Books

Pub Date2009
ISBN9780253220691
Pages281
Link to Publisher

Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue

Lisa Mitchell
Indiana University Press

What makes someone willing to die, not for a nation, but for a language? In the mid-20th century, southern India saw a wave of dramatic suicides in the name of language. Lisa Mitchell traces the colonial-era changes in knowledge and practice linked to the Telugu language that lay behind some of these events. As identities based on language came to appear natural, the road was paved for the political reorganization of the Indian state along linguistic lines after independence.