REIMAGINING PEDAGOGY: WEAVING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE INTO THE FABRIC OF NEP 2020

Abstract

This paper critically examines the integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) within India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, arguing that the policy’s decolonial aspirations remain largely performative. While NEP 2020 advocates for reclaiming Indian epistemologies—such as tribal medicine, oral traditions, and Vedic mathematics—it does so through a Eurocentric lens that fails to disrupt entrenched colonial knowledge hierarchies. The study reveals how IKS is reduced to curricular ornamentation rather than being recognized as a sovereign, relational, and community-based system of knowledge. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial theorists such as Spivak, Mignolo, and Ambedkar, this research critiques the epistemic violence masked by the language of inclusion and diversity. Employing a tripartite dialectical methodology—comprising genealogical analysis, contrapuntal reading, and utopic-dystopic tension mapping—the paper interrogates the policy's structural contradictions.