February 2, 2022
IIT Kharagpur’s 2022 calendar – ‘Recovery of the Foundations of Indian Knowledge systems’
The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur’s 2022 calendar titled ‘Recovery of the Foundations of Indian Knowledge systems’ has kindled a new spark among historians and media all across the world. Prof. Joy Sen, who is to be credited for bringing forth such deep insight into the Vedic Knowledge and Arya Sanskriti claims that this is just the “tip of the Iceberg” and the larger, bigger and deeper science of Indian roots is still to be uncovered. Prof. Sen is the chairperson of the IIT Kharagpur’s Centre of Excellence for Indian Knowledge Systems and a professor of the department of architecture and regional planning. The calendar also put light on the “Recognition of the Secrets of Vedas”, “Reinterpretation of the Indus Valley Civilization” and “Rebuttal to the Aryan invasion myth”. Here is an exclusive interview of Prof. Joy Sen by Lavanya, the associate news editor.
Lavanya: Prof. Sen, my very first question is, why did you choose to work on this calendar, considering that not many are willing to accept the Indian knowledge systems?
Prof. Joy Sen: At any point of time in history, there are always a few things which are not accepted by the present situation you know, we are ordinary people but I am giving you some examples, say when Galileo was talking about the heliocentric and geocentric theory, the science that existed in Europe then, they were not ready to accept him but today it’s normal science. When Buddha was talking about reformations during his time, he faced huge opposition. Even when Swami Vivekananda went to the west and finally, he came back, he faced opposition from his own people and a lot of people said that he was not representing the mainstream faith but today, we have National Youth Day in his name. So, there is always a time. The Indian knowledge system is a new term but it has always existed in different disguises like in Indological studies and Indic studies. This term was basically invented by Professor Kapil Kapoor of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. I know him very closely, a very nice professor with a lot of background. So, at the end of the day, I got inspiration from my grandmother, she worked with Indian freedom fighters like Surya Sen and was really close to Netaji. So, I got the training from my grandmother to look from a much larger perspective and think a little ahead of whatever time we exist in. I think the Indian knowledge system is a turning point of the Indian education system but the education system that we have inherited from the past is based on the colonial hangover, you know a colonial mindset that roughly has three divisions and one is the westernised paradigm. I am a Bengali you know, there is no other race in India who are more Westernised than Bengalis are, in fact, the maximum protest come from Bengalis because they are both westernized and also believers of the left-wing you know the socialist wing and under social secularism which has been in our country since 1947, where you believe in a secular faith and you deny the gnostic foundations of India, you defy its ancient past and whatever is good, has come from the west and whatever is magical and superstitious that is all India’s past. So, you are taught that kind of thing right from day one. That is why it’s a discomfort to many people in the country. I gave you the examples of Buddha, Swamiji, Galileo those are very big people, we’re just ordinary people. So that is why I chose things in that fashion because it’s a turning point. There’s a famous book by Prof. Fritjof Capra ‘The Turning Point’. If you look at the world today, you have the climate crisis, you have the economic crisis, you have the geopolitical crisis, you have a cultural crisis in young boys and girls. They have hypertension, they have sugar because of the westernized materialistic consumption patterns, food habits, nightlife, getting up pretty late and all these kinds of things. So, there is a crisis that is not small, it is not even large, it is huge worldwide. So, the Indian knowledge system is a system that will impart values in living, it will impart much bigger liability to live and recover the greenways of consumption and production. For the west, it’s an invention it’s a new thing but for India, it’s a recovery, it’s a Discovery.
Lavanya: When myths have been fed to the young Minds for decades, why didn’t academicians pay any heed to this?
Prof. Joy Sen: Because there are two reasons for this, one is the blame which you can easily put on the colonial rulers. The main change was actually brought into India by Thomas Babington Macaulay. He went back to the Parliament and said we have to impose a colonial system of education into India and you have to change the mindset of Indians, he was very successful because he was followed by great people, one of them was Randolph Churchill, who came to India in the early 19th century and he almost suppressed and stopped all the indigenous and educational system of India and all the tools and pathshalas and the Sanskrit Institutions and everything. In its place, he imposed a missionary system of education. If you read the book ‘The Case of India’ by Will Durant, the famous historian, he was absolutely shocked by the way the British were plundering and destroying the Indian education system and it is quite evident in his book. There is also another book by Jon E. Wilson written by a British, against the British. The name of the book is ‘India Conquered’. If you look at the last chapter it is called ‘Delusion’ they are saying that during 1942-47, the Britishers are leaving India, with the Indians left in a state of delusion so that they are ‘na ghar ka na ghaat ka’ they are not good as being Indians and just imitating the west without the capability of becoming a good westernized mind. British divided India, the two river valley civilizations which are Indus, divides Punjab and Sindh and also Bengal splits with an intention that even after a few decades of partition, India is not able to rise and become one unified continent. So, in this background our academicians have been groomed in the last 150 years, they have been fed with three Paradigms of westernisation, secular socialism and the leftist agnostic principle of education. These three are fairly different things but they have one thing in common, which is defying India’s past. If you come to mathematics, the language of science which is mathematics is actually from India. I mean the concept of zero and one the ‘shunya and advaitam’, the ‘dasam’, decimal system is mentioned in the Rigveda. In the 10 chapters of the Rig Veda, every Sutra is in the composition of 10, analytical description of the Surya Mandal moving in 10th position and going up to the 11th and 12th. So, India gave the world idea of zero and one, and the Arabic scholars in the ninth century took that through Alexandria to Europe. Islamic civilization in Europe was very advanced when compared to the Christian civilization. It was only in 1493, after the fall of Granada, the Islamic c utilization, the Córdoba Emirate had collapsed, and the French Carolingian Empire came up and that is the time when Indian textbooks were being translated into Latin by the Arabic scholars. Until about the 15th century, Europe did not have a single book of mathematics. What I’m saying is actually there in Bertrand Russell’s book. So, in that book, I think in the 15th or 16thchapter, there is one whole page where he mentioned that what the west thinks is western mathematics, everything originates from India and the entire number system is actually from India. These things are suppressed and never really shown. So, the Indian academicians didn’t get the national confidence to get back to the roots. These things were actually portrayed in last year’s calendar, which also made some noise but this year’s calendar is exceptional. It has become global.
Lavanya: What impact do you think the colonisation and Germans make on the whole Aryan invasion theory and Vedic history?
Prof. Joy Sen: Arya is not about race, it’s not by genetics, it is by the quality of mind. The colonial rulers corrupted the definition of Arya and gave them a racial genetic theory, which was propagated by Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton and one of his Successors Karl Pearson. They really distorted this theory with the Germans and that was transferred to Max Muller. Around 1933-35 Heinrich Himmler, the left-hand side of Adolf Hitler, changed and corrupted it further to create the super ‘Aryan German race theory’. And that led to the Second World War, in the name of who is an Aryan and who is not an Aryan, in the name of genetics, in the name of race and all that. Whereas in Vedas, there is not a single line that explains the Arya by race. It is always by the quality of Mind, by the depth of meditation and the penetration of what you call yoga. The Spiritual documents of India were misinterpreted by the material people from the west. Suppose the Aryans had come from outside, they had no idea about all these things so they came to India and they became Aryans, which means the credit goes to India, the Indian climate, the Indian soil and the Indian ecosystem. This area was called Eugenics, there are journals like the ‘Annals of Eugenics and Heredity’ which were published in 1900-1930. This is called scientific racism. You know after the Nuremberg trial, the German Killers were put to trial by the Americans, after that the reports on Eugenics were put on fire and everything was put aside. The different halls and buildings which were named after Karl Pearson and Francis Galton and Charles Darwin in different colleges like Imperial College of Science and Technology were all removed because they represented a racial bias and epithet. The Europeans used that idea to sell the old wine of the Aryan invasion myth in a new bottle. They used the very idea that they had demolished, for their own benefit. It’s like I make a law and then, for my own benefit, I break the law.
Lavanya: Even after bringing such crucial facts to light, why do you think this calendar is receiving backlash from the media and the people of our own country?
Prof. Joy Sen: The British have created a western paradigm through missionary education. I am not against missionary education because I got my master’s degree in the West. A lot of my friends are Christian and they are wonderful people. The point is, it cannot be one-way traffic from the west to the East, that traffic from east to west flow of culture needs to be recognised as well. The British were not like that about 150 years back, they were colonial, Imperial and aggressive. They created a movement that disillusioned the Indians and because the Indians were devoid from their past and the entire education system was stopped, that came from history, heritage and cultural continuity. What happened between 1920-30, the flow of Russian impact which is communism, essentially Russian Communism, which is Industrial and then the Waves from China, and finally from Vietnam, it came into India and two States was largely influenced by that, one in Kerala and the other is Bengal and at that point of time, Bengal and Kerala both were like the two fountain heads. After a few generations, they slowly became a certain kind of people who created this secular socialism like the campus of JNU the blocks of Romila Thapar. That is how the Indians got disconnected from their own continuity, their own National Pride, religion and spirituality. There is a whole generation of Indians who do not believe in India but they believe in the west. However, scholars from universities like Oxford, Princeton and Cambridge, are extending their support to the calendar.
Lavanya: How do you suggest the research Scholars can re-establish the faith in the Indian knowledge systems and Science?
Prof. Joy Sen: That’s a very profound question because for the Indian knowledge system, you can make a centre and you can run some courses, you can give students a lot of facts and figures but that’s not going to make a lot of difference. Why is it not going to make a lot of difference? The answer is simple because the essential foundations of Indian knowledge systems are not just intellectual and ethical but also spiritual. The people who are teaching Indian knowledge systems subjects like Ganith, Arthashashtra, Vastu Vidya, Parivesh vidya, themselves have to be trained in a particular way of thinking, they must have a connection with the Gurus and the Brahm Rishis. Or at least be aware of them. Otherwise, it’ll just be bookish and become boring for the students. But if you tell them ‘one’ is advaitam, it is akhandam, you explain the summation through matrix and shunya is like a Cypher, which is like a circle and everything is within that ‘Akhandamandalakaaram vyaptam yen characharam’, it’s the shape of zero which is interconnected and is holding the whole cosmos, you see how things can easily be me made interesting. Classes have to be taught in such depths of geometry, realisation, shape grammar and then mathematical. Only then students will get interested. If you just go to the blackboard and draw something, after some time the Indian knowledge systems will fail. It has to come from that depth and level of understanding. Indian knowledge systems are actually a vision. In the words of Gandhiji, “you be the change you want to see in others”. To be a teacher of Indian knowledge systems, one needs to be that person in ethics, values, understanding and empathy.