Digital Humanities and Electronic Literature in India: opportunities, challenges, and future directions

Digital Humanities (DH) and Electronic Literature (E-Lit) are emerging yet underrepresented fields in Indian higher education. In many minority-world institutional contexts, E-Lit has developed through dedicated labs, courses, publishing platforms and professional networks. In India, it more often develops within DH initiatives shaped by curricular pathways and infrastructure constraints, reflecting a wider academic gap where digital literary studies lack standalone curricular visibility and institutional support. India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 highlights the need for digital literacy and interdisciplinary engagement, creating openings for DH and E-Lit in higher education. This study examines their trajectory in India, emphasising interdependence, challenges, and potential. Using Indian Postcolonial Digital Humanities (IPDH) as a framework, it explores how these fields reclaim marginalised narratives and promote culturally embedded digital practices rooted in India's multilingual literary traditions. The concept of techno-indigeneity is introduced to develop globally relevant yet locally grounded methodologies. Aligned with the Digital India Initiative, this study draws on participant data from a Government of India-sponsored Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) course on DH and E-Lit, identifying gaps and future directions, advocating curriculum innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and policy interventions to address linguistic diversity, digital infrastructure and India's cultural and literary traditions.