Assam University Professor Gets Ministry Grant to Decolonise English Literary Studies

A professor from Assam University, Silchar, has secured a research grant from the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) Division of the Ministry of Education for a project that aims to fundamentally shift how English literature is taught and studied in India.

Prof. Anindya Syam Choudhury, from the Department of English, will lead the two-year project — bringing ancient Indian philosophical traditions into a field long dominated by Western critical theory.

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The project is titled "Reconfiguring English Literary Hermeneutics: Indian Knowledge Systems and the Decolonial Turn in Literary Interpretation."

At its core, it challenges the assumption that Western literary theory represents a universal standard, while indigenous methodologies are treated as little more than cultural artefacts.

Prof. Choudhury's research will explore how frameworks such as the Rasa-Dhvani tradition and Nyaya epistemology — both rooted in classical Indian philosophy — can serve as rigorous, legitimate tools for interpreting contemporary literature.

The project takes direct aim at what it describes as an "epistemic hierarchy" in the humanities — a structural bias in Indian classrooms and research institutions that continues to privilege European critical frameworks over home-grown intellectual traditions.

By integrating Indian Knowledge Systems into English studies, the project seeks to give scholars a credible indigenous lens through which to read and analyse literature — contributing to the wider decolonial movement gaining ground in academia globally.

The research also aims to build a pluralistic interpretive method that draws from multiple knowledge traditions rather than a single dominant one.