Only a materialist-comparatist frame can break the colonial grip on Indian English Studies.

Evidence

The history of English Literature is now woven into the very modalities of many strands of Indian thought, and no disaggregation of these elements is possible without detailed and subtle understanding of the verities of this influence. It is only by submitting· the teaching of English Literature to the more crucial and comparatist discipline of Historical and Cultural Studies, and by connecting the knowledge of that literature with literatures of our own, that we can begin to break that colonial grid and to liberate the teacher of English from a colonially determined, subordinated and parasitic existence. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1227