(Draft) Epistemicide and Epistemic Authority in India
Why it is important to acknowledge the rationale for the epistemic authority of some framework.
Note: I wrote this piece in response to a LinkedIn post by Prof. Jishnu Das.
Let me set the context for a disconcerting finding. I held a debriefing session recently at a local university in India. In a hall with nearly 120 students, 20 PhD scholars, and 4 faculty members, I asked how many had heard of the phrase ceteris paribus. Only two hands went up—both belonging to PhD students, no hands went up among the faculty members.
The episode of a hall full of students, scholars, and faculty—yet only two knowing the phrase ceteris paribus—is not merely about the ignorance of a Latin term. It is symptomatic of a deeper malaise: the absence of recognition of the epistemic authority of frameworks that structure human reasoning.
Ceteris paribus is more than a phrase; it encapsulates the bedrock of causal reasoning in Western intellectual traditions, first used by Cicero in the 1st Century BC. It trains the mind to abstract, to control for variables, and to identify causal links. If those charged with educating the next generation of leaders, lawyers, and scholars are unfamiliar with it, the implication is grave: India’s intellectual class is not fully conversant with the very tools that underpin modern institutions, from economics to jurisprudence. Without epistemic alignment, one cannot hope to replicate the structural efficiencies of systems that depend upon such reasoning.
At the same time, India is not alien to causal reasoning. The Nyāya school and Navya-Nyāya were precisely dedicated to identifying and analyzing causal structures. Yet their authority has not been sufficiently acknowledged in our curricula. When epistemic authority is denied or forgotten—whether of ceteris paribus in the Western canon or hetu and vyāpti in the Indian—it results in a hollowing out of intellectual resources. This is epistemicide: the systematic erosion of reasoning frameworks by linguistic and institutional neglect.
The damage is practical as much as it is philosophical. Without training in causal reasoning, law schools produce lawyers who cannot parse evidence rigorously, contributing to a judicial system with 50 million pending cases. Without epistemic scaffolding, economic reasoning remains shallow, leading to policies that fail to anticipate systemic consequences.
The lesson is twofold:
Epistemic authority matters. Frameworks like causal reasoning have earned authority through centuries of refinement because they enable societies to explain, predict, and solve problems. To ignore them is to handicap intellectual and institutional growth.
Language matters. When education is divorced from mother tongues, reasoning becomes shallow. Concepts do not sink deep enough to reconfigure habits of thought. Intellectual dependence on foreign languages without epistemic grounding breeds fragility rather than strength.
Thus, acknowledging the rationale for epistemic authority is not about blind deference; it is about recognizing the frameworks that cultivate intellectual resilience. When we abandon the illusion of free will, we not only move away from demeaning propensity to indulge in any form of blame-game, but as Romer reminded us we find ways not to let crises go to waste. The crisis of epistemicide is precisely such an opportunity: to recover and re-anchor our intellectual traditions while engaging seriously with global frameworks of thought.
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Disclaimer: AI tools were used in curating this content, with human oversight to ensure rigor and contextual relevance.
The opinions and thoughts expressed here reflect only my personal views and not of the institution where I work.
Nothing I have written here is set in stone. I am putting these ideas to start a conversation and bring people to discuss and debate the issues captured here. Give me feedback, and it will help me learn.