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.

Arguments for Decolonisation
The project of decolonisation attempts to set right the wrong history of intellectual traditions in different parts of the world and in different communities. Knowledge has become a term that is used to create hierarchies within, and among, societies. This is accomplished by valuing knowledge of the colonisers along with claiming that this knowledge is not present or available to the colonised and those lower in the social hierarchy. Thus, European colonial discourse repeatedly claimed that logic, mathematics, science, art and even religion (interpreted in a particular manner consistent with Christian theology) were higher order systems that were only possible for the European mind. This conclusion was not based on knowledge, or a critical analysis, of other knowledge systems. In this process, the knowledge systems of the colonised are presented and constructed in particular ways in order to negate their epistemological value. Moreover, colonialism created societies where the colonised were forced to repudiate the knowledge produced out of their experiences and their intellectual labour, and replace it with the systems of the colonisers.

It is important to recognize that the colonisers are not merely the European powers but also the marginalised groups within every society. As de Sousa Santos points out, colonialism is not only a relation between West and the non-West. He sees Southern Europe as being colonised by Northern Europe and those who are seen to be ‘colonised’ today includes migrants, poor, minorities, indigenous populations, victims and many others. Thus, the world of knowing and understanding created by communities of the poor, the dispossessed, those outside the dominant castes, women, migrants and so on needs to be recovered and engaged with for decolonisation to be possible.