Uncovering the Colonial Roots of Language Ideologies in India

PROJECT YEAR: 2016
ROLE: lead RESEARCHER
METHODS: QUALITATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, secondary research
COMPANY: UCLA

Image from *Linguistic Survey of India Vol. 1* (1928).

Problem

A major challenge for government administrating in India was the extensive multilingual variation of the population.

One of the largest projects of the late colonial period in India was the Linguistic Survey of India (1894–1928), a survey that sought to record and classify every spoken language and dialect in India. The authors hoped that the survey would provide a scientific rendering of all Indian languages - not just the written ones - in order to aid in the administration of the colonial government.

In doing so, the authors faced a problem: how to classify languages and dialects without inserting bias about culture, race, and ethnicity. This problem persists in postcolonial India, where language serves as a primary basis upon which decisions are made to grant social and political rights to different communities.

Questions

How did authors use the linguistic survey to contest and/or construct broader social beliefs about race and ethnicity? How did such processes then shape the description and classification of languages and dialects in the Survey, and what are the legacies of these processes for contemporary understandings of language in India?

Methods

From November 2015 - June 2016, I conducted a historical ethnography of the LSI. I conducted archival research on the survey’s planning and implementation, wrote biographies of major figures in the Survey’s production, and analyzed and coded over 500 pages of archival materials from the LSI. I performed qualitative discourse analysis on these pages to identify patterns and themes in the description and classification of languages and dialects.

Findings

The LSI contributed to the modern linking of language and race in India. This process relied upon the application of theories of scientific racism propounded by colonial officials, especially Herbert H. Risley, and ultimately reinforced a racialized hierarchy of linguistic purity in India. These conceptualizations of language-as-race were directly informative of the postcolonial state’s decision to divide independent India into linguistically-organized states, and continues to be relevant in India today through political claims for independent statehood on the basis of language.