What and Whose Traditions? Indigenous Epistemologies, Decolonial Critique, and the National Education Policy 2020

Abstract

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 foregrounds “Indian Knowledge Systems” (IKS) as a corrective to colonial epistemic domination and as a foundation for curricular reform. While this move is framed as decolonial, this paper argues that the policy’s invocation of indigeneity remains conceptually under-theorized and politically selective. Drawing on Indian decolonial and critical theorists and comparative postcolonial debates on language and knowledge, the paper interrogates the categories of “indigenous,” “Indian,” and “traditional” as deployed in NEP 2020. It demonstrates that without sustained engagement with caste, religion, migration, language, and historical syncretism, the policy risks reproducing epistemic hierarchies under a nationalist–civilizational framework. Rather than constituting a genuine epistemic rupture, NEP 2020 may represent a reorientation of dominance, from colonial–Eurocentric to upper-caste–majoritarian, raising the question of whether the policy produces decolonial disruption or epistemic disorientation.