1. High-caste bias in the Indian Knowledge System

The Indian Knowledge System policy pledges to rejuvenate interest in “the unbroken knowledge traditions” of India across schools and higher education systems, which were destroyed by Muslim invaders.Footnote ³ In reality, the term “unbroken” refers exclusively to the high-caste Hindu knowledge systems, which are synonymous with the BJP’s idea of Indian tradition and glorified in this policy as unquestionable and the only authentic traditional knowledge in India. Jagdeep Dhankar, who was the Vice-President of India between 2022 and 2025, stated during a public address about the necessity of IKS: “The Islamic invasion of India caused the first interlude in the glorious journey of Bharatiya Vidya Parampara [भारतीय िवद्या परंपरा, “unbroken Indian knowledge traditions”]. Instead of embrace and assimilation, there was contempt and destruction.”Footnote ⁴ To prevent further destruction, according to the BJP, the vidya paramparas, or unbroken Indian knowledge traditions, must be retrieved through IKS.

According to the caste system, which is central to BJP ideology, the Hindu community is divided into four varnas (categories): the highest are the Brahmins, followed by Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Sudras. The varna system serves as the bedrock of the caste system in India, which is a product of Vedic traditions and has effectively normalized caste hierarchies in India. High-caste Hindus consider the knowledge systems of the Vedic traditions to be the only authentic forms of knowledge, while the rest are inferior.Footnote ⁵

IKS claims that the “rich heritage of ancient and eternal Indian knowledge and thought” has been its guiding light, referring to India’s knowledge traditions of science, technology, and medicine.Footnote ⁶ However, IKS identifies only those ancient educational institutions, mostly run by high-caste Hindu communities and a few by Buddhists—such as Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramshila, and Vallabhi, universities that were established in India during the Vedic era—as representatives of the “highest standards of multidisciplinary teaching and research” in ancient India.Footnote ⁷ It is only the high-caste Brahmin philosophers, such as Charaka, Susruta, Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, and others, who are identified by the IKS as the seminal contributors to India’s various traditional knowledge disciplines.

When the IKS was launched in 2020, the education ministry and panel members of the NEP 2020 justified its launch as a way to decolonize India’s education system by reviving the country’s traditional knowledge systems.Footnote ⁸ Even though India has a vast historical and cultural legacy of multicultural and multicommunal knowledge traditions associated with different castes, religions, and geographies, their definitions of decolonization and revival were strictly restricted to high-caste Hindu knowledge systems.Footnote ⁹ The NEP policy, through the IKS, argues that India’s traditional knowledge systems are rooted solely in the high-caste Hindu Vedic traditions and, in the name of revival, aims to legitimize myths as realities, erase history, and promote pseudoscience as science.Footnote ¹⁰

2. Myths as realities

As a justification for the scientific relevance of the IKS, myths are presented as reality. The BJP has cited a mythical chariot, the Pushpak Vimana, to claim that the first airplane was built in India.Footnote ¹¹ According to the Hindu epic Ramayana, the Pushpaka Vimana was a flying chariot built in the Vedic era and used by Ravana to abduct Sita.Footnote ¹² A mythical object cannot be considered scientifically real.

The BJP has also claimed that the first drones and war missiles were invented in India during the Vedic era.Footnote ¹³ The BJP argues that Brahmastra, a mythical weapon mentioned in the Mahabharata, is identical to a modern missile or drone.Footnote ¹⁴ Based on this narrative, many BJP ideologues promote that Brahmastra is the first known war missile and therefore India is the inventor of war missiles.Footnote ¹⁵

The BJP has further showcased Lord Ganesha as the first example of cosmetic surgery in India. According to Vedic myths, Ganesha has an elephant head and a human body and is regarded as the god of good luck and fortune. While addressing a group of medical science practitioners in New Delhi in October 2014, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, claimed that “there must be some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”Footnote ¹⁶ Again, this argument lacks a scientific basis and is based solely on imagination.

3. Erasing histories

In 2023, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) removed Mughal history from school textbooks.Footnote ¹⁷ They also removed the event of communal riots caused by the Hindus against the Muslims in Gujarat (2002), which happened when Narendra Modi (the current Prime Minister) was the Chief Minister. The history of the Moplah Rebellion (1921) in Malabar, which was led by the Muslims against the high-caste Hindu landlords and the British colonizers, has also been erased.Footnote ¹⁸ These erasures of selective narratives involving Muslims were justified as a means of removing historical narratives associated with foreign communities.Footnote ¹⁹ Histories related to Muslims are considered foreign because the community did not originate in India.Footnote ²⁰ Since the IKS is focused on traditional Indian Knowledge Systems, there is no place for histories associated with foreign communities.

The BJP designates any narrative that does not comply with the high-caste Hindu ideologies and tarnishes their vision of Hindu nationalism as foreign.Footnote ²¹ This is why, besides erasing selective Muslim histories, the BJP also erased references to “Mahatma Gandhi’s opposition to Hindu nationalism” from the school textbooks.Footnote ²² Mahatma Gandhi was opposed to the partition of India into Pakistan and Bangladesh on religious grounds.Footnote ²³ Such a narrative is a threat to the high-caste Hindu, religiously fractured knowledge systems of the BJP. The erasures of selective histories allow the BJP to impose its cherry-picked narratives.

4. Pseudo-science as science

In 2025, in Madhya Pradesh, a group of scientists from the higher educational institutions called the Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IITI), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), the Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology (MPCST), and the Scientific Council were examining whether a yajna could purify the environment.Footnote ²⁴ Yajna is a fire ceremony during which piles of wood are burnt, prayers are chanted, and offerings—such as water, ghee, fruits, and flower petals—are offered to the fire. Vedic traditions claim that yajna wards off evil. However, these ceremonies consume large quantities of wood and pollute the environment. How can an agent of environmental pollution purify the natural environment? The scientists do not yet have an answer.

In 2017, the BJP-affiliated Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, claimed that “one can be cured of TB [tuberculosis] if he or she is near a cow. Our scientists are now certifying these facts.”Footnote ²⁵ He also claimed that cows are the only animals that inhale and exhale oxygen.Footnote ²⁶ However, when asked about the scientific basis of these claims, he was unable to provide a response, except citing this narrative as a Vedic practice.

These instances of justifying pseudo-sciences, myths, and distorted histories demonstrate how the BJP’s high-caste Hindu-centered IKS policy is based not on logic but on manipulations and imagination.

5. From IKS to PKSI

IKS has little scientific or logical grounding. The claims and impositions are motivated by high-caste imaginations and sociopolitical propaganda. It de-normalizes facts and normalizes fictions. The IKS envisions a knowledge system that solely fulfills the high-caste Hindu beliefs of the BJP through distortions and erasures. The BJP has reduced the ideas of the “Indian,” “tradition,” and “knowledge” to a set of fictitious claims and does not acknowledge the historical and scientific contributions of other castes and religions in India. Through IKS, the BJP is seeking to forge a sanitized, exclusionary knowledge-making process that is gradually turning propaganda into truth.

To counter the fraudulence of the IKS, it is essential to envision an alternative knowledge system that can redefine the idea of “Indian knowledge” beyond the high-caste Hindu sociopolitical ideologies of the BJP and encompass the historical and scientific contributions of other communities. This alternative knowledge system can be named the “Plural Knowledge Systems of India” (PKSI).

PKSI conveys the idea of Indian knowledge beyond the monopoly of the high-caste Hindu ideologies of the BJP and restructures the idea of Indian knowledge to recognize the cross-communal and cross-border interactions within India and beyond that have historically shaped India’s knowledge systems. There are two key pillars of PKSI.

First, instead of denying and erasing histories that do not fit within the high-caste Hindu ideologies, PKSI recognizes India’s history of multicommunal and cross-border knowledge systems that evolved through exchanges with different castes, religions, races, and geographies in the forms of trade, commerce, arts, culture, and education. Besides Hindus, groups including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Afro-Indians, Arab-Indians, and others have contributed to the country’s diverse linguistic, culinary, social, cultural, and communal knowledge systems.Footnote ²⁷ The sociocultural diversity that India currently demonstrates has not resulted from a single communal entity. Denying this fact is denying the country’s history. By acknowledging the communal and cultural diversity of India’s history, the idea of “India” and “Indian knowledge” can be freed from the present high-caste Hindu monopoly of the BJP and restructured on the basis of facts, diversity, and difference.

The second pillar of PKSI is that it embraces scientific thoughts over fictitious myths. India has a rich legacy of contributions across metallurgy, agriculture, medicine, and biodiversity conservation.Footnote ²⁸ India also contributed to mathematics through the decimal system, the concept of zero, algebra, and trigonometry.Footnote ²⁹ These contributions have resulted from interactions between Indian, Arab, African, and philosophers from other parts of the world. These contributions have been proven through evidence in the form of formulae, calculations, and applications. To establish a knowledge system rooted in India’s cultural and scientific traditions, these scientific facts and others need to be highlighted over fictitious myths.

From these two pillars, future policymakers can build and sustain a program for the Plural Knowledge Systems of India that prevents further damage to India’s rich educational traditions.