ABSTRACT
In the Introduction, the author describes the aim of this monograph. The book explores the debates over language among the elites in colonial and postcolonial India, focusing on the case of Gujarat, and engages with questions of language, identity, and power. It demonstrates what impact colonialism, nationalism, and the process of nation-building had on ideas of language, linguistic communities, and linguistic territories among different social groups, revealing how different notions of language competed and negotiated with each other, and how certain discourses became dominant in this process. The author further explains how this study on modern Gujarat is linked with wider discussions on language, society, and modernity.
