The story of a Bengali Bahu in a Tamil family

These days I am encountering people who are so obsessed with the vedic knowledge arguing about going back and adapting ancient knowledge system. On the other side, Philosophers and researchers arguing that India has not significantly contributed to the science in recent times(Excluding Ramanujan and Bose). This made me interested in the trajectory of epistemology. Fortunately, one of my professors came with an article he published, to be discussed in the class. This broadly gave the idea of knowledge system and its emergence. I was more interested in the study of knowledge systems and their evolution, than in knowledge itself. After going through the article, I came to some understanding about western epistemology and its history. I am including a rough summary of it for better understanding of my further arguments(Read only if u r interested in History.Otherwise omit and save your patience for further discussion)
( For 2000 years, until 16^th century,  knowledge was limited to a set of disciplines. First division ‘Trivium’ constituted logic, grammar and rhetoric. Secondary education was concentrated on astronomy, music, arithmetic and geometry called “quadrivium”. Higher education was limited to Philosophy, Theology, Medicine and Law. Theology was a very important subject and was involved in every walk of life. Over a period of time, Theology slowly gave way to early modern disciplines. Various intellectual and social revolutions across Europe transformed the ordering of knowledge. Till 17^th century, Knowledge was ordered into two broad categories: Natural Philosophy and Natural History. By early 19^th century, a new order of episteme emerged, that gave rise to various specialized branches: traditional branches like Theology lost their prominence. Philosophy got restructured and became a part of arts. New disciplines like Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology emerged. In this period a new entrant emerged and gained importance. This branch called Social sciences was sharply demarcated. The birth of this discipline started during the enlightenment period and ended during French Revolution. Three major ideological camps have evolved in this newly formed discipline.1) Conservatives 2) anti-conservatives (anarchists, communists, etc.) and 3) Liberals.

Later, in the mid-19^th century, cultural and complexity studies argue against nomothetic theorizing and shifted to non-systemic, non-rational and non-predictive dimensions of reality. But this occurred more consciously and gave rise to ‘interdisciplinary’ approach. 21^st century brought in more proliferation of disciplines and had no patent interconnections between them. Today disciplines have become multidisciplinary and due to the enormous depth of each discipline, super speciality branches have evolved. )

Now, coming back to the argument of why India should/shouldn't go back and adapt ancient education system, I can state many arguments why that would not be a great idea but i will go with a few important ones.
1)Our vedic knowledge is not available in a complete form. We have bits and pieces, here and there, which are either taking their last breathe or artificially kept alive. Only 0.75% (I will quote sources substantiating this if u r really interested ;) )of our ancient knowledge is currently alive. Can we really afford to re-construct 99.25% of the knowledge from the existing 0.75%? Is it realistically possible?
2)Fortunately or unfortunately, colonial rule has already enforced its learning style and education system on most of the oriental countries. We are now standing at a mid point where we are crippled either to go forward (since western system in not yet imbibed into us) or backward(due to lack of knowledge left, and we hardly think in our mother tongue anymore...forget about doing something exotic and native.). We have been working on this system for more than 100 years now. If we go to our native style of education, we will loose on 100 years of progress.

Now, if you are accusing me of arguing on both sides of the discussion, hold on a minute... i am coming to the point.

To project India's current position, I can draw an analogy of a Bengali Bahu married to a Tamil guy. If one's cooking skill and knowledge of ingredients can be compared to the knowledge system, and Bengali bahu as India and Tamil In-law's house as Western system, the story can be told as:

It is difficult to follow bengali cooking in a tamil household, due to lack of availability of ingredients in TamilNadu, loss of knowledge and memory of bengali style of cooking, (for not keeping in touch with the native knowledge and loosing it overtime).
Since she is married to a Tamil family, she needs to learn to cook sambar. Irrespective of how well she tries to imitate and learn her mother-in-law's style of sambar, its not the same. Half her life is over in trying to learn to cook sambar in the exact way Tamilians do.
Now, for people asking why is India not making any significant contribution:
If half our life is over, to just learn and adapt to the new style, where is the scope and space to think about experimenting? Even in case the Bengali bahu tries to experiment something in Tamil style, She would still need the acceptance and approval of her Tamil In-laws to actually recognise that she has done a good job.
Aren't our scientists recognised in India, only after their work is accepted as authentic, by either american and europian scholars?
So what is the way out? How should the Bengali Bahu build up on the existing knowledge acquired by learning to cook sambar to make path breaking creative contributions?

First, to ignore her in-laws(read it as Western) domination in deciding and dictating what she should and shouldn't do, she should have a strong support system. This can be built by gathering similar Bahus, within the family (say, co-sisters) and create a professional group to analyse, critique and evolve. This makes her stand stronger. I would call these professional groups in India as "Universities" and "Research centres". Once your groups are stronger, strive to collectively produce good work constantly and benchmark these groups to highest standards. This will eventually make the in-laws look at your work with a positive and open mind. Once you beat them in their game, you can further look at integrating your native knowledge with the western knowledge to evolve into a new discipline. This would lead to a better acceptance of this new discipline.

Now, to people who still argue that Indians are not significantly contributing, I would say read about politics in intellectual arena about  how ivy league members are ganging up against the rest of the world when it comes to publishing. Don't count papers from India, but count papers by Indians sitting in the US universities.You will definitely see the numbers raising hugely.
Would it mean that Indians were dumb when they were here, and just got downloaded with knowledge once they go there??