Decolonising science is not just a negative project of getting rid of dominant patterns of thought and opening up a space for more local knowledge systems. It is also a production of new forms of thinking, writes Sundar Sarukkai. 

Decolonisation is largely seen as a critique of the dominance of knowledge and intellectual practices of dominant (colonial) cultures as well as a call to replace them with 'indigenous'/’local’ knowledge systems and practices.

Specifically, it is a call to replace/modify the hegemony of ‘Western’ systems of knowledge in the sciences, medicine, philosophy, education, development and in all aspects of the society in non-western societies. It is a recognition that Eurocentric models that are an integral part of education, knowledge systems and political processes in the non-West are not universal and have to be replaced with the intellectual productions of the local and the marginalised.

Knowledge has become a term that is used to create hierarchies within, and among, societies.

Decolonisation is a cleansing process that is used across a wide range of activities and social structures such as in decolonising the university, pedagogy, curriculum, library, methods and aims of research, development, ideas of progress, ways of being human and being social. Typically they draw attention to a variety of knowledge systems produced by communities across the world, such as in medicine, in mathematics, in education systems, narratives on the universe, society and so on. The call for pluriversity instead of university, by scholars such as Mbembe and Mignolo, is based on ideas of pluralism and epistemic diversity.