Graphic politics in Eastern India: Script and the quest for autonomy - Nishaant Choksi (2021)

Abstract

Although linguists and other social scientists proudly assert that India is a land of linguistic diversity and richness, there aren’t many empirical studies showing how this linguistics diversity is socially and culturally anchored and more importantly how it is deployed by speakers in making sense of their identities and simultaneously asserting and claiming those identities. Even more striking is the lack of studies on script and writing systems, not just as a mere representation of speech on paper, as it was conceived in the structuralist traditions, but as a semiotic resource that is created, imagined, and utilized within the social, cultural, and political realms. Studies treating Indian languages and scripts as semiotic resources utilized by their speakers in their day-to-day linguistic encounters are slowly emerging (e.g. Ahmad, 2011; Choksi, 2014; LaDousa, 2020; Martineau, 2020). For example, while the previous studies of Urdu and Hindi in India informed by ideas of nationalism (e.g., van der Veer, 1994; King, 2001) treated them as fixed symbols of Muslim and Hindu identities respectively, recent studies (e.g. Ahmad, 2008, 2011) view script and other linguistic forms of Urdu as resources whose cultural significations emanate from and are rooted in larger social practices which are in a state of flux.