The revival of Indian knowledge systems: Why the world is turning to ancient wisdom

Over the past century, the world has been swept up in an extraordinary wave of scientific progress.

- YUDHISTIR GOVINDA DAS

Artificial intelligence, launch of space rockets, genetic research innovations once considered far-fetched have slipped quietly into everyday life. Yet in our eagerness to keep up with the future, we often forget to look back. Deep reservoirs of traditional knowledge, refined over millennia, are too readily dismissed as quaint or outdated or even unscientific. A prophet, as the saying goes, is rarely honoured in his own land.

A closer look at history tells a different story about India's intellectual heritage. Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) have shaped far more of the modern world than most people realize. Our numeral system, sophisticated astronomical models, Ayurveda's holistic approach to health factoring seasons and diet along with medicines, elaborate treatises on logic, linguistics, music, and art all grew out of a culture that placed knowledge and its proper application at the centre of life. These ideas did not merely survive through the ages; many of them still underpin global thought today.