“Why Do We Need a South Asian Decolonial Criminology?” a Study from Postcolonial Subaltern Studies

South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan have criminal justice institutions (police, courts, and corrections) primarily influenced by British colonial and neocolonial rules. Consequently, the field of South Asian criminology, criminal justice, police science, and forensic science is primarily dominated by administrative-legal criminology or positivist criminology. These disciplines offer Western-Europeanized and imperial knowledge, encompassing legal perspectives, scientific criminology, post-structural and postmodern criminology, and Marxist or critical criminological perspectives. In this article, we will underscore the pressing need for fresh and inventive South Asian Criminological perspectives based on postcolonial subaltern studies, a theoretical framework that focuses on the experiences and perspectives of marginalized groups in the context of colonialism and postcolonialism. While we have different perspectives, such as decolonial studies in Latin America, counter-colonial criminology in Africa and Southern and/or southernizing criminology for the general global South, they have ontological, epistemological, empirical, and geographical theoretical biases. To address the biases inherent in global perspectives from both the developed and developing world, such as Australian Southern criminology, Latin American Southernizing and decolonial criminology, and African counter-colonial criminology, we must urgently seek new perspectives for decolonizing South Asian Criminology. This is necessary to dismantle the influence of colonialism on criminology and criminal justice institutions and systems. Postcolonial subaltern theorists have offered a critical analysis of legal, positivist, and nationalist interpretations and challenged the historical explanations provided by Marxists from ‘history from below’ perspective. Their focus has been on alternative interpretations of history that highlight the importance of spontaneous resistance and the role of subaltern and postcolonial lenses. We will explore how these theoretical perspectives offer an alternative to decolonizing South Asian Criminology based on general subaltern studies perspectives. Moreover, we will suggest alternative perspectives for decolonizing criminal justice agencies in South Asian countries based on the lens of decolonization of criminology.