AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): In recent years, the concept of the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) has gained unprecedented institutional legitimacy in India’s education sector. It has been incorporated into university curricula, supported through government funding, and promoted as a corrective to colonial epistemic dominance. The stated goal of IKS is to revive indigenous modes of knowledge production and “decolonize” India’s education system. However, growing scrutiny shows the project faces serious criticism over how “Indian knowledge” is defined and who gets to define it.
According to analysts, the official discourse of the Indian Knowledge System often frames Indian knowledge through categories such as “ancient,” “traditional,” and implicitly or explicitly “Hindu.” This approach carries far-reaching consequences. By equating “Indian” with “Hindu,” centuries of Muslim intellectual, scientific, administrative, and cultural contributions to the subcontinent are either ignored or portrayed as external impositions. Within this narrative, Islam is treated not as a constitutive element of Indian civilization, but as a historical “interruption.”
A review of IKS syllabi and official resources shows dominance of subjects such as Vedic mathematics, Ayurveda, Sanskrit grammar, Dharmaśāstra, and ancient Hindu cosmology. While these traditions form part of India’s intellectual history, their exclusive elevation as “Indian knowledge” erases the layered and plural character of the subcontinent’s epistemic heritage. Largely absent are Persian and Arabic works, Mughal administrative texts, and Indo-Islamic architectural theory, knowledge systems that continue to shape parts of India today.
Architecture has not been immune to this selectivity. The Deccan sultanates produced a rich body of engineering and urban knowledge that blended Persian aesthetics, Central Asian engineering, and local traditions. Monuments such as Gol Gumbaz, Charminar, and Bidar Fort are not merely historical sites; they embody advanced expertise in acoustics, water management, urban planning, and structural design. Yet in IKS discourse, architecture is mainly examined through Hindu temples, Vastu Shastra, and sacred geometry, while Islamic architecture is pushed to the margins of artistic and technical study.
A similar pattern appears in governance. The Delhi Sultanate and Mughal administrations developed sophisticated systems of taxation, land registration, record-keeping, and bureaucracy. Texts such as the Ain-i-Akbari represent advanced political and economic thought. Nevertheless, IKS programs often leap from ancient Hindu polities directly to the colonial period, effectively bypassing centuries of Muslim rule and institutional development.
Critics stress that the problem is not the study of Hindu traditions, but the exclusive definition of “Indian knowledge” through them. Such a definition reduces Islamic contributions to “foreign influence” and constructs a binary that, rather than decolonizing knowledge, resembles British colonial historiography, now repurposed to serve majoritarian nationalism.
From the analysts’ perspective, pre-modern India was always a site of linguistic and intellectual exchange. Knowledge was produced in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Persian, Arabic, and Urdu, and these traditions evolved through interaction. Limiting Indian knowledge to a single religious or linguistic identity distorts the historical reality of knowledge production in the subcontinent.
The removal of Islamic traditions from the Indian Knowledge System also raises political questions: who benefits from this selective redefinition? Critics argue that IKS has become an institution that determines the legitimacy of knowledge while marginalizing certain heritages, a process that both distorts history and impoverishes how new generations understand India’s intellectual legacy.
According to the authors of this analysis, if the Indian Knowledge System truly seeks decolonization, it must first confront its internal exclusions. A genuinely non-colonial curriculum must acknowledge that Islam in India functioned as an intellectual force in science, medicine, architecture, language, and governance. Otherwise, one form of epistemic dominance is merely replaced with another.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether Islam has a place in the Indian Knowledge System, but whether the system is willing to accept India as it has been and remains, a plural, intertwined, and complex society. Knowledge grows through exchange and synergy, and any attempt to impose religious boundaries on it risks turning a dynamic past into an ideological project.
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