Language Identity and Power in Modern India

This book is a historical study of modern Gujarat India addressing crucial questions of language identity and power.It examines the debates over language among the elite of this region during a period of significant social and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Language debates closely reflect power relations among different sections of society such as those delineated by nation ethnicity region religion caste class and gender. They are intimately linked with the process in which individuals and groups of people try to define and project themselves in response to changing political economic and social environments. Based on rich historical sources including official records periodicals literary texts memoirs and private papers this book vividly shows the impact that colonialism nationalism and the process of nation-building had on the ideas of language among different groups as well as how various ideas of language competed and negotiated with each other.Language Identity and Power in Modern India: Gujarat c.1850–1960 will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on South Asian history and to those interested in issues of language society and politics in different parts of the modern world.