Impact of the Indian Knowledge System on the Contemporary Education System: Opportunities, Challenges and an Evidence-Informed Integration Framework

The Indian Knowledge System (IKS) has gained renewed policy attention following the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) and subsequent guidance issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC).Yet policy recognition does not itself establish educational effectiveness.This paper examines the potential contributions and implementation conditions of IKS in contemporary education through a qualitative, descriptive-analytical review of policy documents, institutional guidance and selected scholarly literature.It treats IKS as a plural and historically evolving field comprising textual, oral, practical, regional and community-based traditions.The analysis considers five potential educational contributions: ethical reflection and holistic development; critical reasoning and dialogic learning; curriculum enrichment and interdisciplinarity; cultural and linguistic plurality; and place-based sustainability learning.It also considers barriers involving teacher preparedness, source validation, curriculum overload, representation, community participation and assessment.A recent exploratory stakeholder study on integrating Ayurveda and IKS into higher-education health and nutrition curricula is used as a bounded empirical example of implementation concerns, not as evidence for all IKS domains or all educational levels.The paper's principal contribution is an evidence-informed integration framework linking source provenance, learning activity, intended outcome, assessment indicator and safeguards.The analysis concludes that IKS should be approached neither as an unquestionable body of authority nor as a category to be dismissed wholesale.Its educational value must be established case by case through accurate contextualisation, inclusive representation, critical inquiry and transparent evaluation.Since this study does not collect primary data or conduct a systematic review, it proposes a research agenda rather than claiming causal effects.