Postcolonial Pedagogy and the Dialogic Classroom: A Critical Reflection from India

Abstract

This essay examines the Indian humanities classroom as both a site of postcolonial critique and a space in which the authority structures that postcolonial theory seeks to dismantle are frequently reproduced. Drawing on the work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Audre Lorde, Derek Walcott, and Mikhail Bakhtin, it argues for a dialogic pedagogy that holds teachers accountable to the critical commitments their discipline professes. The essay proceeds through three movements: an opening reflection on the gap between scholarly self-representation and pedagogical practice; an account of classroom encounters — at a slum outreach school in Chennai and at Saint Berchmans College, Kerala — in which genuinely dialogic moments emerged; and a concluding argument for the postcolonial classroom as a site of ethical as well as intellectual responsibility. The essay notes, finally, that Kerala's pedagogical tradition offers a partial but instructive counterexample to the broader tendency of Indian higher education to reproduce the monologic classroom it nominally opposes. Keywords: pedagogy; Postcolonial; Thiongo; Walcott; Dialogic classroom