Unmasking Monocultures: Epistemic Injustice and the Crisis of Plurality in South Asia.

Social and gender injustices in South Asia are deeply entangled with epistemological infrastructures that define what is known, who is allowed to know, and how knowledge is validated. This paper argues that ontological monocultures—from the Brahmanical logic of Manusmriti and colonial codification of law to modern technocratic rationalism—have produced enduring forms of epistemic injustice. Drawing on the work of Miranda Fricker (2007) and expanding with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s (2014) concept of epistemicide, alongside South Asian thinkers like B.R. Ambedkar (1936), Uma Chakravarti (1993), Vandana Shiva (1993), and Sharmila Rege (2006), we trace a genealogy of knowledge suppression spanning caste, gender, and colonial power. We employ an interdisciplinary framework grounded in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and feminist and decolonial theory to examine how marginalized knowledge has been systemically discredited. The historical arc spans precolonial traditions through colonial impositions to postcolonial and contemporary developments, illustrating how a crisis of plurality afflicts South Asian knowledge systems. We position this inquiry as Research through Design (RtD), not to propose a singular solution, but to advocate for epistemic plurality as a foundation for social justice. Multiple case studies—from the codification of Hindu law under the British, to the exclusion of Dalit voices in academia, to the erasure of indigenous knowledges in development and technology—ground our analysis in lived realities. Finally, we outline a design-based approach—Seeds of Sovereignty and Friction-Led Inquiry—that operationalizes plural ontologies in civic infrastructures. These frameworks illustrate how participatory design and "epistemic friction" can surface suppressed perspectives, planting the seeds for cognitive justice in South Asia's future.