Graphic Politics in Eastern India - Script and the Quest for Autonomy

List of contents

1. Introduction
2. Ol as an Autonomous Practice
3. Scaling Multiscriptality in a Village Market
4. Caste, Community and Santali-Language Education
5. Santali Language Print Media the Jharkhand Imagination
6. Insurgency, Autonomy and Script
Bibliography
Index

Summary

Investigating the communicative practices of indigenous Santali speakers in eastern India, Nishaant Choksi examines the overlooked role of script in regional movements for autonomy to provide one of the first comprehensive theoretical and ethnographical accounts of ‘graphic politics’.

Based on extensive fieldwork in the villages of southwestern West Bengal, Choksi explores the deployment of Santali scripts, including a newly created script called Ol Chiki, in Bengali-dominated local markets, the education system and in the circulation of print media. He shows how manipulating the linguistic landscape and challenging the idea of a vernacular enables Santali speakers to delineate their own political domains and scale their language on local, regional and national levels. In doing so, they contest Bengali-speaking upper castes’ hegemony over public spaces and institutions, as well as the administrative demarcations of the contemporary Indian nation-state.

Combining semiotic theory with ethnographically grounded investigation, Graphic Politics in Eastern India provides a new framework for understanding writing and literacy practices among ethnic minorities and points to future directions for interdisciplinary research on indigenous autonomy in South Asia.

Additional text

Choksi adds valuably to ethnographic work on writing and multimodality.

Product details

• Authors: Nishaant Choksi
• Assisted by: Paul Manning (Editor), Jim Wilce (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2021
• EAN: 9781350215924
• ISBN: 978-1-350-21592-4
• No. of pages: 220
• Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Linguistic Anthropology; Bloomsbury Studies in Linguist
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, India, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Sociolinguistics, Social and cultural anthropology, Semiotics / semiology