PASIGHAT, Mar 14: A national seminar on ‘Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge in Tribal Education’, organized by the Department of Education, Arunachal Pradesh University, was held at the APU premises here today.
Speaking as chief guest at the event, founding and former APU Vice Chancellor Prof Tomo Riba said that tribal communities are knowledge holders and living repositories of wisdom that the world is only now beginning to recognize.
“Our forefathers were great people and they held tremendous knowledge — knowledge that is helping the world today,” Prof Riba said, urging educators and policymakers to ensure that this heritage finds its rightful place within the formal education system.
He spoke on the importance of traditional institutions such as the Nyibu Nyegam Yarko and the Menjwk Meqkok Rwguu (MMR) Gurukul in Basar, saying these institutions have for generations transmitted not merely information but an entire philosophy of life rooted in harmony with nature, respect for elders, and community responsibility. He described them as living models of indigenous education whose value must not be underestimated.
On the question of language, Prof Riba said that while an earlier generation took pride in children who could speak Hindi or English, the time has come to reverse that thinking. “We must take pride in speaking our native language,” he said, expressing concern that many young people today no longer know the language their grandparents spoke.
He noted that tribal knowledge systems — from medicinal plant use and sustainable farming to ecological conservation — are increasingly being validated by modern science worldwide. He encouraged the Department to continue organising seminars that engage with tribal knowledge and its relevance to contemporary education.
The keynote address was delivered by Prof Amitava Mitra, former Pro-Vice Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University, who spoke on higher education as a catalyst for economic growth in Arunachal Pradesh.
Drawing on his years of experience working in the State, Prof Mitra said that Arunachal Pradesh had changed considerably before his eyes — from a time when higher education institutions were few and far between, and students had to travel great distances or leave the state entirely to pursue a degree, to today, where universities, colleges, and research institutions have begun to take firm root across the region.
“The transformation has been visible and real,” he said, “but the potential that still lies untapped is far greater than what has been achieved so far.”
Prof Mitra said that Arunachal Pradesh occupies a unique position in the country — a state of extraordinary biodiversity, cultural plurality, and strategic importance, sitting at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. He argued that this uniqueness, rather than being a challenge, is the State’s single greatest educational and economic asset. “The knowledge that lives in the forests, the villages, the oral traditions of this land — no university in the plains can replicate or manufacture that,” he said. “Arunachal’s higher education system must learn to mine that wealth.”
He contended that for too long, higher education in the Northeast has measured itself against templates designed for the mainland — producing graduates trained for a job market and a social context that does not always match the ground reality of their home state. The result, he observed, has been a steady outflow of educated young people who leave and do not return, leaving communities without the human capital they need to grow. “We educate our youth and then lose them,” he said. “That is not development. That is drain.”
He pointed to the enormous economic potential in areas such as eco-tourism, organic agriculture, traditional medicine, handicrafts, and sustainable forestry — all sectors in which Arunachal Pradesh holds a natural advantage, and all sectors that require an educated, culturally aware workforce to realise their full potential. “The hills, the rivers, the forests, the festivals, the languages — these are not obstacles to development. They are the development,” he said.
Attending as resource person, Prof Sambit Kumar Padhi, Professor and HoD Education, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, stressed that a sound curriculum must precede any meaningful discussion of pedagogy. “Curriculum plays a very crucial role,” he said. “Before we decide how to teach, we must first be certain about what we are teaching and why.”
He called for curriculum designers and educational planners to engage directly with tribal communities in the process of developing learning materials, so that the curriculum reflects rather than erases the world the child comes from.
Prof Padhi spoke at length on National Education Policy 2020, which he described as perhaps the most significant structural opportunity for tribal education reform in independent India. He said NEP 2020’s emphasis on mother-tongue-based multilingual education, flexible curriculum frameworks, and the recognition of local knowledge systems is not incidental — it reflects a fundamental rethinking of what Indian education is for and whom it must serve.
“NEP gives us the policy space that educators in tribal regions have been waiting for,” he said. "Now the responsibility lies with institutions, teachers, and communities to use that space wisely and urgently."
Earlier, Seminar Convener Dr P C Jena, HoD Education and Dean of Academic Affairs (APU), set out the academic vision behind the seminar with clarity and conviction.
He said that the Department had chosen this theme not merely because it is topical, but because it speaks to a fundamental crisis in Indian education — the systematic exclusion of indigenous knowledge from the spaces where knowledge is officially produced, validated, and transmitted.