Reimagining English in Postcolonial India: Artificial Intelligence, Linguistic Politics, and Pedagogical Futures

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how English is learned, taught, researched, and produced in India. Moving beyond automation and convenience, AI compels a deeper rethinking of what counts as “English competence,” who gets to participate in English-language knowledge economies, and how literary and cultural value is created and evaluated. This article examines the role of AI across three interlocking domains—language learning, literary studies (including creative practice and criticism), and classroom pedagogy. After establishing the historical and sociolinguistic context of English in India, it maps key AI affordances (e.g., adaptive feedback, multimodal tutoring, corpus-driven literary analysis, assistive writing, and automated assessment), and critically explores their promise and pitfalls in relation to equity, multilingualism, authenticity, academic integrity, and teacher identity. The paper proposes a pragmatic framework—CARE (Contextualize, Augment, Reframe, Evaluate)—to guide responsible adoption, outlines design principles for Indian classrooms and campuses, and identifies a research agenda tailored to India’s linguistic diversity and infrastructural realities. It argues that AI is not merely a tool to accelerate existing practices but a catalyst for reimagining the epistemic, ethical, and aesthetic foundations of English in India.