A full-day academic workshop on the ‘Historicity of Indian Knowledge Systems’ was organised by the Centre of Excellence in Applied Indian Knowledge Systems for the faculty of Chinmaya Vishwa Vidyapeeth (CVV) on 31st January 2024, at its Chinmaya Eswar Gurukula campus. The workshop was curated and conducted by Dr. Raj Vedam, scientist and co-founder of the think tank, Indian History Awareness and Research. It was part of the series of initiatives by the Centre to strengthen the IKS ecosystem in the University.
The workshop covered four modules. While the first module focused on the historiography of India where the speaker discussed the existing narratives on the antiquity of the Indian civilisation and showed how they do not fit with the evidence from multi-disciplinary areas, the second module focused on the epistemology of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and the epistemologies of old world civilisations of Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans and Chinese. The third and fourth modules discussed the impact of IKS on the rest of the world and its subsequent decline respectively. The workshop made a strong case for an evidence-based narrative on the deep history of India, the historicity and many advances made in IKS, and how they impact us to the present day.
The workshop was attended by 58 persons, including the Dean of Academics, the Dean of Lifelong Learning and Wellness, the Director or IQAC and faculty members.