Nilanjana Gupta

I think English is one of the most difficult to decolonize because we're teaching English literature. And I think it was only probably around the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, that this whole issue of ‘what do we teach when we're teaching English literature?’ Because, traditionally, when we were students, for example, we had in our syllabus, only the British Brits, not even American. So English literature was literature produced in Britain. We had Joyce, of course, a little bit of Joyce and things like that, but otherwise, it was only that. And then, today, if you look at the syllabus, in various English departments across the world, and in India, you will find the syllabus has opened up a lot. So one thing is that when we talk about the canon, which we do so, you know, what is it that is worth teaching? And what are the criteria for choosing something and not choosing something? Do we have one criterion for choice? Do we look at something which is very elusive, which we can call ‘literary word’? But is literary was only about the text only about telling a story? Or is literary word also connected with social consciousness, with social work, with social ideas? Why do we teach literature? Is it only we want to look at them? And you look at the students to look at the way in which you know, sentences are written? Or do we want to also ask them to look at the conditions within which a certain story is written? Do we also want to them to look at the history behind that author -- why that author told the story? And what are we actually doing? We had to face these questions for ourselves in the department.