Must decolonise education, says Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chancellor

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New Delhi, November 18

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit on Friday said it was important to create Indic narratives and the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, offered an opportunity to decolonise education.

Develop Indic narratives

Decolonisation of the social sciences, humanities and languages is very important. It is also very important to develop Indic narratives. S Dhulipudi Pandit, JNU VC

Addressing heads of institutions at “Gyanotsav”, organised by RSS-affiliate Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas here to discuss the NEP implementation challenges, Pandit said the NEP allowed the scope for a paradigm shift in academic narratives, an opportunity academicians needed to seize.

“Decolonisation of the social sciences, humanities and languages is very important. It is also very important to develop Indic narratives. Let us take feminism. We start discussions with Karl Marx. Are we trying to say women never existed before that? The Indic civilisation is a feminist civilisation and the only one that says ‘Matra Devo Bhava’ first. In Indra’s cabinet, who are the most powerful ministers? Minister of education is Saraswati, minister for power is Durga or Parvati and minister for wealth is Mahalakshmi,” said the JNU VC, noting that like China, India needed its own narratives which could only be created by the decolonisation of social sciences, languages and humanities.

Pandit said India was also the only tradition that called male Gods after their wives — Umapati, Sitapati, Lakshmi Pati and added that India mothered democracy.

“The Cholas readied an inscription on democracy 800 years before Great Britain’s Magna Carta. Why don’t we write these things?” she said.