Vanshika Jindal*
The Knowledge We Risk Losing
In 1193, Nalanda, famously known as The Land of Knowledge, burned for months. Foreign raiders led by Bakhtiyar Khilji sacked it, and by the time the fires went out, centuries’ worth of knowledge in medicine, mathematics, and astronomy was gone. Historians still call it one of the greatest human losses of knowledge we have ever suffered. Nalanda is no longer merely a ruin in Bihar; its story continues in a less visible form. A similar loss of knowledge may be taking place quietly in households across India. Every time a grandmother’s remedy is dismissed as “superstition”, a fragment of inherited knowledge risks being lost. Every time a fasting practice, a particular sleep routine or a seasonal diet is dismissed without asking who prescribed it, why it was followed, or what purpose it served, another page of an unwritten library remains unexplored. Much of this knowledge has never been formally recorded; it has survived through oral transmission, passed from one generation to the next, without any permanent record or reliable means of preservation.
The younger generation’s scepticism is equally understandable. Older generations often pass down rituals and beliefs, sometimes dismissed as “superstitions”, without explaining the “why” behind them. The ritual survives, but its reasoning does not always survive with it. Meanwhile, younger generations are encouraged to question rather than simply accept, to seek sources and understand the scientific reasoning behind everyday practices. As a result, inherited practices are rarely accepted solely because they have been followed for generations.The two generations, therefore, may hold different halves of the same knowledge, yet struggle to communicate because they speak different languages of understanding. This is where AI may have a role; not as a substitute for either side, but as a tool to translate, document and bridge the gap between them.
The Convergence of Tradition and Technology
This is no longer a dream. In July 2026, the Ministry of AYUSH signed an MoU with the IndiaAI Mission to integrate traditional medicine knowledge into India’s national AI ecosystem. The initiative seeks to use artificial intelligence to organise and examine traditional knowledge at a scale that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. Rather than placing tradition and modern science in opposition, it raises the possibility of using technology to examine both through a common framework.
Chronobiology, the Nobel-winning field that researches our body’s internal clock, has independently arrived at Ayurveda’s centuries-old conclusions, based on its dosha-oriented that is specialised routines for different biological requirements: when to work, sleep, eat and wake in harmony with the sun. Our ancestors weren’t just guessing. They just didn’t have a word like ‘circadian clock’yet. That’s the power AI trained on both ancient texts and modern science can give us, and may even give them, to start earning back that trust.
The Importance of Documenting Traditional Knowledge
The history of turmeric demonstrates the importance of documenting traditional knowledge. In the 1990s, an American company obtained a patent relating to the wound-healing properties of turmeric. India successfully challenged the patent by producing documented evidence, including references to a 1953 medical journal and ancient Sanskrit texts, establishing that the use of turmeric for such purposes was already known. That is apparently the reason the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library exists today: to ensure that 34 million pages of traditional cures, which added up to about 2.26 million formulas, were digitised in case that happens again. So the irony nobody discusses here is: it was not pure faith in tradition that would have preserved turmeric, and neither was it unquestioned faith in science: it was documentation. Which, if you think about it, is what AI is now promising to do right now, just on a scale that no human librarian could really pull off. Which means that AI might just be completely non-partisan in this dilemma of science versus faith.
This could make the traditional debate between “faith” and “science” less rigid. Instead of asking whether inherited practices should simply be believed or rejected, AI could help document them, identify patterns and direct attention towards questions that can then be tested through appropriate scientific methods.
The Challenges of an AI-Mediated Future
However, the potential of AI must also be considered alongside its limitations. The same technology that could help preserve knowledge associated with the legacy of Nalanda could, if inadequately designed or governed, contribute to its further loss. More than half of India’s employees already say that the pace of AI change is difficult to keep pace with, while many remain concerned about its implications for employment. AI models trained on incomplete or unrepresentative data may risk reducing India’s considerable regional and cultural diversity to a simplified and homogenised conception of “tradition”, overlooking variations in dialects, community practices and family-based knowledge. The digital divide presents a further concern, as the very elders whose knowledge is sought for preservation may have significantly less access to digital technologies and smartphones than younger generations, as reflected in studies on the digital divide between older and younger populations. Consequently, a system intended to
bridge the generational divide could inadvertently create another one, in which younger generations control the technologies through which older generations’ knowledge is documented and interpreted. The challenge, therefore, is not merely to build the bridge, but to ensure that both generations have the opportunity to cross it.
Conclusion
Can AI help India recover knowledge that is at risk of being lost, or could it instead contribute to another form of its disappearance? The answer remains uncertain. AI has no memory, reverence, or lived understanding of the knowledge it processes. It will not determine whether Nalanda’s legacy is preserved or lost again; that responsibility ultimately rests with how society chooses to use it. The roughly two-thirds of India under thirty-five that everyone seems to keep referring to as the “engine” of this AI revolution will be either the generation that finally sat down with its elders and asked why, or the generation that automated the asking and called it progress.
Viksit Bharat by 2047 cannot be built through the potential of the youth alone, nor can it be sustained through the knowledge of older generations alone. Its success will depend on whether these two generations can meaningfully engage with and learn from one another. The future may therefore depend not only on what AI can preserve, but on whether it can encourage a generation to question and understand the knowledge it inherits. If AI can help create that dialogue, the question remains whether we will be willing to use it for that purpose.
* The author is a first-year Law student at the National University of Study and Research in Law. The author may be contacted at vanshika307jindal@yahoo.com.
This blog reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Policy Chronicle.
This blog was selected as the Top Entry in 1st Fresher’s Blog Writing Competition, 2026.