Passions of the Tongue - Language Devotion in Tamil India, 18911970

"An important and original book providing a completely new perspective on the intellectual and cultural history of southern India. . . . Sumathi Ramaswamy has both produced a major work of comparative history and made the finest scholarly contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of modern Tamil Nadu to date."—Nicholas B. Dirks, author of The Hollow Crown

"The most thorough account of the history of the symbolic profusion of a language—any language—I have ever read . . . The scholarship is extraordinary, and Ramaswamy is quite likely the most knowledgeable on this subject in the whole of India—nay, the world."—E. Valentine Daniel, author of Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence

About the author

Sumathi Ramaswamy is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Summary

Why would love for their language lead several men in southern India to burn themselves alive in its name? This title analyzes the discourses of love, labor, and life that transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment, producing in the process one of modern India's most intense movements for linguistic revival and separatism.

Product details

• Authors: S. Ramaswamy, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Ramaswamy Sumathi
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.11.1997
• EAN: 9780520208056
• ISBN: 978-0-520-20805-6
• No. of pages: 343
• Series: Studies on the History of Soci; Studies on the History of Society and Culture; Studies on the History of Soci
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Linguistics, Asia, HISTORY / Asia / General, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, Language: reference & general, Asian History