Virtual Learning Environments for Indian Knowledge Traditions: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This paper is about the urgent need for digital preservation and dissemination of rich cultural heritages like those known under Indian Knowledge Traditions (IKTs). Invention of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) totally inspired by the IKTs can be instrumental in addressing the issues in preserving, disseminating and educating on the intricacies of such knowledges. With this kind of invention, the world at large can expose themselves to the treasures in IKTs. Foundational principles of virtual learning environments as such are proposed as outcomes of a well-acquainted four-year scholarly engagement on the domain. A myriad of opportunities are present along with the insurmountable challenges therein. This perpetual blending of the ancient with the modern will ensure that ancient systems will survive in the information era. This paper is to prepare that blending.

Rulers, historians, missioners and colonialists neglected and denigrated the education and knowledge systems of the native by terming them under labels like baseless, heathen or indigenous. Though potent systems like Vedas, Shastras, Upanishads, Samhitas, Puranas and Itihasas curated vast, complex and highly cherished knowledges for centuries nurturing a huge population, after the colonial expansion, statutes have been imposed under expedition, and rebuff, gradually the erosion, of these knowledges occurred under the establishments of the English schooling system. Thus, a vast system of educational tradition was exterminated in the relative blink of an eye (Abeldina et al., 2015).