“Quest for Relevance”: English Literary Studies in Post-colonial India

Abstract

This essay examines the institutional decolonisation of English Literary Studies in India through the case of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Situating AUD's curricular interventions within the theoretical legacies of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on decolonization, Gauri Viswanathan’s institutional history of English studies in India, Aníbal Quijano's concept of the coloniality of power, and Mignolo’s epistemic disobedience and decolonial option, the paper argues that decolonisation in this context has meant not merely diversifying the canon but redistributing the university's ideological orientation toward the margins. Drawing on curricular design, pedagogical practice, and the inclusion of orature and multilingual instruction, the paper offers AUD as a working model — necessarily partial and contested — for what a decolonised Literary Studies programme might look like in a multilingual postcolonial nation.