Overview

• Vice-President Dhankhar traced major disruptions in Indian Knowledge Systems to Islamic invasions and British colonisation that shifted universities from producing thinkers to clerical staff.
• He proposed creating open digital repositories of Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali and Prakrit manuscripts to ensure global access to India’s classical texts.
• Dhankhar urged interdisciplinary training programs blending philology, computational analysis, ethnography and comparative inquiry for the next generation of IKS scholars.
• JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit stressed that higher education institutions must cultivate narrative power to support India’s political and cultural objectives.
• Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal highlighted the rising international recognition of Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic philosophy as strategic tools of India’s cultural diplomacy.