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ID: 169028

Mother tongue activism and language shift in multilingual India: Marathi in Pune, Maharashtra / Chandras, Jessica

Chandras, Jessica	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

This article outlines the extracurricular work of education and language revitalization by two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. It demonstrates how these NGOs respond to anxieties and fears of language shift, language death, and social change in ways that fill a gap in how connections of language to society are addressed in the formal education system in Pune. These NGOs recreate structures of hierarchies among socioeconomic classes in their work of language preservation, assigning to lower classes the task of maintaining Marathi as an everyday language and delegating the promotion of Marathi “high culture” forms such as the arts to the upper classes. The article illuminates ways in which Marathi use and language ideologies shape socioeconomic class identifications and how ideologies about language and language use take different forms based on needs defined through a socioeconomic class lens.

Key Words

Maharashtra ; Mother Tongue ; Marathi in Pune

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ID: 175490

Mother Tongues—the Disruptive Possibilities of Feminist Vernaculars / Brueck, Laura

Brueck, Laura	Journal Article
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This essay considers the methodological intervention of understanding a ‘mother tongue’ (matribhasha) as a gendered vernacular. It seeks to illustrate the subversive potential of the vernacular as a gendered lens though which we can understand the Dalit feminist critiques of caste hierarchies and Dalit and non-Dalit patriarchies, and the places they intersect. The essay considers the works of Anita Bharti and Meena Kandasamy, contemporary Dalit women authors who write in Hindi and English, respectively. Thus, this paper extends the definition of the vernacular beyond the confines of linguistic and regional specificity, allowing for a feminist reclamation of the term.

Key Words

Literature ; Feminism ; Dalit ; Vernacular ; Poetry ; Premchand ;
Literary Criticism ; Mother Tongue ; The Thakur’s Well

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