Four Learnings from Gautam Bhan

Gautam Bhan is one of the foremost academics advocating how environments on the Global South need their own theory. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity of dabbling into a lot of discussion on knowledge production within the Global south, as well as the urge to decolonise education in this region. In my effort to give meaning to what "decolonise" means in academia, and how does one think of performing it, I indulged myself in Bhan's talks, from one of which, I got some very tangible ideas for academic practice. Here they are:

The ability to translate

Academics are not able to translate their language in different scenarios/situations and therefore they feel silenced. Academics speak in largely academic situations/settings because they are almost sure that it is (going to be) the space from where the validation of their language comes from, and thus are trapped in the "seduction of the academica"

Automatic Modernity

Bhan points out how the project of modernism gives an automatic direction to aspiration - and to aspire has to come to mean to be modern. This conceptual relationship between modernity (read modernity coming from the West) and the desire for progress and the engine of aspiration needs to be challenged. That is the culture work academics have to collectively undertake, Bhan suggests.

On Insularity of Academic Voice

Bhan says that no one stops academics from writing, intervening and performing in domains outside of academia. Therefore, academics cannot afford to stay within the bubble of knowledge production of academia and lament that the world outside is not listening to them. The must actively find audiences and write in their language to make their knowledge and findings about the world more accessible.

On Theory from the North

Bhan says that we need to "particularise" Northern theory - meaning, theory coming from the north is not universal theory, and that it must be assigned a status that it is a theory of that place - and therefore, it cannot be "the" way of doing/thinking things everywhere, rather, "a" way in which things happen somewhere, and therefore all ways of doing things hold value and knowledge because they are inherently embedded in certain values of a place.