Partha Chatterjee:

One important question here that has to be answered is that not everything that was instituted under colonial rule necessarily needs to be thrown out. There is a clear question of choice of deliberate choice, and, in fact, of deliberate political choice. My own sense is that the idea of the decolonial actually has emerged in more recent times, particularly through the 1990s, I would say, in South America, because in South America, the historical situation was rather different, because there the history of empire, specifically the Spanish Empire, that ended a long time ago, 200 years ago, in the early 19th Century, in the course of the, what are known as the, Bolivarian revolutions. Now, because of those revolutions, the Spanish Empire withdrew, and various republics were formed in South America, which were essentially led by European immigrants or descendants of European immigrants. The indigenous peoples were almost entirely left out of these new republics and their polities, the institutions of the new republics. This is where the new politics has emerged in the late emerged in the late 20^th Century, of the indigenous peoples of South America to claim their role and their place within the republics. And the argument began to be made that even though the Spanish Empire was thrown out, these countries were never really decolonized -- and need to be decolonized now. And so the idea of decolonial came from Latin America, especially, for instance, in Bolivia, in the Chiapas movement in Mexico, and so on. And that had its effect on in the intellectual circles in other parts of the world. And now, it seems to me that that has had its effect in the new arguments about decolonization. And my own view is that there is definitely a need to question the various continuities with between the colonial and what has emerged after independence in the post-colonial countries. And, as I said before, this is a very deliberate politics. On the other hand, I am not entirely sure that indiscriminate use of the idea of decolonization necessarily helps us to understand what is it about the various modern institutions that were put in place under colonial rule? Which are the institutions and practices that actually have served us well, and which, in fact, need to be questioned – and, perhaps, abandoned and replaced by others? It's a new question. But my own view is that we need to look at this question not in broad, general terms, but in specific sectors in specific institutions. And it's specific, especially when we come to the question of education, in specific disciplines.