Subverting the Erasure: Decolonial Efforts, Indigenous Language Education and Language Policy in Nepal

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes Nepal’s language education policy from a decolonial perspective, examining how rights-based (neo)liberal ideologies and policies do not necessarily contribute to creating space, either ideological or implementational (Hornberger, 2005), for Indigenous languages in education. Drawing on the theory of “decoloniality” (Quijano, 2007), I have argued that the efforts to create equitable Indigenous language education should go beyond a language-centric perspective and pay attention to recognizing and reinforcing critical historical consciousness of Indigenous communities. The data for this paper are drawn from a larger ethnographic study of multilingualism and language policy in Nepal. The analysis of ethnographically grounded dialogues with teachers and community members and the close observations of community activism and pedagogical practices shows that Indigenous communities transform discriminatory language ideologies, policies, and practices by embracing the centrality of their history, culture, and place as the fundamental aspects of Indigenous language education.

KEYWORDS:

• Decoloniality
• Indigenous language education
• language activism
• language ideology
• Nepal
• Newar

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the support of the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the Publication Subvention Fund for this paper. I thank the two reviewers for their critical comments on the paper. I am grateful to Dipak Tuladhar for trusting me to work with him and his team.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Notes on contributors

Prem Phyak

Dr. Prem Phyak teaches at the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include language policy, multilingualism, language ideology, Indigenous language education, and teacher education. He has co-authored a book, Engaged Language Policy and Practices (Routledge, 2017) and published articles in several journals.