ABSTRACT
This volume critically engages with recent formulations and debates regarding the status of the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent vis-à-vis English. It explores how language ideologies of the “vernacular” are positioned in relation to the language ideologies of English in South Asia.
The book probes into how we might move beyond the English-vernacular binary in India, explores what happened to “bhasha literatures” during the colonial and post-colonial periods and how to position those literatures by the side of Indian English and international literature. It looks into the ways vernacular community and political rhetoric are intertwined with Anglophone (national or global) positionalities and their roles in political processes.
This book will be of interest to researchers, students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, Indian Writing in English, Indian literatures, South Asian languages and popular culture. It will also be extremely valuable for language scholars, sociolinguists, social historians, scholars of cultural studies and those who understand the theoretical issues that concern the notion of “vernacularity”.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|123 pages
Ideologies of Vernaculars and English
chapter 1|17 pages
Beyond Hegemonic Binaries
chapter 3|18 pages
“Mother English”
chapter 4|15 pages
The Location of Theory
chapter 6|23 pages
Political Reform, Territorialising Language
part II|95 pages
Lost/Found in Translation between Vernaculars and English
chapter 8|15 pages
British Translators, Bhagat Singh, and ‘Atheism’
chapter 9|18 pages
Telling Lives in Forked Tongues
chapter 10|19 pages
Vernacularizing Science in Colonial Bengal
chapter 11|17 pages
Multilingual Locals in Transnational Geographies
part III|95 pages
Language Ideology, Literature and the Vernacular Public Spheres