Linguistic minorities and strategic mobilisation in eastern India

Bengali-Biharis during the era of linguistic territorialism (1935–57)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8961597
AutoresMedha Bhattacharya (London School of Economics and Political Science, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen60
Número3
Páginas275-300
Fecha de publicación2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00194646231183347
OpenAlexW4385634194
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas24

This article analyses how linguistic minorities in the province of Bihar navigated the era of linguistic territorialism, when mainstream political organisations and figures within India largely agreed that specific linguistic communities ‘belonged’ in particular regions. Indian scholarship has tended to focus on the mechanisms that brought about the linguistic reorganisation of states in India, therefore, concentrating largely on the ways in which territory and language became intrinsically connected. This article will examine the link of language and belonging with regard to a ‘community’, which demanded that states remain linguistically and culturally heterogenous. It focuses on the section of Biharis that identified Bengali as their ‘mother-tongue’ and tracks the transformation of Bengali politics within the province/state during the transition from colonial rule to independence. It explores the ways in which narratives of historical Bengali settlement were deployed for different reasons across this period, and argues that Bengalis in Bihar conceptualised the ordering of the Indian nation in a way that was inherently different from mainstream understandings of how the country should be ordered during this period. Bengali-Bihari figures and publications deployed rhetoric that attached much greater value to territorial belonging than to linguistic or cultural belonging. This article demonstrates that contrary to common assumptions, there were large groups of people who conceptualised India not just as a linguistically heterogenous nation, but one that consisted of linguistically heterogenous states that protected minority linguistic communities

Aesthetics · Bengali · Colonialism · Independence (probability theory · Linguistic landscape · Linguistics · Mainstream · Narrative · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Gender Studies · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies