The Agenda of Post-Colonial Education

Decolonizing the mind, connecting the young with their cultural heritage and knowledges, was a concern voiced by leaders of the national movement for independence and reiterated in the Report of the Kothari Commission. Yet, higher education in India, particularly teaching of the social sciences, is frequently accused of being eurocentric and western oriented. Can this bias be corrected by rejecting western categories and replacing them with Indian categories? Is replacing one set of categories by another enough and sufficient?  As the call to indigenize has an intuitive appeal, the paper reflects on the idea of self, tradition, culture and history that informs this perspective and cautions against reproducing binaries that marked the colonial framework. It argues that postcolonial education must be anchored in the idea of historical beings who inhabit a cultural world as well as the values that define the modern historical world. The challenge therefore is to conceive of a system that is democratic and inclusive, and prepares the mind for cross-cultural conversations that are mutually fulfilling.