RSS-backed national education conference ‘Gyan Sabha’ to be held in Kerala from July 25

Kalady: Over 300 prominent educationists, including vice-chancellors, academicians, and state education ministers from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Puducherry, will gather in Kalady, Kerala, next week for a four-day national conference on education, titled Gyan Sabha.

Organized by the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, the education-focused wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the event will take place from 25 to 28 July on the theme ‘Education for a Developed India’. A key highlight of the conference will be an address by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on 27 July, where he is expected to speak on the Indianization of education and the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Spiritual and academic institutions including the Gayatri Pariwar, Art of Living, Ramakrishna Mission, Chinmaya Mission, and Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhan Kendra will also be represented at the event.

Addressing the media in Delhi on Friday, Atul Kothari, national secretary of the Nyas, said the conference aims to make Indian education more rooted in traditional values, knowledge systems, and culture. “The aim is not to oppose Western knowledge systems but to ensure Indian students remain rooted in their traditions, culture and knowledge,” he said.

The first two days (July 25–26) will feature a closed-door Chintan Baithak, where selected participants will deliberate on curriculum Indianization, promotion of Indian languages, integration of traditional knowledge, and moral education. The final day, 28 July, will be an open policy-focused session involving wider stakeholder engagement.

This is the first time such a large-scale educational event by the Nyas is being held in Kerala, the home state of Adi Shankaracharya, whose birthplace Kalady holds deep philosophical and cultural significance.

The Gyan Sabha is being seen as a significant milestone in the Nyas’s ongoing efforts to shape a national academic framework aligned with the NEP and rooted in Indian ethos. However, this push for “Indian civilizational values” comes amid growing concerns over the ideological motivations behind such reforms. Critics argue that Modi’s BJP and its ideological parent, the RSS, are using education as a tool to rewrite history in line with their political vision of replacing India’s secular foundations with a Hindu-first identity. The Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, originally founded to defend Indian culture in textbooks, now stands at the center of this campaign, one that critics say marginalizes India’s Muslim population, erases centuries of Islamic rule from the historical record, and promotes an exclusionary narrative under the guise of national pride and cultural revival.