Vernacular : Three Essays on an Ambivalent Concept and Its Uses in South Asia

This book examines the validity of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ and the position of the so-called ‘vernaculars’ in colonial and postcolonial settings. It addresses recent formulations and debates regarding the status of regional languages of South Asia in relation to English. The authors explore the range of meanings the term has assumed and trace a history of contestation since the colonial age. They contend that though the ‘vernacular’ in South Asia has, since the nineteenth century, often operated as a hegemonic category relegating the languages thus designated to an inferior status, those languages (and other cultural formations labelled as ‘vernacular’) have also received empowering impulses and vested with qualities like groundedness and strength. The book highlights the need for a critical discussion of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ in the context of the ongoing rise of Anglophonia in South Asia as a whole and post-liberalisation India in particular.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary and culture studies, history, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.

Hans Harder is 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 postcolonial intellectual history. He has written and/or edited Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Śrīmadbhagabadgītā: 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).

Nishat Zaidi is Professor and former Head at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. 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).

Torsten Tschacher is Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He received his PhD in South Asian studies from the National University of Singapore in 2007 and has subsequently held positions at the Universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen as well as Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on the history and discursive traditions of Muslims around the Bay of Bengal. His book Race, Religion, and the ‘Indian Muslim’ Predicament in Singapore was published in 2018 with Routledge, and he has recently co-edited, with Pushkar Sohoni, Non-Shia Practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the Diaspora: Beyond Mourning (Routledge 2022). He has also translated two novels from Tamil to German.