Reinventing Inclusive and Holistic Education: Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the National Education Policy (2020)

Abstract

For a teacher, there is nothing more endearing than interacting with young, vibrant minds and becoming a first responder to their curiosity. It is the imagination of the young that invents, innovates, and redefines the future. Orthodox learning in the name of formal education has inhibited the innovative capabilities of the curious mind. For decades, India’s formal education was constrained due to dated dictums, ideas, and alien designs aimed at producing subservient subjects who sought education only for remunerative work. There was a deliberate denial of any other form of ubiquitous learning. The colonial baggage that we carried with us in post-independence India resulted in the repudiation of our ancient knowledge, its immense learning, and its copious ability to stimulate intellectual enterprise. Persistent efforts were made to dismiss its scientific rigor and glorious past. Perfunctory attempts were made in post-colonial India to tweak anglicized education policy in 1968 and then in 1986, but without any distinct reforms. The National Education Policy (NEP) announced on July 29, 2020, made a conscious attempt to restructure amidst criticism from the followers of the old school. Theoretically, it acknowledges and celebrates ancient and indigenous knowledge systems and the significance of imparting learning in the local vernacular. It contends to develop a model of holistic education that could benefit from anthropological epistemology, which is premised on a holistic understanding of humankind. The discipline encourages integrated learning from science, social sciences, philosophy, and humanities, and is rooted in experiential learning. Inherent in its teaching is a jest for inclusivity. Embedded in its learning is the ancient practice of spiritualism and the appreciation and documentation of social, cultural, and ethnic diversity. NEP-2020 promises to integrate Janjati/tribal/indigenous knowledge systems into this holistic model of education that was initially introduced by Tagore in 1901 in the Brahmacharya school. The first section of the article examines the relevance of this model of education for developing a paradigm of holistic education. The new policy is resolute to achieve inclusive and equitable education by 2030 to meet Sustainable Development Goal 4 and confront the challenges of climate change but ignores Tagore’s holism. Indigenous/Janjati knowledge systems are known to be the most versatile and resilient, but NEP-2020 is silent on advocating and protecting them. There is no blueprint for their documentation, which is rooted in oral traditions and cultural practices. Even the section on “Lok Vidya” refrains from making any specific reference to diverse Janjati knowledge systems. This article examines some of these lacunae and proposes a pathway for the documentation and augmentation of these tenacious practices. It evokes anthropologists—the traditional chroniclers of these knowledge systems—to prepare encyclopedias of these indigenous practices and convert them into easy pedagogic exercises to be adopted by various educational systems at different levels.