[This post is the seventh essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.

The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”. 

We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]

It is impossible to think of modernity and colonialism, without thinking of their third sibling – science. They are not just siblings, in fact, but a set of triplets which took birth within the same western context and period – and hence, the adjectives ‘modern’ and ‘western’ are used to qualify science, often by the colonizers themselves. Just as the notion of ‘savage native’ was a part of colonial construction, so was the idea of ‘modern science’. Not only did the colonial powers conquer people and knowledge systems across the world, but they also established hegemony within their own societies, colonizing them from within. This was done using complex mechanisms of power, control and appropriation. Continue reading Colonialism, Modernity and Science: K. Sridhar →