ABSTRACT
The concept indigenous knowledge has emerged out of post-modern discourse on development, which has engaged anthropologists among others and informs the critique of earlier structuralist and modernist approaches which had privileged Western science and capitalism as the ultimate arbiters of development. The fact that highly systematized systems of knowledge such as the Indian Ayurveda are classified as ‘indigenous’ indicates the western bias in its conceptualization. For Ayurveda is a very ancient and systematic knowledge supported by scholarly written texts. Even if we accept Veronica Strang’s identification of indigenous with the local or a ‘landscape’ we must not overlook the colonial history behind the global expansion of western science from its European origin. Indigenous knowledge is understood not as a pragmatic path to aid ‘development’, or as a rational system of knowledge, but as a symbol of power, assertiveness and identity.
