Indian Knowledge Systems: The Idea of ‘Unity’ in Diversity

The course examines a profoundly important question that has vexed political scientist and international relations scholars for many decades, namely, how is India able to remain as ‘one’ nation, despite its enormous diversity at so many levels. In other words, the course digs deeper into the ‘unity’ aspect of the ‘unity in diversity’ of India. The course establishes that the reason behind this unexplained cohesiveness of Bharat, despite the multitudes of diverse lifestyles is explained by the common jeevan darshana (loosely translated as life’s philosophy) that Indians practice in their lives. This is further viewed through the gyan parampara and laukik prayojana of these philosophies. We dwell on five (out of many) such philosophies, namely, (a) relationship with nature, (b) families and communities, (c) learning methods, (d) arts and craft traditions, and (e) local governance. The pedagogy of the course will be illustrative in nature, done through a comprehensive case-study based mapping of regions of India.

Syllabus

Yugank is Professor – Public Policy at FLAME University. He is the founder director ofCentre for Knowledge Alternativesat the University,where he is developing large-scale documentation of district-level statistics and cultures across India.

His research interests include regulation, law and development, institutional economics, knowledge systems, informal markets and psephology. His research has been published in high-impact journals. He is also a reviewer in several of them. He also regularly contributes to national dailies and other popular fora as well.

He enjoys teaching interdisciplinary subjects, including public policy, new institutional economics, law and economics, futures studies and ethics.

Yugank engages with the government on public policy issues regularly. He is Member, National Education Policy (NEP) Steering Committee, government of Maharashtra, Regional Advisory Council Member, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, government of India, and Consultant, Procurement Research Cell, AJ National Institute of Financial Management. He sits on the academic board of the Indian School of Public Policy, which he helped set up. Recently, he also co-founded a philanthropic, crowdfunded school in rural, western UP.