IIT Mandi organises workshop on Indian knowledge system, mental health
India Today
The institute aims to set up an academic program on the Indian knowledge system and mental health that can benefit society. The general goal is to formalise the Indian Knowledge System as a scientific discipline.
IIT Mandi aims to provide students, academia, and practitioners with insights on empirical research pertaining to the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) and mental health. Towards this goal, the institute organised a three-day workshop on 'Indian Knowledge System (IKS) and Mental Health' from March 25 to March 27, 2022, in partnership with IIT Mandi iHub and HCI Foundation.
The workshop was sponsored by the State Bank of India, Netweb Technologies, and Hospimedical.
With the advent of leading artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) education highlights the importance and benefits of this system for the body, the mind, and the consciousness. The workshop covered talks and brainstorming on graduate curricula based on IKS, as well as different research topics related to it.
Addressing the inaugural event, Chief Guest K Sanjay Murthy, Secretary, Ministry of Education, Government of India, said, "The transformation of traditional knowledge forms into science is the need of the hour. It is essential that these knowledge systems be standardised in terms of their utility and consumption by the general population without creating any hype or unverified claims."
"I am glad that IIT Mandi has taken this step to formalise Indian Knowledge Systems as a scientific discipline."
Using bio-signals such as electroencephalograms (EEGs), brain imaging, as well as virtual reality-based immersive neuron-feedback, the programme envisioned at IIT Mandi seeks scientific innovations aimed at addressing mental health with the Indian Knowledge System. This will allow both IKS and mental health challenges to benefit from a scientific approach.
Highlighting the importance of the workshop, Professor Laxmidhar Behera, Director, IIT Mandi, emphasised that the very foundation of the Indian Knowledge System was built on the hypothesis that matter in its elementary (subtle) form is cognitive and thus cognitive emotion and behavior are not emergent properties of any complex molecular combinations.
