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Renny Thomas and Sasanka Perera, "Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes" (Columbia UP, 2025)
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- [00:01]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
Close your eyes.
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Dr. Rennie Thomas
Feel your body relax.
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Dr. Rennie Thomas
And breathe.
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Dr. Rennie Thomas
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- [01:01]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome back to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkar. And more importantly, I have the double delight, the pleasure of welcoming back to the podcast Dr. Rennie Thomas, and welcoming Dr. Sanka Pereira to the podcast. They're both co editors of a really interesting, brand new Columbia University Press publication called decolonial South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes. What a fascinating and interesting title. Welcome both to the podcast.
- [01:31]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Thank you. Thank you.
- [01:33]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Yeah, it was intriguing. It was an intriguing pleasure going through this book and the various entries. Tell us first about the. How do you see the bachana, the backstory? How did this come into being, this book?
- [01:44]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
I mean, it has a kind of a. I think it has two histories in the sense that I had been talking about this with a bunch of colleagues, including Ravi Kumar, who's one of the contributors, in a very different context. How, how do you create a body of work like this? But I, I think we have mentioned that in, in the introduction or some such place. And, and, and that began because when South Asian University was started in New Delhi ABOUT 13, 14 years ago, one of the things some of us tried to do was to also try, try to see whether some kind of contribution towards philosophy and thinking in general in social sciences and humanities could come from our part of the world. It usually comes from what we call the west. To us and I, we were wondering whether we could do that kind of thinking for ourselves and maybe the west could Borrow it too, you know, that kind of. So. But then that conversation didn't go into a book. So that is when Renee and I, when he went to Bhopal, I guess we had a chat. We were both in India and To see whether that idea could be concretized. And here the younger scholar was very enthusiastic. Well, read about, you know, the kinds of things that we want to talk about. And it took off from there. I mean, if I. I suppose if you. I mean, if I am to resurrect my Buddhist background, you know, some good karma brought us together in certain ways. And it seemed to have. A Buddhist and a Catholic have been brought together in this kind of thing. And I think both these histories had to come into place, otherwise this wouldn't have worked. Right. Initial idea. And then. So Rene. I don't know if I've forgotten anything.
- [03:42]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
No, that's it, actually. I mean, our idea was to also, you know, contribute to what is. So, I mean, now everyone talks about theory from the south and theory from elsewhere. So we thought like, you know, having contributors from this part of the world, theorizing about concepts and ideas can contribute, of course, to the theorization elsewhere. As in when we think from elsewhere, it is the worst, but also from the worst when they think about the theorization should, we thought should come from this part of the world as well.
- [04:14]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Yeah, so that's really fascinating, the premise. So just for those listening, the book unites a number of articles on keywords, just as the title suggests. And all of the entries are intriguing, that they reexamine or problematize or challenge sort of Western hegemony in a sense of social theory. Social theory of South Asia in particular. And the entries, they're drawn from various source languages. Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Assamese, you name it. So really, really fascinating endeavor, both in terms of its overall enterprise and also in terms of the format, pulling keywords. Do you want to say a little bit about how you amassed this army team? What does that look like?
- [05:11]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
I guess I think this is mostly Rene's contribution because I think he was more familiar with the kinds of people we ended up inviting, either because they were friends or colleagues or, you know, people. I also invited a few. But there was something that certain things that were very clear to us and that is that people should be able to contribute something that was. That has not been discussed before in this sense. See, if you take the kinds of words that we've looked at, we are looking at South Asia, not in terms of geographic entities like this country and that and so on. We are looking at it in terms of language. So for example, if you take Tamil, it is not just a language in. In Tamil, nad it is also language in north and Eastern Sri Lanka. So, so when we are talking about Tamil as an example, it. It takes into account that entire region. If you talk about Singhala, which is my language, it takes into it it's only Sri Lanka. Right. So the way in which cultural mapping is done in this book, the reimagination of South Asia is primarily through language.
- [06:34]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Right?
- [06:35]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
So that is one. And so we were trying to figure out who would be familiar to talk about concepts and words in these languages, whether it's singular. Tamil, Malayalam, and then there are things like Hebrew, Malayalam, Arabic, Malayalam, which we didn't know kind of existed, Nepali, and, you know, Hindi and all these kinds of things. Some of the languages are better known. So the point is, we wanted people to talk about specific things in these languages that they were familiar with, which they could suggest, okay, now, can this word, can this concept be an idea that can read social formations or politics or whatever in other parts of the region and the world?
- [07:26]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Right.
- [07:27]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
So, for example, you talk about gender and caste and those kinds of things which came to us from the enterprise of European and North American social sciences. So in the same sense, we are not rejecting any of these things. We are simply trying to see whether we can also contribute things from our languages, because assuming that concepts and philosophies have to come from the context and the temporal conditions which in which we actually work. So this is what we were trying to do. Rene, I don't know if you want to add anything.
- [08:02]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Yeah, I mean, just to continue. Actually, the initial idea was to, you know, so when we invited the authors, we actually gave them exactly a year to write this piece, and we wanted them to write 4,000 to 5,000 words. So it's like really a lengthy exercise. So, you know, in between we had conversation, etc. But I think the idea was to really have larger essays that would really touch upon questions around theories, but informed through concepts and ideas coming from the concepts and the language that they have selected, actually. So there are two things that we wanted them to reflect upon. First was that what is it that they are trying to theorize from the concepts that they have selected? Second is about how do they contribute to the larger decolonizing kind of exercise. In that process, we also wanted them to really think about the larger politics of decolonial in our times. There's a larger appropriation of decolonial et CETERA So you see a lot of the essays and our introduction also, we talk about why should we also challenge that kind of this kind of nativism and an appropriation of the decolonial, et cetera. So is there a way of really talking about decolonial without being nativistic and reductionistic, et cetera, et cetera. So all the essays have really attempted. In fact, you'll see that. So the essays really, I mean, you know, the authors come from diverse traditions. You see very well established scholars like Banu Subramaniam Pradnama Baneraji and others. We also have a lot of new oasis, actually people who teach in different small places. Otherwise they wouldn't really write about these notions of, you know, indigenity and decolonialization, etc. Etc. That was the aim and I. We think we are kind of able to convey the message that we wanted.
- [09:54]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Yeah, the stance of the book is really fascinating. The format in the stance, it's quite novel. But the novelty is not for novelty's sake. The novelty is commensurate with the changes we need in the lay of the land. That you have these four or five thousand wordish, deeper than sort of dictionary entries, but sort of these, these sort of bite sized essays on a particular topic framed by not only the categories of South Asia, but the linguistic contours, the linguistic currents. And so one of the sort of the truisms that always comes out of my mouth here and there on this podcast is that the vast majority of the podcast guests are situated either in North America, particularly in America, some Canada, some Europe. I've had a number of South Asian scholars as well, really from all over the world. But if when we are studying South Asia with western categories, our categories don't change, it means we're not really studying South Asia. It means we're not quite studying South Asia because the data should enrich the category. Yet this book is taking that and applying it on a meta level, such as the discussion of the data itself creates its own categorization. It really is fascinating. I think we should maybe give the listeners maybe some examples, a snippet of one or two of the entries and talk about what's happening there. That's one sort of request. And the other massive sort of big ticket idea to my mind is with respect to the effort to quote, unquote, decolonize whatever that means to whomever hears it. You know, is that merely just reacting? Is that merely. Is it what's, you know, how does one do that? Because whether we are Whether one adopts a implicit or explicit colonial stance or one reacts to one overtly, either way, one is caught when one is being defined by the very power structure that one is aiming to transcend. So then.
- [12:03]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
So the.
- [12:03]
Dr. Raj Balkar
So then how do we create a space other than that? So, yeah, I've. I've said too much already, but please, I'd love to hear some responses.
- [12:12]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
Okay, I will. I will talk less this time, and I'll let Rene explain. See, two things. One is decolonial itself can be very tricky, right? As an. As a. As a word. But I think the way in which we've tried to define or to explain what we wanted to do is very simple, and that is to get ourselves out of the shackles of various kinds of colonialisms and colonialisms here we don't necessarily mean only the kinds of European colonialism that controlled our politics and history and so on. That is one with which came all sorts of ideas which basically have created the personality of social sciences and humanities in our part of the world and the rest of the world. Right, so that was one. But the coloniality can also come from hegemonic use of language within our countries. Right. So in where I come from, obviously, there is a fairly serious Sinhala domination in. In Sri Lankan culture. Right. If you look at India, then you can see the language politics have been going on for a very long time, particularly with regard to Hindi and things like Tamil and Malayalam.
- [13:34]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Right.
- [13:35]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
So we. That is why we have a very serious plurality of languages in the book. So basically, we are. We are trying to deal with two kinds of colonialism here. One is the colonialism that comes from power of language within. Power of certain languages within our countries, and then the kind of colonialism of ideas that have come to us from outside. So that is one. Now, what do we do with certain kinds of words? I will just try to explain the word that I dealt with and then a bit of a general conversation, too. I tried to bring in this word that became very well known in the recent street protests in Sri Lanka, which was Aragalaya. Right. Aragalaya became. I mean, everybody was talking about it. I. People ask me what it means even in India. I mean, this is a. These are very obscure Sinhala word, but it had all sorts of meanings at different times. Now, basically, it means some kind of a struggle, right? But the original meaning was the. The kind of music that was made when women wore, you know, these, these jewelry in their feet. That was the original reference to this. But everybody had forgotten about it. But In Marxist parlance in Sri Lanka, Aragala meant the kinds of protests and the upheavals that you could initiate in order to change society, revolution included. But in this last phase, it, it meant something very specific. It meant the kind of struggle that would change society radically. The kind of, and also the kind of struggle that was supposed to be non violent. All these things were embedded in that word, which was not embedded in the same way up to this time. So the question was now if is it only a thing that that word, is it only something that can read that specific situation? Or if we sensibly bring into social sciences of our region or elsewhere in the world, can that concept be used to talk about similar situations elsewhere? And so that is the kind of thing that we are trying to do. And remember, this is not in our mind, this is not the end product. We are trying to initiate the conversation, intellectual conversation of what things can, how things can go from here. And, and also I want to make this one last point. And that is, I mean, keywords, kind of discourses are, are not new. There have been attempts before these two and there will be after this. But the difference in our attempt is that we have actually given far more space for scholars to think about their ideas. It is not just a paragraph, it's actually almost a fairly serious longish essay. So it gives you the freedom to think and to share that thinking with readers. So this is what we've tried to Rennie.
- [16:53]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Yeah, in that sense, you know, keywords are essentially forms of theories in, in our view. And when we invited the other, we wanted them to keep that in mind. So like, you know, three words that I want to really, you know, talk about as a kind of example is like, you know, the first word is really fascinating word actually coming from the northeastern land of Nagaland. It's written by an anthropologist, actually, Kanata Chopi. He writes about maroon, which is essentially dormitory for men. And he's trying to argue what happens because Maroong is now not taken very seriously at all by the large notions of state. What happens when you actually think about these institutions also as part of the larger social structure, what happens to the political socialization and things like that and how that contributes to the belonging of a place. So it's very interesting because this word is very, you know, essentially coming from a particular place. It's not even like, you know, he talks about in fact, a particular place from north. I mean, Nagaland, not necessarily doesn't really represent Nagaland itself. Right. So in that sense, you know, can we think about these categories actually to theorize, for example, politics, you know, what. What does it do in political theory, for example.
- [18:06]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Right.
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Dr. Sasanka Pereira
And similarly, another word, again coming from northeast, is from Arunachal Pradesh. It's a very fascinating word called e, and that essentially means shamans. And then, you know, others, both are anthropologists, Hambigaya, Dure and Reseko. Really they are asking this very interesting question. If you look at the life world of ego, you know, they actually conceive their world within the human animal relations. You know, they don't make that distinction. And what happens then if you really look at the life world of ego, to think and theorize about environment, you know, forest conservation and things like that. Right. So it really then contributes to, you know, the kind of decolonial that we are thinking. Right. You know, the kind of decolonial theorizing that we have in mind, in our mind. Hence my own, you know, keyword is actually laboratory, because when we think of laboratory, we are only thinking about these mega big laboratories, right? So what happens to the smaller laboratories that we see in our everyday life and how that contributes to our understanding of the social and the science and then how that really, then, you know, helps us theorize the larger questions of science and society and technology, et cetera. So these are the three representative words, and as you can see, that they come from different worlds and they come from different languages, different regions. Of course, one is in English, the other coming from Nagaland, the other from Arunachal Pradesh. So that's how we conceived. And we hope the readers would find all the other concepts and keywords useful in their own thinking of South Asia
- [19:42]
Dr. Raj Balkar
as a. Yeah, actually, since you just mentioned the readers, I'll ask this question. I usually ask it a little later. But who might most benefit from the book? Who's the book aimed for?
- [19:53]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
I think the simplest answer is people like us who are curious, who want to think out of the box, who are very familiar with the kinds of theoretical constructs that have come to us from more powerful parts of the world. Because this is both Rene's training and mine is part of that we are not out outside to. I mean, whether it's Marxism or post postmodern thinking, I mean, these are things we are very familiar with. But. But then we also very curious to see whether there can be this contribution in the same way those guys have done from our part of the world. So I would say the people. See, if people are satisfied with the, the kind of, of idea that philosophy and theory is somehow universal, then I think, let them be satisfied. But I think for people who are a little bit anxious that this might not be the case, then I think they'll find our book very interesting, whether they are scholars or academics or whoever in mainstream institutions or even general, I mean, regular readers who are curious. I don't think the book is difficult to read because usually what happens is when it comes to theory of Philosophy, there is this general assumption that it's difficult to read, and many of us write it in such a way that it becomes linguistically challenging. But I don't think that's the case with this book in general. The short answer to your question is that anybody who's interested in thinking out of the box about theory and philosophy and how this might. How we might be able to turn the table, so to speak, and allow thinking from this kind of South Asia to talk to the rest of the world, those are the kinds of people who will find it interesting, really.
- [21:58]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Actually, I mean, I think, you know, the book aims at. Aims at actually people who want to understand South Asia because, you know, very often what happens is theorization doesn't really happen, as they believe. And the idea is to really then see how theories are. Theories work in this part of the world. It's not that, you know, people only do field work. I think that distinction is something that many scholars have really, you know, discussed and challenged in this part of the world. So our aim is actually then, you know, joining those kind of theorization to say that, no, these keywords are actually part of the theorization that scholars who are located elsewhere from here. Elsewhere also means the Northeastern, The North American universities, European universities should also take these ideas that emerge from this part of the world seriously and engage with them and not merely seeing them as actually categories that emerge from fieldwork, but also from the larger theorization. In many ways, it is to really challenge that distinction of theory and the field as well as.
- [22:59]
Dr. Raj Balkar
So, to put it, perhaps at the risk of oversimplifying, it's theorization stemming directly from what's happening on the ground, from direct experience with phenomena. And what better theorization could there be, assuming it's done well? So one of the moves in the
- [23:21]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
book,
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Dr. Raj Balkar
in terms of power structures, in addition to being purposefully decolonial, there's also a move to. There's a move to. Away from Brahmanism or Brahmanical sort of bias. Do you want to say a word
- [23:39]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
or two about that? Yeah, I mean, you know, a couple of essays, in fact, really talks about the Significance of thinking from below. So you know, like whether it is Dalit epistemologies thinking through Ambedkar. And in fact, you know, when we think about Ambedkar, we are also, you know, again, you know, the larger notion of connected history trees. It's very important because we are trying to also see the connection between Ambedkar a thought and WEB Du Bois and the other figures.
- [24:04]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Right.
- [24:05]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
So even when we are thinking about Ambedkar, it is still very useful for others. That's the whole idea. Right. So this thinking from below, in fact more than three to four chapters really then discusses certain ideas from those life folds. I think it is from for example, certain indigenous worlds. It's from Dalit lifeholds and a couple of essays are actually from Islamic worlds. So I think that these ideas then contributes to the kind of decolonial that we are talking about. Because very often when we think of decolonial from this part of the world, it's essentially coming from the dominant. But what we are trying to do is to really keep a distance from that kind of thinking and to see what the so called others how to say.
- [24:47]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Yeah, fascinating. Is there anything else about the book or the project you'd like to touch on?
- [24:53]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
Very curious that something like this in, I mean something this extensive really hasn't happened before. I mean, as we were saying that these keywords have been published before. But there has never really been a serious enough engagement in our part of the world. Even though decolonial theory and so on and so forth have been making the rounds since the 1970s, particularly from South America. But somehow it hasn't really caught on in our part of the world. Maybe because we are fairly comfortable with what we have inherited through our colonial experience. So what I would like to see is a conversation around the possibility of theorizing based on this book. Because what we have done is to explain, I mean basically outline the possibilities. This is not, as I was saying before, this is not the end of end of the conversation. This is the beginning. And this is also not, I think Rene explained this. This is not some sort of a cry towards the past and nativism and so on and so forth. We are just interested in looking at the ways in which our languages and cultures have produced certain kinds of knowledge. This is not harking to our surpassed. See, we want these words and concepts to be able to talk to the present in this region as well as in the rest of the world, if it's possible. Right. And also move by the idea that theory is by definition not universal, that they will come out, that they will be better produced and understood if you pay attention to the times and the histories and the politics in the context of which they emerge in the first place. So if people are interested in these things, then I think this will open new avenues of conversations. This is what I think.
- [27:03]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Yeah, I mean, exactly. So one of the things is actually, when we think of this book, what makes it very different is actually some of the essays are really historical in nature, based on archival work. Some essays are ethnographic, some are creative in nature. So what we are interested in is to see how this volume can speak to other locations, like, for example, Latin American context. There are really fascinating keywords, efforts actually, coming from Latin America. And you would like to see how this can have a conversation with those kind of theorization. And I think there'll be much that we share with the other places as well.
- [27:43]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Yeah, I'm just looking at my list here of notes that I made and there's a couple I'll touch on. We do have a bit of time here. And this is in no way a leading question. It really is an open question. But were there any keywords or essays that surprised you, that sort of struck you or sort of stuck out in your mind? I'm sure you know all of them, if not the vast majority, stuck out in your mind in different ways. But were some of the. The rumination surprising to you?
- [28:11]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
See, for me, a lot of these essays deal with, written by scholars from India, a lot of them. And so as an outsider, in certain ways, as an outsider, a lot of these things were new to me. But at the same time, if you take the word shoonya that Prathama Banerjee has talked about, now, I grew up knowing what shoonya meant since I was, you know, grade one. But then knowing that and knowing what she is talking about are two very different things. Right? So in that sense, it surprised me because we have this knowledge, if you are looking at only at this word, the kinds of things that are embedded in it, the possibilities of interpretation and so on that we have not touched. This is not going back to the past. This is about looking at certain kinds of ideas that. That makes sense today, Right. So that sense, lot of things did surprise me because we had to read every one of these things, right? And to me, it was very. A lot of these words that I actually didn't know. And I didn't even know that there were certain languages in India that was called, for example, Hebrew, Malayalam. Right. I knew there was Malayalam. But so in that sense, I. I would say that even this Sri Lankan word, kole, which literally means piece of paper, but piece of paper articulated in the context of migration, of Sinhala migration to Italy and the kinds of discourses that come out of, of being illegal in a foreign country and that kind of thing. So a completely different kinds of meanings compared to what the context in which that word is usually used. So yes, there were surprises at different levels. One is hearing some of these things for the first time, but more importantly about the possibilities of interpretation, about the possibilities of theorizing, which became very clear.
- [30:23]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, most of the words are like, really? I mean, it came to us a surprise, especially when the fine finished product came to us. So there were like, you know, few essays that caught our attention. I think Pradhama's one essay that has already mentioned the other essay was by Ezan and he's a graduate student at Chicago University. And he has this really fascinating essay on Korva, which is essentially a Tamil Arabic word or Arabic Tamil word, where, for example, let me read parts. It's beautifully written, so I think it will be useful for the, you know, the audience. So he concludes his essay on Korwa. He writes to sum up the term Korva, Korve, Korkutal. Korkal helps us to think through the conundrum of poesy in pre modern South Asia as a craft from a para Sanskritic ideology of theopathy, and provides the hermeneutics to understand the significations of metapoetic references from the lexicons of gemology and alchemy, you know, and the allusions of abiding pearls, corals and rubies stringing garlands of flowers, transmuting silver to gold, churning butter from milk. And the lie helps us to reimagine poesy beyond the parameters of existing literary theories in quotation mark. Employing the categories of craft, didacticism and ethical guidance, Korva pushes against narrow limits of high and low divisions of art, transcending the binaries of material culture and literature, and offers tools to reimagine the firmly defined categories of Western aesthetics. And this is what make many of these entries so fascinating because they were actually looking at their keyword from very unconventional categories, like, for example, here to talk about the pre modern South Asian poetry, he's looking at the craft and pearls. So that kind of imagination. So I think I'm just giving you this as an example, but most of the essays are actually as surprising as this. I'm sure Sasanga would agree with this.
- [32:35]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
Yeah. Obviously there's no disagreement. This probably. For me, this is probably the most interesting, intellectually refreshing exercise I've ever done. I mean, we've all written things, right. We've all edited things. But this was intriguing, to put it mildly. I really hope that other people will find it interesting, too.
- [32:59]
Dr. Raj Balkar
Fantastic. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much both for appearing on the podcast today.
- [33:04]
Dr. Rennie Thomas
Thank you.
- [33:05]
Dr. Sasanka Pereira
Thanks so much.
- [33:06]
Dr. Raj Balkar
For those listening, of course, we've been speaking with doctors Rennie Thomas and Sasanka Pereira on this brand new publication called Decolonial South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes. Until next time, keep listening, keep reading, keep well, and keep contemplating the power of theorization and where it comes from. Take. Sam.