Tracing Linguistic History

Ajay Prasad

LANGUAGE IN SOUTH ASIA

Edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and S.N. Sridhar

Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2008, pp. xxiv 608, Rs. 895.00

VOLUME XXXVII NUMBER 5 May 2013

The jacket of a recently published book on Macaulay by Zareer Masani says cheekily, ‘If

you’re an Indian reading this book in English, it’s probably because of Thomas Macaulay’.

Controversial as his proposal to teach Indians the language of the Queen then was, no less

heat is generated when one mentions his name today in India. However, as Robert D. King

would have it, ‘English has become simply one more Indian language, the language used by

the minority, true—but a very articulate Indian elite minority—and by many writers with vast

international sales and readers of important Indian language. That I think, it is not likely to

change’ (Language Politics and Conflicts in South Asia).

Change, evolution, importation, modification, cohabitation and export have been the gist of linguistic history of Indian subcontinent and the

editors Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru and S.N. Sridhar have tried to sketch a biography of Language in South Asia dividing it in 10 parts—

each tracing an aspect as deeply as is required to get the feel of that. So the part ‘Language History, Families, and Typology’ places South

Asian languages in a historical context and charts their typological characteristics. So, when R.E. Asher embarks to informs of the existence of

Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic groups and their prolonged coexistence, one can imagine the shape of things to come in terms of

linguistic history about to unfold. Further, the existence of Dravidian tongues in the North West, Austro-Asiatic ones in the North Eastern plains

and the penetration of the Indo-Aryan group finishing off with the Ceylonese isolation, one knows one is dealing with a complex history which

make the linguistic-historical crossroad of Trieste into a child’s play.

Karumuri V. Subbarao, in the same part, delving into the typologies of South Asian languages, brings out the main commonalities while

underlining how that of Khasi and Kashmiri fail to fit the common typologies, speaks of linguistic unity in diversity. This chapter is brief, baring

what is absolutely essential to grasp before one embarks on the journey of discovery of South Asian linguistic history.

In the second part ‘Languages and Their Functions’, Yamuna Kachru, in ‘Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani’, takes on the most polemical debated topic

since before India’s Independence. She shows how these ‘differ from its European cousins typologically in several respects’. However, it is the

chapter on ‘Persian in South Asia’ by S.A.H. Abidi and Ravinder Gargesh that complements the previous in enlightening the birth of Urdu as

well as how Persian came to rule India for several centuries exactly in a manner English would do at the decline of the Mughal empire.

Persianization of Indian languages, the authors show, could be used to understand the analogy with the ascent, fruition and impact making of

English today.

Anvita Abbi’s ‘Tribal languages’ and Tej K. Bhatia’s ‘Major Regional languages’ are studies in contrast. While the tribal languages who have a

history of prolonged cohabitation are today threatened by extinction thus questioning the rationality of administrative planning, the emergence of

major regional languages fortified by state language status only goes to show how languages survive, refortify and redeem their dignity as

patronage is bestowed upon them.

Rakesh M. Bhatt and Ahmar Mahboob’s ‘Minority languages and Their Status’ speak of a most beautiful and at times sad state of things in the

region. While Urdu, a minority language gets constitutional and official safeguard, not many are that lucky. A minority language becomes

Pakistan’s and Jammu & Kashmir’s official language, where the majority languages get discriminated against are two situations unique in the

world. The authors speak of the official policy of support to Nepal’s minority languages and the lack thereof in Bangaldesh but they have

overlooked the sordid tale of Garhwali-Kumaoni in Uttarakhand, tribal languages in Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh, and Maithili in Bihar

after the new State formation.

Madhav M. Deshpande in ‘Sanskrit in the South Asian Sociolinguistic Context’ talks of the evolution and penetration of Sanskrit in the region

and goes further to provide an insight into the most precise and articulate grammar-making exercise of any language ever taken by Panini.

In Part 4, ‘Multilingualism, Contact, and Convergence’, Sridhar takes up the Indo-Aryanaization at the level of vocabulary, morphology, syntax,

phonetics and semantics and touches upon the sociolinguistic implications of language contact in terms of caste dialect and diglossia. He

shows the tendency of borrowing from foreign tongues rather than finding derivatives from native resources.

‘Pidgins, Creoles, and Bazaar Hindi’ by Ian Smith shows a more contemporary phenomenon: what happens when two or more languages come

into contact while each maintaining her autonomy. The case of Nagamese in North Eastern India is a most interesting study of various stages

and various ways of how a pidgin develops and of its limited or extended social use. The author, however, could have also very well gone on to

explore if the decline of Nagamese is accompanied by the inclusion of Hindi lexifier or not as we see the increasingly greater replacement by

Hindi as contact language in the region. Secondly, the history of Portuguese Creoles in India’s western coastal pockets and in Sri Lanka have

lived a most amazing survival and it is another area worth exploring in the light of state formation and the state of minority languages.

Tej K. Bhatia and Robert J. Baumgardner, in ‘Language in the Media and Advertising’ show the creativity of Indian advertising in exploiting the

linguistic plurality and hierarchy to the maximum and the employ of English in it. The author makes one see the ad-roitness and brevity in

advertising products and choosing tools most creatively. The revenge of the native goes beyond what could be done with the language of the

metropole that it once was. The South Asians not only exploit the British made hill stations in the native way, the metropole has also lost its

control over the language it wanted to teach to the babus of this region. What happens with it with the creative mind is what this study tries to

probe.

Another study into the creativity of the South Asian mind involving the English language is ‘Language and Youth Culture’ by Rukmini Bhaya

Nair. It presents through examples of scripts how the metropolitan youth of South Asia employs English and the regional language through

clippings, inflectional and derivational suffixes, abbreviations and acronyms, neologisms, nonce formations and, relexicalized items that have

undergone changes in meaning. This may be the argot of the metropolitan few at first glance but as the things go viral in this era of internet,

facebook and SMS Fwd’s, it surely shows the shape of things linguistic to come.

Wimal Dissanayake in ‘Language in Cinema’ talks of the non-visual aspect of cinematic medium and shows how this powerful medium employs

language and in turn it impacts communities. The role of classical Sanskrit theatre, folk theatre and Parsi theatre as the precedent of South

Asian cinema is discussed and the author talks of the linguistic structure of the region’s cinema. The continuance of Hindustani in Bollywood,

strengthening of regional language cinemas and how they relate to the issues of nationhood, regionalism, art and burning social sores turn it

into a most fascinating area to be explored further.

India has bred and accepted some of the most important religions in the world and some of the most ancient ones are practised to this day with

deep sincerity and dedication. In highlighting how religions have related to languages, Rajeshwari V. Pandhari-pande in ‘Language of Religion’

describes the distribution of languages across religions, ideology and power hierarchy, modernization and composite identities and goes to

show how the two religions Hinduism and Islam which had Sanskrit and Arabic respectively as the languages of religion, while maintaining

these have adopted English for its further propagation and defence. Sikhism on the other hand has accepted the modern Indian language of

Punjabi as the liturgical medium, says Pandharipande, just as Christianity has added English and regional languages into its sacred fold while

maintaining Latin.

Could Sikhism’s patronization of modern Punjabi be ascribed to why Pakistan chose not to have it as the official or state language despite a

throbbing majority of 64% speaking it? The politics of language has both mean and grandstanding elements. King in ‘Language Politics and

Conflicts in South Asia’ goes to explore this theme by looking at the ingredients that lead to language conflicts and language as a political

concern. The topic explores the history of language conflict from the Aryan invasion to the classical age of Hinduism and then situates it during

Islamic rule, colonial period and period around independence. It is probably the issue making most headlines, and thus the element present in

the history in the making. Language in South Asia is a welcome contribution to the field of the research in linguistic history of this region.

Ajay Prasad is Assitant Professor at the Centre for European and Latin American Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

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