstanding right away. He stood before the audience and explained that bringing Indian ideas into English studies does not mean we should hate the English language or ignore Western ideas. This is not about throwing away the books we love or acting like Western philosophers have nothing to offer.
Instead, it is about bringing both sides together so they can help us understand literature better. It is about equality in education. He reminded us of a very powerful truth: English is no longer just a foreign language left behind by the British. Over the decades, Indians have taken the English language, reshaped it, breathed our own culture into it, and made it our own. We write our own stories in English, we dream in English, and we communicate across the globe in English.
Therefore, if English belongs to us, we have every right to study it using our own cultural tools. We do not have to choose between being a good student of English and being true to our Indian roots. We can be both.
With this powerful thought planted in our minds, the seminar began. Over the next few sessions, the way I look at literature completely changed. It was like taking off those borrowed glasses and finally seeing the world with perfect, clear vision.
Here are the biggest, most life-changing lessons I learned over those two days.
Video: Inauguration & Plenary Sessions
Lesson 1: Learning from Our Own Roots
The Guide: Dushyant Nimavat
In our universities, we often accept Western theories as the ultimate, unquestionable truth. If a famous European philosopher said it, we write it down in our notebooks and treat it as a universal law. We rarely pause to ask: Did ancient Indians have a system for finding the truth?
Dushyant Nimavat challenged us to look backward to move forward. He introduced us to the ancient Indian ways of finding truth and analyzing the world, specifically focusing on the Nyaya system.
The Nyaya school of thought is an ancient Indian system of logic and deep thinking. It is essentially a step-by-step method for figuring out what is true and what is false. For centuries, our ancestors used this system to debate, discuss, and understand the universe. Dushyant Nimavat showed us that we can take this ancient system of logic and apply it directly to the English poems and novels we read today.
Instead of just forcing a Western idea onto a poem, we can use Indian methods of knowledge. The Nyaya system gives us specific tools for this. Two of the most important tools he discussed were Pratyaksha and Anumana.
Pratyaksha (Direct Perception): This means knowledge that you get directly through your senses. In literature, Pratyaksha is what we see directly on the page. It is the literal text. When we read a poem, Pratyaksha involves looking at the actual words the poet chose, the rhythm of the lines, the rhyming words, and the clear actions of the characters. It is the foundation. You cannot understand a story without first looking closely at what is right in front of your eyes.
Anumana (Logical Inference): This means making a logical guess based on what you have seen. Once you have read the literal words (Pratyaksha), you use your brain to read between the lines. This is Anumana. It is the process of figuring out the hidden meanings, the secret feelings of the characters, and the deeper message the author is trying to send. If a writer describes a character staring out at a dark, stormy sea, Pratyaksha tells us the weather is bad. Anumana tells us the character is probably feeling sad, confused, or troubled inside.
Learning Outcome: Hearing about Nyaya was a massive turning point for me. I realized that Indian traditions aren't just ancient stories, myths, or religious texts. They provide actual, highly logical, step-by-step methods for studying literature. We have our own science of reading. We don’t always need to look to the West for the "right" way to study a book. The tools to be a great literary critic have been in our cultural backyard for thousands of years. I just needed to learn how to use them.
Lesson 2: Emotions and Nature are Deeply Connected
The Guide: Kalyani Vallath
When we read books in a traditional English class, we are usually taught to look at human emotions as something that happens entirely inside a person's head. If a character is sad, we analyze their thoughts. If they are in love, we look at their heartbeat. Nature, in Western thinking, is often just a background. It is a pretty stage where the human drama takes place, or sometimes it is a wild force that humans must conquer.
But Kalyani Vallath took the stage and introduced us to a completely different way of seeing the world. She brought us into the beautiful, ancient Tamil idea of Tinai.
The Tinai system, which comes from ancient Sangam literature in South India, is a breathtaking way of understanding poetry and life. In the Tinai system, human feelings are not separate from nature. They are deeply, permanently tied to the earth, the weather, and the landscape. You cannot separate what a person is feeling from the ground they are standing on.
Kalyani Vallath explained that ancient Tamil poets divided the world into specific landscapes, and each landscape represented a specific human emotion or situation. For example:
Kurinji (The Mountains): The high, cool, secret mountain areas represent the intense, hidden union of lovers. The excitement of a secret romance matches the thrill of the high mountains.
Mullai (The Forests): The deep, quiet forests represent patient waiting. When a lover goes away, the other waits in the forest, showing loyalty and the slow passing of time.
Marutam (The Agricultural Plains): The busy farming lands and villages represent the daily, messy reality of domestic life. This is where lovers have arguments, feel jealousy, and eventually make up.
Neithal (The Seashore): The vast, salty, crashing ocean represents deep sadness, grief, and the pain of being separated from someone you love.
Palai (The Dry Wasteland): The harsh, hot desert represents extreme hardship, running away, and the terrible tests of life.
The most amazing part of her session was when she showed us that this ancient Indian idea does not just apply to Indian poetry. She applied the Tinai concept to famous Western books!
She used Thomas Hardy’s famous English novel, The Return of the Native, as an example. In that book, the story takes place on Egdon Heath a dark, wild, lonely landscape. The characters who live on this heath have dark, wild, and lonely emotions. The landscape shapes their destiny. By using the Tamil Tinai system, we can perfectly analyze this classic English novel, proving that this deep, unbreakable connection between nature and emotion happens everywhere in the world.
Learning Outcome: Literature isn't just about what characters are thinking in their brains; it’s also about the environment around them. We are shaped by the earth we walk on. Now, whenever I read a story, I will not just look at the dialogue. I will always pay close attention to the landscape. If a scene happens in a forest, by a river, or on a mountain, I will ask myself: How is this landscape affecting the characters' moods? Nature is not just a background; it is a main character in every story.
Applying IKS in Academic Research
Paper Presentations — Round 1
Video: Paper Presentation — Session 1
Following the plenary addresses, the afternoon transitioned into the first round of paper presentations. As an MA student, this was arguably the most engaging part of the seminar. Translating high-level theory into concrete textual analysis is notoriously difficult, but watching peers and early-career researchers successfully apply the concepts we had just learned was deeply inspiring.
The Trickster, the Curriculum, and Oral Traditions
Bhumi Gohil | Krishna as the Trickster Hero: Bhumi explored Lord Krishna through the lens of archetypal criticism. By examining Krishna's divine play (Lila) and convention-defying actions in the Mahabharata and the Puranas, she effectively demonstrated how universal archetypes can be interpreted natively through India's own cultural narratives.
Asha Kurana | IKS in School Curricula: Asha made a compelling case for integrating Indian logic, ethics (Dharma), and aesthetics into primary and secondary education. She argued that decolonising the mind shouldn't just happen at the university level; early exposure to IKS produces critically engaged and culturally grounded students.
Dr. Balaji Shel | Lepcha Oral Traditions and Tinai Poetics: In a brilliant display of intra-Indian comparative literature, Dr. Shel connected the Lepcha oral traditions of the Himalayas with the South Indian Tinai poetics discussed earlier by Dr. Vallath. By establishing a comparative framework entirely free of Western influence, this presentation highlighted shared ecological and emotional threads across India's vast, underexplored literary landscape.
Bridging the East and the West
Paper Presentations — Round 2
Video: Paper Presentation — Session 2
Video: Paper Presentation — Session 2
Even as the first day drew to a close, the energy in the room remained high. The second batch of presentations tackled the comparative framework specifically, how Indian epistemology can be used to re-read Western canonical texts. For English literature students in India, navigating this East-West tension is a daily reality, and these papers offered incredibly useful methodologies for thinking through it.
Epistemology, Non-Duality, and Divine Intervention
Jyoti Agarwal | Raja Rao’s Indian Epistemology: Going beyond the familiar Gandhian themes in Kanthapura, Jyoti conducted a close reading of how Rao consciously molded the English language to carry the unique rhythms, philosophies, and worldviews of Sanskrit and Indian vernacular traditions.
Omi Joshi | Wordsworth and Upanishadic Non-Duality: Omi provided a fresh take on British Romanticism by comparing William Wordsworth’s pantheism with the Upanishadic concept of Advaita (non-duality). He compellingly mapped the "sense sublime" in Tintern Abbey to the ancient Indian realization of Brahman and Atman.
Shristi and Anandini | Flood Memory and Tinai Poetics: Bridging ancient aesthetics with modern disaster narratives, this duo used the Neithal (coastal) landscape of Tinai poetics to analyze how coastal literary traditions process, mythologize, and remember catastrophic climate events.
Priti Taresha | Robinson Crusoe and the Bhagavad Gita: Priti demonstrated that Indian Knowledge Systems are not exclusively for reading Indian texts. By comparing the themes of divine intervention and spiritual crisis in Crusoe's island isolation with Arjuna's battlefield dilemma at Kurukshetra, she opened up a familiar Western classic in an entirely new way.
Lesson 3: Making Classrooms More Active
The Guide: Kalyan Chattopadhyay
Think about a typical classroom today. The teacher stands at the front of the room, speaking for an hour. The students sit in straight rows, staying perfectly quiet, furiously writing down notes. We are expected to memorize exactly what the teacher says, memorize what the textbook says, and then write it all down on an exam paper to get a degree.
Kalyan Chattopadhyay took the microphone and pointed out a harsh truth: why do we still sit in classrooms just listening and memorizing, without questioning anything? He explained that this is an old, outdated way of learning. In fact, it is a leftover habit from colonial times, designed to make students obedient rather than making them smart.
He suggested that if we want to truly understand literature, we need to completely change how our classrooms operate. And the answer to fixing our classrooms lies in Indian ideas.
He talked about the concept of Rasa. Rasa is an ancient Indian idea that translates to "juice," "essence," or "flavor." In Indian art, the goal of a poem or a play is not just to deliver facts; the goal is to create a specific "flavor" (like romance, comedy, terror, or peace) that the audience can actually taste and feel in their hearts.
If literature is all about feeling and "tasting" these deep emotions, how can we possibly learn about it by sitting silently and memorizing dates and facts? We cannot.
Kalyan Chattopadhyay argued that we need to bring the idea of Rasa into the classroom to make learning more lively. We also need to embrace the ancient Indian tradition of Samvada, which means dialogue, debate, and questioning. In ancient India, the greatest learning happened when a student asked a teacher difficult questions.
Education should be a lively two-way street. A classroom studying English literature should be a place where students discuss how a poem made them feel. They should debate the choices the characters made. They should ask tough questions and share their own thoughts. Learning Outcome: Learning literature shouldn't be boring memorization. It is a crime to take a beautiful, emotion-filled poem and turn it into a list of vocabulary words to memorize for a test. A classroom should be a fun, active discussion space. My own thoughts, my own emotional reactions, and my own questions matter just as much as the printed textbook. True learning happens when we speak up, not when we stay silent.
Lesson 4: Great Minds Think Alike (East and West)
The Guide: Ashok Sachdeva
As students of English literature, we spend so much time studying British and American writers that we sometimes start to believe a myth. We start to think that modern literature and deep philosophy were entirely created by Western writers. We often view the West as the "giver" of knowledge and the East as the "receiver."
Ashok Sachdev completely flipped this idea upside down. He showed us that history is much more connected than we think. Many famous Western writers, the ones we study in our textbooks, actually turned to ancient Indian philosophy when they were looking for answers to life's biggest, most difficult problems.
He gave us an incredible example involving T.S. Eliot, one of the most famous poets of the 20th century. After the horror and destruction of World War I, the Western world was broken. People felt hopeless. In response, T.S. Eliot wrote his famous masterpiece, The Waste Land. But when Eliot needed a way to end the poem when he needed to offer a message of hope and healing to a broken world he did not use Western philosophy. He turned to the ancient Indian Upanishads. He ended his famous English poem with the powerful Sanskrit word "Shanti" (peace). He needed Indian wisdom to heal a Western wound.
Ashok Sachdev then gave us another amazing comparison. He asked us to look at William Shakespeare’s most famous character, Hamlet, and the great Indian hero from the Mahabharata, Arjuna.
At first glance, a Prince in a cold Danish castle and an archer on an Indian battlefield seem to have nothing in common. But Sachdev showed us that their souls were fighting the exact same battle. Both Hamlet and Arjuna were great warriors who suddenly froze. Both faced huge, crushing doubts about what they were supposed to do. They both struggled to figure out their duty or as we call it in India, their Dharma. Arjuna’s struggle led to the beautiful teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, while Hamlet’s struggle led to one of the greatest plays ever written.
Learning Outcome: The big questions about life, death, duty, and peace are the same all over the world. Human beings are connected by the same deep struggles. We do not need to feel inferior to Western literature, because Western writers have deeply respected, studied, and used Indian ideas in their own famous works. Great minds truly do think alike, whether they are sitting in London or ancient India.
Plenary Day 2 - Sachdeva, Bhattacharya, Ketkar
Lesson 5: Language is More Than Just Grammar
The Guides: Atanu Bhattacharya & Sachin Ketkar
When we learn a language, we usually start with grammar. We memorize rules about verbs, nouns, and sentence structures. We tend to think of language simply as a tool like a telephone that we use to pass information from one person to another.
But the sessions led by Atanu Bhattacharya and Sachin Ketkar completely changed how I think about words, meaning, and translation.
First, Atanu Bhattacharya took us back in time to talk about ancient Indian thinkers, specifically the great grammarian Panini. Thousands of years ago, Panini created a set of rules for the Sanskrit language that was so perfect, mathematical, and logical that modern computer scientists still study his work today.
Bhattacharya showed us that in our Indian tradition, language is not just a simple tool to talk. The language you speak actually shapes how your brain works. It shapes how you see the world. The rich, complex structure of Indian languages carries our history, our values, and our way of thinking. When we only study English, we are forced to see the world only through an English lens.
Then, Sachin Ketkar took this idea and applied it to the art of translation.
In the modern world, people think translation is easy. You just take an English word, find the matching Hindi or Gujarati word in a dictionary, and swap them. But Ketkar explained that this is impossible when dealing with deep cultural ideas.
He used the word Dharma as an example. If you try to translate Dharma into English, you might use the word "religion," or "duty," or "law," or "righteousness." But none of those English words capture the true, massive meaning of Dharma. The exact English word does not exist because the cultural idea does not exist in the same way in the West.
Because of this, translation isn't just copying a word from one language to another. It is not a math problem to be solved. Ketkar explained that translation is a highly creative, beautiful process of sharing our culture with the rest of the world. It is about explaining an entire worldview to someone who has never experienced it.
Learning Outcome: I used to think that reading a translated book meant accepting that the true meaning got "lost." Now, I see it differently. Translating a book is a beautiful art form. It is the building of a bridge that helps connect two completely different cultures. And understanding my own native languages deeply will only make me better at understanding English.
Lesson 6: Seeing Women's Power in Stories
The Guide: Amrita Das
The seminar ended on a highly powerful note with a session by Amrita Das, who talked about the Divine Feminine and how we read female characters in literature.
In many Western literary theories, especially some older feminist theories, we are taught to look at female characters mostly through the lens of their suffering. We analyze how society oppresses them, how the male characters mistreat them, and how they are trapped in unfair systems. While this is very important and often true, it can sometimes reduce female characters to simply being victims who are waiting to be saved or waiting to escape.
Amrita Das argued that we need a more empowering way to look at women in stories, and once again, she pointed to our own Indian roots. She introduced the Indian idea of Shakti.
In Indian philosophy, Shakti is the divine feminine energy. It is the moving, creative, powerful force of the entire universe. Without Shakti, the universe cannot function. It is a power that is fierce, unstoppable, and deeply respected.
When we take the idea of Shakti and apply it to literature, it gives us a completely different, much more empowering view. Instead of only looking at how a female character is oppressed, we can look for her Shakti. We can look for her hidden power, her inner strength, her quiet endurance, and her ability to create change.
Whether we are reading about a strong mother in an Indian novel, or even analyzing a famous Western character like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, using the lens of Shakti allows us to analyze their fierce energy and ambition without automatically labeling them as weak victims or evil monsters.
Learning Outcome: We have our own powerful, ancient words to talk about strong women. We do not have to rely only on Western theories of victimhood. Shakti allows us to view female characters not as helpless victims, but as powerful, complex forces of nature who drive the story forward.
Overall Learning Outcome: The Biggest Takeaway
After two days of intense listening, taking notes, and debating in the hallways during tea breaks, my brain was overflowing with new ideas. If I had to sum up everything I learned from this entire seminar into one major, life-changing outcome, it is this:
I have finally learned how to think for myself using my own cultural roots.
Before this seminar, I felt like a guest in the world of English literature. I felt like I was just borrowing a pair of Western glasses to read English books, always relying on someone else’s rules to tell me what a story meant.
Now, I feel empowered. I know that my own culture has incredibly powerful, ancient, and highly logical tools like Nyaya (logic), Tinai (nature), Rasa (emotion), and Shakti (power) to understand any story in the world. I do not have to leave my Indian identity outside the classroom door anymore. I can bring it to my desk, open an English book, and read it with confidence.
The most beautiful outcome of this seminar is the realization that East and West do not have to fight. This is not a competition. By combining the great literature of the West with the deep wisdom of India, we don't just become better students of the English language. We become deeper, more sensitive, and more open-minded thinkers who can easily see the hidden connections between nature, language, human emotions, and the universe.
Final Thoughts: A Clearer View
Attending the "Indian Knowledge Systems and English Studies" seminar was like getting a brand new, perfectly prescribed pair of glasses.
I walked into that auditorium on the first day as a student trained to only use Western ideas, unsure of how my own culture fit into my education. I walked out two days later with a rich, colorful, and deeply Indian perspective.
Mixing Indian Knowledge Systems with English Studies doesn't mean building walls between cultures to keep people out. It means opening doors so that different ideas can flow freely. As I continue my M.A. studies, write my papers, and prepare for my future career, I am no longer just reading English literature. I am reading it with an Indian mind, an Indian heart, and Indian logic.
The stories finally make much more sense now.
To end this reflection, I want to share a thought that perfectly captures the spirit of this seminar:
"Knowledge is not a single block of stone; it is a river fed by many different streams." By allowing the streams of Indian wisdom to flow into the river of English studies, our education has finally become whole.
Full Seminar Recordings:
- Inauguration & Plenary Day 1 - Nimavat & Vallath
- Paper Presentation Session 1
- Paper Presentation Session 2
- Plenary - Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay
- Plenary Day 2 - Sachdeva, Bhattacharya, Ketkar
- Dr. Amrita Das & Valedictory
Here is the Video-Overview of this blog:Here is the Presentation upon this blog:
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