Hyderabad: Does studying and conducting research on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) a contentious idea?

Going by the Telangana Education Commission’s recent resolutions against the UGC’s Guidelines-2025 claims that it was. It finds, “The most contentious idea floated in these guidelines and followed through by allocating Rs 20,000 crore in the 2025-26 budget, is that of Indian Knowledge Systems.” Striking a presumptive note and expressing doubts on the intentions behind such allocation, it said that “While genuine documentation and continued research on the scientific knowledge that evolved indigenously in India is welcome,” however, “going by the record of this regime, existing globally competitive science and technology institutions in India will be starved of funding and obscurantist studies on astrology and Manu Smriti, and falsification of history will be encouraged in the name of Indian Knowledge Systems.”

Being an education commission, instead of acting like a professional body expected it to adhere to the academic standards of discussing in detail provision by provision the UGC guidelines-2025, weighing the pros and cons of it, the TGEC said, “it is evident that in its recent history, the UGC has become more intrusive into the governance structures beyond its mandated domain with politically motivated interventions,”

Regarding appointing the knowledge experts as the faculty at the universities, it further accused UGC and the Centre that “This strategy is to expand the catchment of ideologically compatible candidates from other fields to enter laterally into the higher education institutions, as not enough such academicians of merit are now available in the university system.”

As if not enough, it pointed out that “Already all the central universities are filled with ideological appointments bypassing academic merit, and the present changes in regulations are essentially to give legitimacy to the dubious appointments.”

Giving a conspiracy spin to the UGC Guidelines-2025 and the Centre acting as an invisible hand from behind the curtains, the TGEC claims that there have been systematic efforts to infiltrate individuals with radical communal agenda and faith in the dangerous inequitable ideology of religious prejudice at the top positions of major institutions and to “fill all new recruitments with people subscribing to the same ideology.”

The TGEC’s resolutions were endorsed, and it was signed in majority by retired professors who taught political science, sociology, and distance education from the University of Hyderabad, Osmania University, Kakatiya University, one reportedly from Zology and a retired Supreme Court Judge, besides the chairman of the TGEC and its members.

The expertise of the IKS of the signatories is not known. However, the TGEC’s political overtones in its resolution against the UGC guidelines-2025 have now come under the scanner for not acting like a professional body.

The TGEC is facing accusations of being a Marxist and leftist ideological basion none other than the MPs from the BJP and the Union Ministers, making the recent resolution of the TGEC further drawn into ruling and opposition politics.