How are indigenous knowledge systems (worldviews, concepts, practices) relevant to today's global crises? what traditions continue, or are being revived, that provide answers to issues of ecological destruction, inequity and inequality, injustice, hunger, poverty? What challenges do they face? How can they be disembodied from traditional oppressions of gender, caste, etc? Online presentation to Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University, India, 12.7.2020.

1. Indigenous Knowledge & Heritage
Relevance for a Just, Sustainable, Equitable World
Ashish Kothari
Kalpavriksh / Vikalp Sangam /
Global Tapestry of Alternatives

2. Some propositions
• Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) ranges across all
human life and activity
• IKS are both tangible and intangible, and latter may be
even more important
• Without building on IKS, ‘development’, technology,
education are impoverished, even regressive
• IKS is directly linked to socio-cultural, political,
economic aspects of life (and so has both progressive
and regressive aspects)
• IKS remains as relevant today as it was then … if not
more, in the times of COVID

3. Rich, complex knowledge systems &
practices as heritage
Tangible
• Agriculture: farming, pastoralism, fisheries, forestry
• Water harvesting and use
• Food, health/medicine
• Crafts/arts: from items of daily use to decorative, or sacred / festive
uses
• Technological products
• Building, settlements
Intangible
• Cultural forms: music, dance, folklore, theatre, etc
• Languages
• Relations with each other & rest of nature
• Systems of governance & management of environment
• Cosmological, spiritual worldviews

4. Several thousand years of living with nature
Traditionally, complex ways of knowing and using
diversity of crops, livestock, fish, forest species, etc
India’s agricultural heritage

5. Indias agricultural biodiversity
– Diversification within crops, e.g.
• Rice: 50,000 - 300,000 varieties
• Mango: >1000 varieties
• Sorghum: >5000 varieties
– Diversification within livestock, e.g.
• 26 cattle breeds
• 40 sheep breeds
• 18 poultry breeds
• at least 35 dog breeds

6. WHY / HOW THIS DIVERSITY?
Deliberate selection and adaptation by
farmers and pastoralists:
*resilience / buffer against disaster
*diverse needs (food, medicine,
cultural)

7. Colonial and post-colonial imposition of homogenous ‘modernity’,
uniform ‘developmentality’, & denigration of traditions / ‘primitive’
Redefinition of who is an ‘expert’, what it is to be ‘skilled’
Cultural homogenisation
• Agriculture: ‘Green / White / Blue revolution’ models of
monoculture
• Crafts: displacement by mass industrial production, denigration
of non-uniformity as ‘blemishes’, decline of local exchanges and
patronage
• Building/architecture: ‘kachha-pucca’ distinction, takeover by
cement-concrete
• Sidelining of intangible (esp. folk) heritage, e.g. languages
Result: severe crisis of livelihoods, self-confidence, self-esteem in
several hundred million people, loss of knowledge, languages
Destruction of India’s IKH

8. Dominant vision of ‘development’
Violence against nature, communities,
and cultures … growth as cancer

9. Violence against each of us: our identity, our health, our well-being!
Livelihoods to Deadlihoods
Illustrator unknown

10. Can indigenous knowledge become
relevant again?

11. Resistance …
(to capitalism, state domination, patriarchy, communalism,
etc)
… is part of the
alternative

12. Assertion of self-determination
& different ways of life,
recognition of the unrecognised
Dongria Kondh indigenous
people vs. Vedanta corporation
& Indian state
(customary vs. statutory law?)

13. India: alternative initiatives for well-being
Water
Crafts
Shelter
Food
Energy
Governance
Livelihoods
Conservation
Village revitalisation
Urban sustainability
Learning
Health
Producer
companies
Gender

14. •Empowering dalit women farmers, through collectives
•Securing women’s land rights
•Reviving traditional agricultural diversity / practices (millets)
•Creating community grain banks
Deccan Development Society: conservation,
equity, food sovereignty, livelihood security

15. Asserting IKS as proud heritage
Nadimidoddi Vinodamma
Fully self-sufficient on 3 acres of drylang
Seeds & earth as sacred
Agriculture as ‘culture’, not only material

16. Dharani: farmer’s company
(facilitated by Timbaktu Collective)
Greater market access, better prices, all organic, relations
with consumers

17. Kachchh
Water self-sufficiency in one of
India’s lowest rainfall regions
Knowledge transfer to parageohydrologists

18. Livelihood revival with hybrid
knowledge
“The loom is my computer”: Prakash
Vankar, Bhujodi village
Sheetal Hiteshbhai, Siracha village

19. Maati Sangathan, Uttarakhand (India): Women’s
empowerment through livelihoods based on natural / cultural heritage

20. Mahagram Sabha, Gadchiroli
(Mah): adivasi self-rule
• Federation of 90 villages
• Aims: sustainable livelihoods,
forest rights & conservation,
local governance built on
traditional decision-making,
women’s empowerment,
adivasi cultural identity

21. Informed decisions
through monitoring, and
regular study circles
(abhyas gat)
All decisions in gram
sabha (village assembly)
only

“Our government in Mumbai and Delhi,
we are the government in our village”
Innovations in traditional governance: Mendha-
Lekha, Gadchiroli (Mah)

22. Learning / education: re-locating it in community,
ecological roots, creativity, inquisitiveness …
•Adharshila, MP
•Jeevanshala, Narmada
•SECMOL, Ladakh
•Imlee-Mahua, Chhattisgarh
•Marudam, Tamil Nadu
•Adivasi Academy, Guj
•Swaraj University, Rajasthan
•Beeja Vidyapeeth, Uttarakhand
•Bhoomi College, Karnataka
•Karigarshala, Surshala, etc: Kachchh
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Skhole = leisure!

23. Technology by/for/with/of people
Technological innovations to reduce ecological impact,
governed democratically … built on traditional systems
(malkha cotton weaving, AP; Hunnarshala housing,
Kachchh, earthen refrigerators)

24. Alternative Media, Communications, Arts
Freedom from govt & corporate control:
•Community radio (>150); FM?
•Mobile-based (CGNetSwara, Chhattisgarh)
•Movement newsletters, folk theatre
•Film/video (Video Volunteers)
•Internet (Scroll, Wire, Infochange, India Together …)
•‘Social’ networks … virtual communities
Pic: Puroshottam Thakur

25. Gram swaraj (village self-rule) & rural
revitalisation:
outmigration is not inevitable
Ralegan Siddhi & Hivare Bazaar (Maharashtra), Kunariya
(Kachchh), Kuthambakkam (TN), Kudumbashree (Kerala)

26. Challenges …
• IKS are deeply connected to social, economic, political
systems … including caste, gender, other inequities … how
to disembed from such inequities?
• IKH are subject to co-optation & hijacking by regressive
forces, e.g. religious right-wing
• Continued attack by dominant ‘developmentality’ and
western ‘modernity’
• How can ‘folk’ and ‘classical’ binary be dissolved?
• How can ‘hybrid’ systems of IKS and non-IKS be well-
balanced?
• How can IKS become inspirational and relevant for youth?
• How can IKS be part of all forms of education?

27. Ecological resilience &
wisdom
(rights of nature, conservation,
ecocentric worldviews)
Radical democracy / swaraj
(direct citizens’ power, accountable
representative institutions, borderless
world)
Economic democracy:
Earthshastra
(producer sovereignty, localised
self-reliance, caring/sharing,
commons)
Social justice & wellbeing
(justice, equity of genders, ethnicities,
castes …)
Culture & knowledge
diversity
(new learning, knowledge
commons, celebrating
creativity, spiritual / ethical
deepening)
Towards a sustainable and equitable society
5 interconnected, integrated spheres
VALUES

28. • Diversity and pluralism (of ideas, knowledge, ecologies, economies,
ideologies, polities, cultures…)
• Self-reliance for basic needs (swavalamban)
• Self-governance / autonomy (swashasan / swaraj)
• Cooperation, collectivity, solidarity, commons
• Rights with responsibilities of meaningful participation
• Dignity & creativity of labour (shram)
• Qualitative pursuit of happiness
• Equity / justice / inclusion (sarvodaya)
• Simplicity / sufficiency / enoughness (aparigraha)
• Rights of nature / respect for all life forms
• Non-violence, peace, harmony (ahimsa)
• Subsidiarity & ecoregionalism
• Fun!!!
Worldviews that celebrate life
Values & principles of
transformative alternatives ….

29. Vikalp Sangams (Alternatives Confluences):
practical collaborations, bottom-up visioning

30. COVID/post-COVID: Vikalp Sutra
Networking to generate/sustain:
• Dignified livelihoods in traditional & new sectors
• Rights and security of workers
• Alternative economies of self-reliance, circularity,
localisation, caring/sharing
IKS can be crucial part of achieving more just,
equitable, sustainable livelihoods

31. www.vikalpsangam.org