Engagement/Activity
Vidya Ashram has an emancipatory engagement with life and society. Sa vidya ya vimuktaye. The Ashram does not see vidya as an accomplished object, event or disposition, nor does it see emancipation just as a goal. Vidya as derived from lokavidya and in motion eventually back to merge with lokavidya is essentially the core of an emancipatory engagement, emancipation residing in the knowledge activity that strives to serve life and society.
The activities of the Ashram feed its knowledge centered explorations providing the flesh and blood to the philosophical disposition. The chief places of such activity are on the interfaces that knowledge may have with education , people’s movements and ordinary life. Given below is the beginning we have made.
Local and Regional Interventions:
National and International Interventions:
- Participation in resistances organized by the National Alliance of People’s Movements.
- Organisation of workshops called Dialogues on Knowledge in Society at meetings of the World Social Forum.
- Knowledge Dialogue in the University through participation in conferences and invited lectures at various institutions such as IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, C-DAC Mumbai, NIAS Bangalore, CSDS Delhi, etc.
- Lokavidya Panchayat Blog: A blog for discussing contemporary issues from a lokavidya perspective.
- Participation in the international on-line Edu-Factory project on Conflicts in Knowledge Production, Hierarchies in the World of Knowledge and Autonomous Global University.
