Prayagraj, 12 Sept (HS): Speaking on the concluding day of

the two-day International Seminar on Indigenous Knowledge Traditions (September

11-12, 2026) held at Ishwar Sharan PG College, Prayagraj, Prof. Shweta Prasad,

Member of the Executive Council of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and

Chairperson of the Department of Sociology, stated that reviving indigenous

knowledge is not an exercise in historical nostalgia, but an imperative for

sustainable development, ecological survival, and social justice. She stated

that India's academic world needs to engage with indigenous peoples at the

level of their lives, cultures, and values to rediscover indigenous knowledge

systems. This work has grown rapidly in the fields of social sciences and

humanities in recent years.

Speaking at the closing session, Prof. Yogendra Pratap

Singh, Director, Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Social Sciences, said that

the Indian knowledge tradition is actually the indigenous or indigenous

knowledge tradition, and the vision of the National Education Policy 2020

includes that the indigenous knowledge tradition and its creation should be

made a part of the education system, curriculum and pedagogy.

Delivering the presidential address at the closing session,

College Principal Professor Anand Shankar Singh raised the question, Can

we revive indigenous knowledge traditions using government databases,

university libraries and laboratories, or modern technologies? The answer

is no. He outlined the way forward, asking, How will this

revival happen? To do so, we must go back to the very ground where it

originated, where it is preserved, the language in which it was named, and the

communities that are accustomed to living with it.

But we have to transfer this knowledge tradition into the

hands of those young people who, instead of transforming it exactly, should

recreate it by making slight modifications as per the times and needs; this is

actually the revival of indigenous knowledge.

On the second day of the seminar, the first plenary session

was chaired by R. Shiva Prasad, former Professor, Department of Anthropology,

University of Hyderabad. Professor B.K. Nagla, Professor of Sociology, MD

University, Rohtak, and Professor S.N. Chaudhary, former Tagore National Fellow

and a renowned sociologist of the country, gave their research and scholarly

presentations on indigenous knowledge traditions, sustainable development and

environmental heritage.

The third plenary session of the seminar was chaired by

Prof. Manish Kumar Verma, former Dean, Ambedkar School of Social Sciences, Baba

Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, in which Prof. Pramod Kumar Shukla, Indian

Council of Sociology, Dr. Sumit Saurabh Srivastava, Associate Professor, Centre

for Development Studies, Allahabad University, Dr. Manish Mishra, Senior

Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, and Dr. Umesh Chandra,

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Allahabad University enriched the

seminar with their research interventions on decolonization of knowledge

traditions.

On the second day of the seminar, the online international

plenary session was chaired by Associate Professor Man Bahadur Khatri,

Department of Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, in which Prof.

Elisabetta Marino, Department of English, University of Rome, Dr. Sayan Dey,

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bayan College, Oman, and Dr.

Priyanka Dutta, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Mount Carmel

College, Bengaluru, made academic contributions to the seminar with their

research papers.

The second online international plenary session was chaired

by Professor Diana J. Fox of the Department of Anthropology, Bridgewater State

University, USA, and featured Dr. Eugenia Flynn, Assistant Professor,

Department of Languages, Monash University, Australia, Flix Padel, an academic

from the UK, and Professor Andrew Davis, Director of the Edward Cadbury Centre,

University of Birmingham, on the datafication of living knowledge traditions,

Aboriginal literature, and patterns of development.

On the final day of the seminar, social scientists and

researchers from across the country presented a total of 150 research papers in

two parallel technical sessions. Rawat Publications of Jaipur, Lokbharati and

Rajkamal Publications of Allahabad, and Samvad Publications of Meerut also

organized exhibitions of research and reference books in the fields of

literature and social sciences.

On this occasion, Dr. Ankit Pathak, Assistant Professor in

the Department of Political Science, presented a brief report on the two-day

international seminar. He reported that a total of 700 research papers were

presented online and offline during these two days. The closing session was

moderated by Dr. Ragini Rai, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ancient

History, Culture, and Archaeology. The vote of thanks was delivered by Dr.

Vikas Kumar, Coordinator of the Seminar, Coordinator of the Center for Tribal

Studies, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology.

Hindusthan Samachar / Abhishek Awasthi