Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: Rethinking Language, Culture and Society

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”.

Nishat Zaidi is a professor and former head of the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has authored/translated/edited 16 books. Some of her recent publications include Karbala: A Historical Play (translation of Premchand’s play Karbala with a critical introduction and notes) (2022), Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime (with Dilip Menon et al. 2022), Literary Cultures and Digital Humanities in India (with A. Sean Pue 2022), Makers of Indian Literature: Agha Shahid Ali (2016), Day and Dastan (with Alok Bhalla, 2018) and Between Worlds: The Travels of Yusuf Khan Kambalposh (with Mushirul Hasan, 2014).

Hans Harder is a professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests include modern literatures in South Asia, particularly Bengali, religious movements, and colonial and post-colonial intellectual history. He has written and/or edited Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Śrım̄adbhagabadgıt̄a:̄ Translation and Analysis (2001); Literature and Nationalist Ideology: Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages (2010); Sufism and Saint Veneration in Contemporary Bangladesh (Routledge 2011); Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair (with Barbara Mittler, 2013) and Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular (with Charu Gupta, Laura Brueck and Shobna Nijhawan, Routledge 2021).