Guest post by SHAMAYITA SEN

[This post is the first of a series in Kafila, titled Decolonial Imaginations.

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.]

This article comes as a response born from a deep sense of intellectual anguish and frustration. It is a rebuttal to a YouTube video titled The Left’s Accidental Gift to Hindu Nationalism posted by one of India’s leading independent news portals, The Wire on 14^th August 2025. The video attempts to summarize Meera Nanda’s critique of Postcolonial Left as elaborated in her latest treatise, Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason (2025). While I have read the newly published work, including the excerpt published in The Wire which have been shared widely in popular social media platforms, this piece restricts itself to the Video which comprehensively outlines Nanda’s arguments. An extensive engagement with the critique that Nanda mounts is reserved for some other time.

Continue reading Sleeping With the Enemy? Postcolonialism, Misread and Misjudged: Shamayita Sen →