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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
155922
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the way in which assemblages of technologies, political institutions, and practices of exchange have rendered both language and script a site for an ongoing politics of authority among Santals, an Austro-Asiatic speaking Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) community spread throughout eastern India. It focuses particularly on the production of Santali-language print artefacts, which, like its dominant language counterparts, such as Bengali, has its roots in colonial-era Christian missions. However, unlike dominant languages, Santali-language media has been characterized by the use of multiple graphic registers, including a missionary-derived Roman script, Indic scripts such as Devanagari and Eastern Brahmi, and an independently derived script, Ol-Chiki. The article links the history of Santali print and graphic practice with assertions of autonomy in colonial and early post-colonial India. It then ethnographically documents how graphic practices, in particular the use of multiple scripts, and print technologies mediate a contemporary politics of authority along vectors such as class and generation within communities that speak and read Santali in the eastern state of West Bengal, India.
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| 2 |
ID:
190164
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article describes how attention to the uses, attitudes, and perceptions of various scripts may provide a dynamic picture of the construction of ethnic identity beyond the framework of ethnic conflict in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. Currently, the languages of Manipur are written in several scripts such as Eastern Brahmi, Roman, Meitei Mayek, and Zo script. Drawing on data collected from interviews of college-age residents of Manipur from different ethnic backgrounds, representatives of cultural organizations in the hills and plains, and from analysis of social, print, and audio-visual media, the article argues that the alignments between script, ethnic identity, and territory are not stable but change in relation to individuals’ or organizations’ positionality towards broader social and political ideologies. In graphically diverse regions such as Manipur, script serves as a semiotic resource through which people can incorporate distinct, but overlapping, ideas of belonging in the construction of ethnic identity.
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