Vrinda Nayak:

The concept of decolonizing the curriculum, which emerged from the Rhodes must fall moment in 2015, at the University of South Africa, presented a holistic view of decolonization, which is the dismantling of power structures influenced by colonial legacy. It was about addressing the influence of colonization in the curriculum, as well as structural inequalities at the institution level. In my opinion, a direct translation of this concept to higher education institutions across the world is a challenge, considering the cultural context, varying influence of colonial power on inequality that exists in societies across the world, and how nations have evolved over the time once they were free from colonial rule. I think in countries like the UK, which colonized other countries during the last few centuries, and where the population is predominantly white ethnic, there's a need to see decolonization in a slightly different way to that of the USA or South Africa. The emphasis here should be on embracing equality in a way that supports the different identities held by the ethnic minority population of multicultural Britain. This should be reflected in implementing the concept of decolonizing the curriculum in decolonizing the higher education structures in the UK higher education institutions.

Subhajit Naskar:

There is a there is another important game-changing event that has happened in Africa in 2015/16, where there were a massive student protests that erupted. And that sort of started happening in other pre-colonial countries -- you know, those basically got liberated in ‘40s, and ‘50s -- which is largely known as Global South. So these student protests that erupted in the university campuses greatly influenced the way university campuses sort of, you know, crafted the curriculum framework one or second, the kind of pedagogical discourses that basically existed.

Partha Chatterjee:

As far as higher education is concerned, first of all, decolonization cannot simply mean a return to what existed before colonialism. Because before colonialism, if one thinks of the pre-colonial then the arena of higher education was extremely limited and narrow, it was restricted to a very, very tiny minority of the people who were privileged. And very few people had access to higher education. That is clearly not emanate is restricted by social groups in India, for instance, hugely restricted by caste, by gender, and of course, privilege. That's clearly not something that would be acceptable today. What happened under colonial rule was the introduction of a system of higher education, which in fact prevailed or which had come to prevail in the countries of Europe, in its period of Enlightenment and modernisation. The idea of the university which was then implanted in countries like India under colonial rule was very largely modelled on the European university, with its divisions into faculties and departments and so on, now, this actually has come to stay in almost every country, which used to be under colonial rule, they have come to stay and the entire system of modern education everywhere is broadly organized in that particular structure.

Shubranshu Mishra:

Decolonization is about challenging and dismantling inequalities, but it is also about creating: creating new forms of knowledge forms that are inclusive. It means to examine how knowledge is produced, how it is disseminated, what kind of prisms are used to create knowledge that is seen to be dominant or authentic, who is involved in disseminating that knowledge and who is included and excluded from it. It is about acknowledging and accepting knowledge that is produced by the indigenous by colonized and besieged subjects. It is about addressing the historical amnesia around colonial rule and imperialism and understanding those as informing contemporary politics as well. It is about addressing institutional racism and about resisting neoliberal and capitalist forms of governance in the institution and universities. It is about listening to the experiences of alienation that the marginalized have to share about it is about paying attention to your reading list, about attainment gaps, about promotions, about, you know, governance and classroom experiences. It is also about going beyond Northern epistemologies, and include perspectives from the Global South that are often dismissed as not universal enough or not generalizable enough, not mainstream enough. Decolonization actually is about transforming teaching and learning to see purpose in what Dr. Ambedkar called, ‘an experience that is about to educate, to agitate and to organize’. It is about creating international / transnational solidarities and intersectionality. With the growth in movements like decolonizing the university / decolonizing the curriculum in the UK to Rhodes must fall in South Africa to student protests in JNU and Jamia Millia in India about fee hikes and protecting the citizenship rights of minorities to the Cisco case of caste discrimination in the United States. What these instances tell us is to think about global aspects of race and caste and examine the interlinked ideologies of white supremacy and Brahminical patriarchy.