India is often praised for its spirituality, poetry, and devotion. What is less known, and usually deliberately forgotten, is that it also built one of the world’s strongest cultures of reasoning. Generations of Indian students have been taught that critical thinking began in ancient Greece, evolved in Enlightenment Europe, and entered India through English education. This version of history is incomplete and biased. India has always been a civilisation of questioning minds and debating scholars. Our schools, however, have not told this story.
For decades, Indian textbooks have associated rationality with Europe and tradition with India. They celebrate Socrates, Aristotle and Descartes, but rarely mention Gautama, Kanada, Nagarjuna, or Shankaracharya as logical thinkers. As a result, young minds grow up believing that logic is foreign to our soil. Worse, they begin to assume that questioning authority is un-Indian.
Indian civilisation did not rely on unquestioning belief. It argued, debated, and demanded evidence. The country that produced yoga and ayurveda also developed powerful logic, epistemology, and debate systems. Centuries ago, Indian thinkers asked the same questions modern philosophy asks. What is truth? How do we know what we know? Can knowledge be verified? What is the difference between perception and reality? Far from being passive acceptors of tradition, Indian scholars built competing schools of thought that openly challenged one another. Disagreement was a respected intellectual practice. A short journey through India’s intellectual heritage makes this clear.
The Nyaya school developed a formal system of logic that teaches how to examine claims, test evidence, and avoid errors in reasoning. It offered a five-step method to reach logical conclusions, more detailed than the three-part syllogism taught in Western philosophy. Modern students learn about Aristotle’s logic, but almost none are exposed to Nyaya, which explains the same skill with greater clarity and practicality.
Buddhist philosophers taught rigorous inquiry based on scepticism. Gautama warned against accepting any scriptural, social, or religious claim without testing it through experience and reflection. The Buddhist method of argumentation exposed contradictions by systematic questioning. That is the essence of critical thinking.
Jain philosophy argued that truth is many-sided and cannot be captured fully from one viewpoint alone. Its method encourages students to compare interpretations before forming a conclusion. In today's world of social media polarisation, this approach teaches intellectual humility and reduces bias.
Vedanta promoted rational reflection as a path to clarity. It used disciplined questioning to remove confusion and sharpen understanding. It insisted on inquiry. Knowledge, it taught, must withstand reasoning before being accepted.
India even developed a structured tradition of debate called vada. Scholars engaged in public reasoning contests with rules for evidence, logic, and fairness. Debate was used as a method to uncover the truth. An education system that once honoured debate now silences it in the name of rote learning.
When Indian students are disconnected from their own traditions of inquiry, they lose confidence in their intellectual heritage. They begin to memorise rather than think. They struggle to analyse arguments, detect false claims, or evaluate evidence. They become passive receivers of information rather than active thinkers.
In a world flooded with misinformation, fake news, and agenda-driven propaganda, reasoning skills are no longer academic luxuries. They are survival tools. India cannot become a global knowledge leader if its students cannot think independently and question intelligently..
The problem is not that we teach Western logic. The problem is that we teach it alone. Indian students are given a single intellectual lens to view reason, while their civilisation’s contributions are removed from sight. This creates a false hierarchy of knowledge. It breeds silent inferiority. This is not an argument against Western knowledge—the call is for fairness. Students must be trained to compare ideas, not absorb them uncritically.
The National Education Policy, 2020 acknowledges that India’s knowledge traditions must be restored. It states that students must develop critical thinking rooted in Indian and global perspectives. The policy encourages universities and schools to introduce Indian knowledge systems. To think freely, students must stand on intellectual ground they recognise as their own.
Serious about producing independent thinkers and reclaiming Indian reasoning traditions must move from policy pages to classrooms. Teachers should be trained in Indian argumentation frameworks to use reasoning tasks in daily classes. Simple reasoning modules drawn from Nyaya, Buddhist logic, the Jain idea of many viewpoints, and Vedanta’s reflective method should be introduced from Classes 6 to 12.
Schools and colleges should run vada-style debate clubs. College students should get humanities electives that study Indian epistemology as part of global philosophy. Most importantly, classrooms should build bridges by teaching Indian and international knowledge, showing that rational inquiry belongs to everyone.
Some worry that bringing Indian traditions into education will promote cultural bias. The opposite is true. This reform fights bias. By acknowledging all knowledge systems, we prevent the domination of one tradition over others. The purpose of education is not to glorify the past. It is to learn from it and build better thinkers for the future.
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar | Former Chairman, UGC and former Vice Chancellor, JNU
(Views are personal)
