Decolonising Epistemicide In NLUs – A Probe Into Modernisation Of Indian Legal Education

Adheena Biju, LL.M., The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

ABSTRACT

NLUs, supposedly the grandeur of legal education in India reveals slight tendencies of knowledge assassination or epistemicide. It is rather a subconscious exercise that traces its way back to colonialism induced hegemonic manipulation. NLUs’ perceived superiority over non-NLUs leads to colonization and resultant epistemicide in legal education in general. However, in a postcolonial milieu, they ought to be the premier institutions that foster legal education and research in the country. The paper commences by having a glance at the history of National law schools, their scope and objectives, followed by enumeration and analysis of Legal research in perspective. Methodologies currently used in NLUs are learned in order to expose colonial heritage, if any. After establishing that indeed colonial psyche is intertwined in the methodologies in praxis, the paper strives to elucidate epistemicide in law schools, induced by hegemonic manipulation in the backdrop of a deeply rooted colonial narrative. In search of a liberal legal research methodological setup, the paper purports to find its conceptual remedy from Critical Legal Studies movement, an essential bifurcation of postcolonial research methodology in the wake of liberal legalism.

Keywords: NLUs, colonial hangover, colonial psyche, epistemicide, decolonization, postcolonialism, liberal legalism