Harisha H M (Hagalawadi)
Masters in Advaita Vedanta from National Sanskrit University (erstwhile Rashtriya Samskrita Vidyapeetha), Tirupati.Studied Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit Vyakarana in a traditional manner from Veda Vijnana Gurukulam, Bengaluru.Ph.D. Scholar
Harisha H M (Hagalawadi)
Masters in Advaita Vedanta from National Sanskrit University (erstwhile Rashtriya Samskrita Vidyapeetha), Tirupati.Studied Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit Vyakarana in a traditional manner from Veda Vijnana Gurukulam, Bengaluru.My primary research interests are in understanding Indian traditional knowledge and philosophy. The mainstream research on Indian traditions (Indological and Orientalist) is facing criticism in recent decades being constituted by western concepts and world-view. This affects the way different cultures are approached and understood, as the problem of cultural difference is not accounted for in this model. Hence the need for building fundamental conceptual enquiries to understand Indian culture.
With this broad agenda, currently I’m working on understanding ādhyātmika traditions of India with a primary focus on vīraśaiva-liṅgāyata tradition. I’m problematizing the nature of participation in these traditions to draw larger theoretical implications of understanding cultural forms.
So far, these traditions are assumed and studied as religious sects. This not only assumes the western experience of religions as universal, but also makes the enquiry of Indian traditions opaque by blocking meaningful engagement with their own conceptual scheme. Hence the task ahead is also twofold: our new studies have to avoid western frameworks in studying Indian traditions and also formulate fundamental conceptual frameworks to engage with these in a better way. My current study offers such a heuristic paradigm by formulating the nature of participation in an ādhyātmika tradition.
Harisha H M (Hagalawadi) is a doctoral scholar in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Chanakya University. His current interests are in understanding ‘religious’ traditions of India by developing indigenous conceptual frameworks.
He has worked as a team lead and language expert in a large-scale data creation project in Indian languages for training LLMs under the aegis of AI4Bharat, IIT-Madras. He has a substantial teaching experience in teaching Sanskrit at various institutions in Bengaluru.
He is also an expert in translation between English, Sanskrit and Kannada having translated many research and popular articles for different periodicals and a book-length volume on Indian philosophy.
He is an acclaimed novelist in Kannada with two published novels Nyaasa and Rishyashringa. He is also a professional screenwriter in Kannada film industry and worked on movies Kanoorayana (directed by veteran director T S Nagabharana), French Biryani (Dir. Pannaga Bharana), Tatsama Tadbhava (Dir. Vishal Atreya). He is also a script doctor and collaborator at PB Studios, Bangalore.
- Masters in Advaita Vedanta from National Sanskrit University (erstwhile Rashtriya Samskrita Vidyapeetha), Tirupati.
- Studied Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit Vyakarana in a traditional manner from Veda Vijnana Gurukulam, Bengaluru.
- Ashwin Kumar A P & Harisha H M, “Sutaka”, in Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes, Renny Thomas & Sasanka Perera Ed.,Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2025
- Ashwin Kumar A P & Harisha H M, “Sutaka: manavashastradinda achara meemamseya kadege”, in Lokajnana, Nithyananda B Shetty Ed., Vol.11-12, Issue 31-33, Tumkur University, Tumkur, 2024
- Harisha H M, Naveen Bhat & Shashanka Hatwar, “Problems in Current Translation Strategies of Sanskrit Languages in the context of Machine Translation and AI”, Activity-based Language Learning: Challenges and Opportunities, DES Pune University, Pune
Project 1:
- Title: AI4Bharat
- Duration: 3 Years
- Granting Agency: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
- PIs: Prof. Mitesh Khapra
- Purpose: Creating datasets in Indian languages for training LLMs
- Short Description: AI4Bharat, a research lab at IIT Madras, is dedicated to advancing AI technology for Indian languages through open-source contributions. Over the past, the lab has developed and released a wide range of datasets, tools, and state-of-the-art models. The focus areas of the lab include transliteration, natural language understanding, generation, translation, automatic speech recognition, and speech synthesis. AI4Bharat’s work is recognized globally, with publications in top-tier conferences and deployments in real-world use cases, making a significant impact across academia, industry, and government sectors. Indian Languages comprising 22 scheduled languages. It also comprises of creating parallel datasets, ASR and TTS data in all these languages starting from audio collection to transcription, annotation and translation. (link: https://ai4bharat.iitm.ac.in/)
- Status: Completed
- Grant Amount: NA
Project 2:
- Title: Reconstructing Categories of Indian Educational Thought
- Duration: 1 Year
- Granting Agency: Ramadas Pai Chair on Education, CU
- PIs: Prof. Ashwin Kumar A P
- Purpose: To build the logical geography of educational thought in India
- Short Description: The Assumption underlying our investigation is that our ways of seeing and doing involve schemes of distinctions. These are embodied in the visual and verbal sign systems we use in dealing with our natural and social surroundings. Predicates available to us through natural languages are the resources not only for learning and teaching, or acquiring and communicating knowledge, but also to constitute that very knowledge. These predicates have been shaped by the accidental and unsystematic as well as deliberate and systematic efforts by generations of people in their daily dealings. As such they are subject to change, but the fundamental distinctions achieved over hundreds of years do not yield easily to abrupt change of usage. This fact shows itself in how the nuances of meaning expressible through a predicate of one language is not expressible by the supposed equivalent predicate of another language. Thus, we have a possibility of recovering the scheme of distinctions passed on from the Indian traditions, in spite of the fact that our linguistic registers are constantly remixed due to unending pressures exerted through the innumerable intellectual currents that constitute the modern life.
- Status: Ongoing
- Grant Amount: 10 Lakhs
- Awarded Sha. Balurao Young Writer of the Year 2020 by B. M. Shri Pratishthana, Bengaluru.
- Finalist of Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar
Popular Writings
- Harisha Hagalawadi, “Nyaasa”, Chanda Pustaka, Bengaluru, 2015
- Harisha Hagalawadi, “Rishyashringa”, Chanda Pustaka, Bengaluru, 2020
- S N Das Gupta, “A History of Indian Philosophy”, vol.5. MLBD, New Delhi,1988: Prabhakara Joshi Ed., (in Kannada) Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati, Bengaluru, 2025
- Harisha Hagalawadi, “Bharata Bhanjaneya Olasuligalu: Dharmapalaru Kandante”, in Paramparadharita Abhyudaya Darshana – Dharmapal Drishti, Ed., M S Chaitra, Rashtrotthana Sahitya, Bengaluru, 2022