Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, announced a ₹100 crore contribution to support a new initiative aimed at preserving and promoting India’s ancient knowledge systems. The announcement was made at the inaugural Adani Global Indology Conclave, a three-day event held at the Adani Corporate House in Ahmedabad.
Organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Education’s Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) division, the conclave focuses on reviving Indology—the academic study of India’s civilisation, languages, philosophies, sciences, and cultural heritage. The funding will be used to develop the Bharat Knowledge Graph, a first-of-its-kind digital framework designed to structure, preserve, and future-proof India’s knowledge in the era of Artificial Intelligence.
“This is the repayment of a civilisational debt,” Mr Adani said, highlighting that the initiative will also support scholars and technologists working on the project. He added that without proactive efforts to protect cultural frameworks, human behaviour risks being shaped by “the cold logic of machine algorithms.”
As part of the initiative, the Adani Group and IKS will run a five-year programme supporting 14 PhD scholars across leading institutions. Research will cover disciplines such as linguistics, computational linguistics, ancient astronomy, heritage studies, traditional sciences, indigenous healthcare, traditional engineering, sustainability, political thought, and classical literature. Scholars were selected through a rigorous national consultation involving IITs, IIMs, IKS-focused universities, and senior academics. The programme aims to integrate classical knowledge with modern tools such as data science, systems thinking, and multimodal archiving.
Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, who was the guest of honour, praised the initiative for supporting India’s vision of becoming a Vishwaguru (global teacher).
Aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the initiative seeks to bring ancient Indian wisdom into contemporary education and research, making traditional knowledge relevant in modern academic and technological contexts. Rooted in the ethos of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam treating “the world as one family”, the project reflects the Adani Group’s commitment to nation-building, soft power, and civilisational leadership.