COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE: PUBLICATION PROJECT

PUBLICATION PROJECT FOR COMPILING BOOK-SERIES ON

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Objectives:

The purpose of this project is to compile, edit, reproduce and translate texts and other source materials, including studies, related to various indigenous/traditional knowledge practices in South India. It is to make a creative critical intervention in the indifferent attitude that prevails among scholars and the general public, towards traditional knowledge practices, and thereby generate discourses and public interest conducive for enlivening, retrieving, and upgrading them, which have already been strained in various ways.

Definition:

The community knowledge signifies those ideas and skills that are embedded in different living or livelihood practices of the community of people. 

Community knowledge, as a contrast to the institutionalized formal knowledge embodies collective ownership that has been shared by generations of people through the process of adapting and modifying according to the requirements of conditions of life and its survival. Community knowledge and cultural practices seem to have been battling for their survival in the context of the fast-growing process of urbanization. Many of these forms have already become extinct, and many of them remain gasping for their last breath.  Despite the tyranny of modern science and its validation process against community knowledge traditions, there is a growing awareness of their potentiality for the creation of a sustainable and peaceful social living.

Areas of knowledge:

  Following are some of the broad areas and subjects of knowledge, in which specific materials have already been identified. Kalarividya, Marmachikilsa, Siddha vaidyam, Nattuvaidyam, Spiritual and ritual practices, Alchemy, Metallurgy, Farming, Dietary, pharmacology, Health care and healing practices, Architecture, Agriculture, arts and festivals.

Nature of the work involved:

 Identification of practitioners and documentation of community knowledge, collection of manuscripts, preparing critical edition of works, translations from different languages to the Malayalam, and if possible, other South Indian languages too.

Collaborative Mode:

Since many of these knowledge forms are still remaining as part of the oral tradition, tremendous work is to be undertaken for identifying and compiling the materials for book making. It would be more practicable if it is done in a collaborative scheme. Various individuals and community organizations could be invited for collaborating with the work.

There is a greater need for initiating a non-conventional method of pedagogy, which is specifically suitable for the nature of community knowledge forms. As they remain to be mostly as part of everyday informal village life, the learning and teaching process has to be in the mode of a creative intervention for strengthening the community ways of living and livelihood means. Various methods of participatory actions and collaborative work have to be adopted. 

Centre for Community knowledge:

For the effective conduct of this work, there is a need to set up a Study Centre for Community Knowledge and Cultural Practices, with a view to promote research studies on them, and their sustainable ways of transmission. It becomes imperative to create a positive attitude among younger generations towards the age-old traditions of knowledge and cultural forms that lay scattered in limbo, because modern society considers them as unwanted or outmoded vestiges of the gone era.

Dissemination project:

It also forms part of a dissemination project for conducting a community-based learning programme that can be called as ‘community course,’ on traditional health care practices. There is a need for community initiative for developing a network of regional/village level practitioners and their bodies for imparting knowledge and practical skills on health caring and healing based on traditional/indigenous systems of knowledge in Kerala.

As the domain of traditional health care knowledge forms part of a unique domain of oral traditions, any work for preservation and transmission has to be conceived on a participatory basis, wherein proper mechanism for eliciting a sincere involvement of various practitioners and their community organizations have to be made. Therefore, this project has to be undertaken on a collaborative basis. It requires to create a feasible condition for getting active participation and collaboration of the practitioners’ community, appropriate locations for conducting the community course are to be identified.

Since many of these knowledge forms are still remaining as part of the oral tradition, tremendous work is to be undertaken for identifying and compiling the materials for book making. It would be more practicable if it is done in a collaborative scheme. Various individuals and community organizations could be invited for collaborating with the work.

        The traditional health care practices and the knowledge systems related to that seem to be getting wider attention from the quarters of modern science-educational institutions, especially from the Medical Education. Despite stunning achievements in the medical science and in the high-tech based clinical practices, the potential for or prospects of making the modern Allopathic medical system as the last resort for everything related to the health and healing has become suspicious even at its apex research community. As per the admission from its own elites, the list of its incurable diseases is very lengthy, and many of those health problems are very common. Moreover, the iatrogenic condition and effects are very high in modern medical practices. These form some of the issues that are taken to be the fundamental crisis being confronted by modern medical science and the therapeutic system as such. It seems to be due to the self-awareness of these factors from within the circle of the modern medicine there has emerged a discourse on the so-called ‘complimentary’ or ‘alternative’ healing systems.

Justification:

         During the period of colonial domination, there had taken place a large-scale transferring of knowledge and technology in India, whereby the indigenous cultural and social practices were obstructed and destroyed. The educational system and the method of material production that was introduced here were meant for European imperialist exploitation. Even though the question of reviving theswadesi cultures and education system was raised during the period of the national freedom movement, the nationalization process did not take place any desirable manner even in the post-independent era. Since the Euro centrism continued to prevail in every sphere of socio-cultural life, the age-old traditions of knowledge practices that have been carried with them, despite serious discontinuity, disintegration, and deformity, also remained suppressed and marginalized from the mainstream society. The framework ofmargi-desidivision seems to be another operating principle that created major constraints in the way of proper recognition of people’s own traditions of knowledge and cultural practices. Consequently, the regional cultural differences have been accounted for as mere adaptations of the greater pan-Indian nationalistic culture. 

It is often observed by scholars that the cultural past of Indian subcontinent has been studied with an undue consideration given the so-called pan-national features and expressions. These are the context, which makes relevance for the present project, with its thrust on critical intervention by way of bringing the so-called ‘little’ or ‘lesser’ traditions of knowledge as the subject matter of public debate and scholarly pursuits.