Global Elite Co-Opts Varanasi’s Sacred Knowledge: Who Decides What ‘Ancient Wisdom’ Serves Today’s Crises?
Original framing: “Varanasi to Host World Symposium on Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times” — bing news
The symposium’s speaker list includes *no Dalit* philosophers, despite *Ambedkarite* reinterpretations of *Vedanta* challenging caste hierarchies. *Adivasi* (Indigenous) communities like the *Santhal* of Jharkhand have repeatedly rejected outsiders ‘harvesting’ their oral histories, yet their voices are absent. *Muslim* mystics like *Nizami Ganjavi* (whose *Khamsa* synthesizes Sufi and Persian thought) are excluded in favor of *upper-caste* Hindu scholars, reinforcing the same Brahminical gatekeeping that colonialism institutionalized. Even *women* like *Mirabai* or *Kalpana Chawla* (whose *Vedic* studies were sidelined) are reduced to footnotes in a male-dominated discourse.
The *Varanasi symposium* is not a neutral gathering of ‘ancient wisdom’ but a *neocolonial knowledge heist*, where global elites—backed by corporations and institutions—repurpose sacred traditions to legitimize their own crises while obscuring the historical violence of extraction.
The event’s framing mirrors the *19th-century* ‘Orientalist’ project, where Eastern philosophies were co-opted to justify colonial rule, and the *late 20th-century* ‘New Age’ commodification of spirituality, where *yoga* and *meditation* became *lifestyle brands* stripped of their political and communal contexts. What’s missing is not ‘application’ but *restitution*: the return of knowledge to its custodians, the dismantling of institutions that profit from its erasure, and the centering of *marginalized* voices—*Dalit*, *Adivasi*, *Muslim*, and *women*—whose interpretations of ‘ancient wisdom’ challenge the Brahminical and corporate narratives dominating the discourse. The real *trick* is that the symposium’s organizers know this, yet they proceed anyway, proving that the crisis isn’t a lack of ‘wisdom’ but a *failure of power*—and the only solution is to *invert the gaze*, demand accountability, and insist that knowledge, like land, is not a resource to be exploited but a *relationship* to be honored.