Our ancient education model worked at a different depth. The four puruṣārthas — dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa — held the architecture of a whole life. The five kośas mapped the human being from food to bliss. Our pedagogy was rich, diverse, intense and highly impactful in shaping the mind, body, will and character of every student. The teacher understood his role the inspirer-in-chief whose job was to light the spark of knowledge and wisdom in the student through inspiration – and through leading the students to the knowledge inside them. Aurobindo distilled the principles for our time: → Nothing can be taught → The mind must be consulted in its own growth → Work from the near to the far And Cāṇakya named the foundation everything else rests on — vinayasya mūlaṁ vṛddhopasevā. Sit at the feet of the learned and wise elders with shraddha, bhakti and vishwas and allow the transmission to take place through the bridge that is formed when the guru-shishya relationship is formed correctly. While we live in a very different world today, many principles of our ancient educational system still apply — and if implemented well, can help revive the knowledge traditions that produced the great minds and great personalities we are all so proud of. Here are Seven commitments for the IKS-inspired educator: → Activate the learner before transmitting – make the student ready to receive → Know the student before delivering the curriculum – every student is not the same! → Boil the subject to its essence – “The idea is to know that by knowing which I can know everything!” → Use story before concept – stories, if well-chosen and delivered the right way can help to bring the concept alive for the students and they can share the story with others! → Hold the room as sacred space – take time to prepare the room for transmission → Model what you teach — you cannot show them their tigerness if you are still bleating → See the divine in the student, because it is there Every change does not have to be delayed waiting for huge funds, policy changes or a big revolution. The revolutions that really matter involve quiet inner transformations in the system itself: The Teacher, The Student, The Parent, The Principal and yes, the classroom! Even better if the students can learn under trees, near a water body – in the lap of mother nature. Become the teacher you wished you had through “Creativity, Enthusiasm and Ownership.”

Thank you so much SJCE Science & Technology Entrepreneurs Park (STEP) ! I really had a fabulous time speaking to the STEP family and look forward to the next one! Thanks for all the love and engagement. 🙏🏼 And thanks to Shiva Shankar for the opportunity and to Meghana S D (Meg) for all her help and support. Harsha Shamanna Vijayanand Gurudev Great presentations by Harsha Shamanna and Pranesh . ! I was so happy to see the kind of innovations happening in my dear Mysuru and quite impressed by the kind of support that SJCE STEP is providing these entrepreneurs. And I have to say the energy in the room was amazing and quite unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere! It’s 10:10 pm and I am still getting messages from the participants. Much love to all! 🙏🏼

I had the distinct honor and privilege of curating and moderating the IKS APEX Meet 2026 at Jeppiaar University, Chennai on April 10th, 2026. The meet closed almost two weeks ago, and I am still unpacking it. One moment has stayed with me above the rest. An audience member, near the end of the day, offered the sharpest framing of the gathering: IKS is currently being inserted as a subject inside an environment designed around non-IKS principles. The question, she said, is not whether to add IKS as a credit. The question is whether the soil itself can be transformed. Now, this very idea is something that I have been writing and speaking about for some time. But I did not expect it to come from a parent! That reframing has been doing quiet work in me since. Because when I look back at what the day actually produced — the panel’s morning of Vāda and Saṃvāda across fifteen disciplines, the afternoon when students, parents, teachers, administrators, scholars and education enthusiasts spoke as equals, the lightning policy round that surfaced concrete directions on textbooks, teacher training, mother-tongue instruction, degree programs, AI-driven delivery, Centres of Excellence and cross-disciplinary integration — almost every strong idea pointed back to that same question. Changing the soil, not just the seed. The students, for their part, told us the obstacle upstream is not them; it is a parent generation asking first what a thing will earn, and a school system amplifying the question back. The parents, once given the floor, turned that picture on its head — curious, engaged, willing co-thinkers the moment they were treated as citizens rather than customers. So many new ideas came out of the day. Some will become initiatives, some partnerships, some the next conversations, and some will move to the policy level. The working map for transforming Bhāratīya education through Indian Knowledge Systems is now in hand. I look forward to connecting with kindred folks on this topic! Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gkEZ-Jeh Dr.Regeena Jeppiaar Murali Dr.Shaleesha A. Stanley Dr. BASKARAN R Dr.Kishore Sonti Dr. Binu Siva Singh S K ( Dr. S K ) Ashish Pandey Dr. Mala Kapadia Dr. Purushottam Bung – Academic Leader Dr. Yamuna Devi Central Institute of Classical Tamil Chennai Hari D K Siddhanta Knowledge Foundation Saravanan Sundaramoorthy Nrithya Jagannathan Ram Jawahar

Ten days on, I am still working through what the IKS APEX Meet 2026 surfaced. At Jeppiaar University, Chennai (10 April), I moderated a Saṃvāda between fifteen scholar-practitioners across authentic research methods, Ayurveda, classical Tamil and other classical language traditions, Indian mathematics and astronomy, patent law for Traditional Knowledge, pedagogical models for IKS revival, and IKS-led entrepreneurship; the afternoon then belonged to the room. The questions parents raised were not the ones we had anticipated: the erosion of folk and forest-dwelling knowledge before it vanishes; the spectrum between mother-tongue instruction and source-text Sanskrit study; whether IKS should stand as its own discipline or weave into the everyday classroom hour; whether it must first prove itself through visible success in industry, products and startups before becoming a viable career path; how to sustain children’s wellbeing in a system that treats them as throughput. And one audience member left me with the sharpest framing of the day — that IKS is currently being inserted as a subject inside an environment designed around non-IKS principles; the question is not whether to add IKS as a credit, but whether the soil itself can be transformed. That is where the next phase of work for Bhāratīya education begins. Full reflection in the article.