REIMAGINING INDIAN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS THROUGH SUBALTERN EPISTEMOLOGIES: TOWARDS A DEMOCRATIC, INCLUSIVE, AND CONTEXTUAL CURRICULUM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

Abstract [English]

The contemporary resurgence of interest in Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), particularly following the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has generated extensive academic discourse concerning the role of indigenous epistemologies in curriculum transformation within India. Nevertheless, dominant institutional interpretations of IKS continue to privilege Sanskritic and elite-centered intellectual traditions while marginalizing the epistemic contributions of Dalit–Bahujan, Adivasi, nomadic, minority, laboring, and other subaltern communities. Such exclusions reproduce historical hierarchies of knowledge and reinforce structures of epistemic inequality embedded within Indian society (Guru, 2021; Rege, 2018). This article critically interrogates the integration of Indian Knowledge Systems into contemporary educational frameworks through the analytical lenses of Dalit–Bahujan thought, subaltern historiography, constitutional morality, and critical pedagogy. Drawing upon the writings of B. R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, Paulo Freire, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Sharmila Rege, and Gail Omvedt, the paper argues that educational reform must transcend civilizational glorification and instead cultivate emancipatory, pluralistic, and socially accountable pedagogical frameworks. Contemporary curriculum discourse must therefore acknowledge indigenous ecological wisdom, labor-centered epistemologies, oral traditions, folk knowledge systems, multilingual pedagogies, and anti-caste intellectual traditions as foundational rather than supplementary domains of knowledge production (Omvedt, 2021; Ilaiah Shepherd, 2022). The article further examines the tensions between cultural nationalism and epistemic democracy, emphasizing that meaningful integration of IKS requires critical engagement with caste, gender, labor, and power relations. It contends that democratizing curriculum through Dalit–Bahujan and subaltern perspectives can contribute toward cultivating critical consciousness, constitutional ethics, ecological sustainability, and social justice within contemporary Indian education (Freire, 2021; Kumaravadivelu, 2023).