Dharampal School of Svayambodha
Built on Dharampal's archival discoveries about pre-colonial India, this school argues that Svayambodha - self-knowledge grounded in India's actual historical capacities - is the precondition for any viable Indian future, not a romantic luxury.
A school of thought which emerged after India’s independence was the Dharampal School of Thought. It built upon the Gandhian ideas of education and has contributed greatly to India’s public discourse. Gandhi was a great critique of the British and their institutions. Particularly in education he had remarked that how India had a vibrant education system and how the British uprooted and supplanted it with a system which has been eroding Indian’s Knowledge Tradition ever since.
Shri Dharampal, inspired with this vision of Gandhi, created a vast body of literature which analyzed how India’s education used to be before the British messed it up. However this school did not remain confined to the field of education. A lot of other scholars started seeing the same pattern of the destruction of indigenous and vernacular practices during the British colonial times and have published studies in the field of medicine, water conservation etc., illuminating upon the indigenous systems which were conducive to India’s culture and were also sensitive to ecology.
This school is extremely important for Bodha because it talks about not just the pathologies of the modern knowledge systems but also builds upon the Indian Knowledge Systems that work and which are still relevant to creating a Nature-conducive culture and culture-conducive policy. If the Voice of India school gives us a good Shatrubodh to defend ourselves against external attacks, the Dharampal School gives us a good Swayambodha in socio-cultural arena to let us build upon our core cultural strengths.
