Samir Saha:

Besides equity, and inclusiveness, and breaking up the gender barrier, I think it is more important that a dialogue-based approach is taken in teaching learning process. These days, the criteria for measuring learning has become how much one absorbs to do -- the criteria of doing. So, these criteria of ‘doing things’ comes better from dialogue, dialogue between teacher and the student, dialogue between teachers, dialogue between students: these are becoming lace day by day. So I think for decolonization, more dialogue-based approach to teaching and learning should welcome.

Shubranshu Mishra:

Just like the society, the university and classroom are hierarchical, too. There is a lack of competitive power in staff meetings in the classroom. Staff, particularly women of colour, are expected to work twice as hard, are often overlooked and undervalued. And students coming from privileged backgrounds expect their core and traditional modules to be taught by white members of staff. So all of this needs to be addressed in a true decolonial movement in the university. And having said that, the classroom is an unequal space for students as well -- particularly those who come from marginalized experiences. So it becomes a challenge for the instructor to create the classroom as a safe space as a brave space. And here I borrow the concept of ‘principled classroom’ that is put forward by Building the Antiracist Classroom, which is a collective of women of colour academics in the United Kingdom. And what it requires is to have open discussions in the classroom that centre experiences of students who come from marginalized backgrounds. It also means to reassess privilege and understand the benefits that people draw from that privilege, even if they are not actively participating in you know, acquiring that privilege. But this is something very natural, and it means to reassess, you know, those identity positions. So it means to have these open conversations and to respect people's choices and privacy when they share the experiences of alienation and marginalization. And I think including these inclusive sources, inclusive pedagogic techniques in the classroom truly is important for decolonizing the classroom.

Partha Chatterjee:

India is almost unique in terms of the number of major languages, which are usually known as the regional languages -- at least 10 or 12 major languages with millions of speakers, each of them having a substantial print literature, in a standardized form, in which you have textbooks and school education and college education, and an entire field of publishing, and literally activities 10 or 12 different languages. Now, this is a particularly rich field. When one thinks of the question of higher education, it's a complex field, because one of the legacies of the colonial universities was the use of English as the principal language of higher education. Now, over the 20th century, most regions of India and most universities have introduced education in the regional languages. So, in fact, most universal states or at least most of the states of India, you will probably find there are more students who study in the regional language rather than in English. And yet, not just the prestige, but, in fact, the sheer practical importance of the English language as the principal language of higher education continues to this day. And this has, I mean, the one fundamental intellectual reason for this is of course, the need that is felt to connect with a global institutional world of science and social science. So, that cannot be abandoned. As a result, what has happened is the differences in prestige n these two levels -- between higher education and English on the one hand, and teaching and study in the regional languages -- this difference in social importance has had a very peculiar effect – and, in my view, damaging effect -- of essentially bifurcating the world of education into these two sectors, the more important work, certainly, almost all serious research in the social sciences in India is in fact carried out in English and publications in English, publications in English-language journals, and the need in fact to project one's research results in the global world. All of this makes the use of English important -- but what is very much lacking is the transmission of the knowledge that is produced in the English language to the other sector, where education is in the regional languages. There is not just a lag; there is often a complete separation between these two worlds. And this, it seems to me, is one of the major problems. And if one calls it ‘decolonization’, ‘the need to further decolonize’, I would not object at all. What really needs to be done is a much more active bilingualism in higher education. This unfortunately is not practiced at all. Active bilingualism in which researchers / teachers would operate as fluently in English as well as one or more regional languages, so that even if the language is different, the content need not necessarily be so totally separated. This, it seems to me, is a particularly important item that needs to be put into the agenda.

Vrinda Nayak:

Many educators are not fully aware of the concept of decolonizing the curriculum as applied to the subjects they teach. Senior leaders in universities need to prioritize creating safe spaces for discussing or debating the importance of decolonization as part of addressing social injustice in their institutions. It's also important to encourage staff and students to work in collaboration. To explore this theme and embedded within the curriculum. We need to hear the voices of those who belong to marginalized communities, particularly ethnic minority students, while creating interventions and activities in our model content, and teaching practices for them to develop a sense of belonging and create an inclusive environment. To achieve this, a change in higher education culture is required. And this is not an easy task. As it needs constant support from the institution, and engagement with the learning community as a whole.

Melissa Percival:

I think universities are very double-edged institutions, because they are institutions of power. And they are historically, very Eurocentric, Anglocentric, male dominated, perhaps skewed towards older people, rather than young, younger scholars, faculty, perhaps versus students; they're places of hierarchy. And I think unless we acknowledge the structures within those institutions, we can't claim to be genuinely curious and genuinely exploratory about our learning and our teaching. So I think it's a question of realizing that all our comments, all our argument, evaluation, all our research comes from a certain starting point. And that might be a starting point of privilege, it might be a starting point of just not seeing what the questions are. And so I think that the potential for decolonizing is really exciting, if we can actually embrace it -- and if we're willing to do the hard work, of confronting our own prejudices, and helping others around us to, to confront that, too.