Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

Exploring the Materiality of Indian Knowledge Systems: Ayurveda, Artisans and Tribal Initiatives

May 5, 2025, 12:15-2:00pm
HKS, Wexner 434-A

Abstract

This talk is an intervention in an aspect of the dominant narrative in India today. This narrative emphasizes the superiority of Indian Knowledge Systems stemming from the philosophy of the textual traditions, claiming to pre-empt modern knowledges, and thereby a superiority to it.  From my study of Ayurveda and drawing from a host of studies on other ‘traditional’ knowledge systems, I argue that the significance of these knowledges lies in their practices over time, including when they negotiated with modern knowledges. These practices, and by them I mean mainly the systems of production based on these knowledges, are ecologically embedded, while drawing upon a common epistemology. While they owe allegiance to texts, they are adaptive and dynamic over time, which is what actually makes them relevant for today. Further, in the light of the planetary polycrisis, I argue that they offer concrete alternatives as models of sustainable production systems, possibly their greatest value.

About the speaker

Madhulika Banerjee teaches Political Science at the University of Delhi. She published Power, Knowledge, Medicine: Ayurvedic Pharmaceuticals at home and in the World in 2009 and has written extensively on Ayurveda since then, both in peer-reviewed journals and the popular media, been on fellowships at different institutions overseas, most recently at The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany and active in international academic collaborative projects with colleagues from France and Brazil. She has also published ‘The Herbal Sutra’, a book of Indian herbs for the contemporary with Roli books in 2023. She has watched and learned from those involved with active politics on the ground—mainly in social movements, believing that knowledge should be co-produced with those in practice. Her current focus is on how the experience of ‘pluriversal knowledges’ with modernity, offers a fresh framework for responses to the climate crisis.