Language Culture and Nation-Building: Challenges of Modernisation (An Old and Rare Book)

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Guided by the ideologies of national development and social welfare, the State in contemporary times is often led into intervening in the domains which primarily concern the cultural and moral fabric of its people. At times, the obsession with such concerns is carried to the extent of individual states pursuing rigid policies such as, the Apartheid, religious fundamentalism, language chauvinism, "sons-of-the-soil" doctrine, finding justification for differential treatment to different sections of its population in the name of social and cultural development.

This phenomenon has resulted into many ethnicity-based movements in different parts of the world. These often erupt into direct confrontation with the State, and become a major source of national and international tension. Many such issues of ethnic revival have challenged the cohesion of the State as such. The upsurge about the concerns of ethnicity, at least in the initial stages, usually gets manifested through religion, language, and other cultural identities.

Ethnicity with narrow loyalties appears to be impeding the processes of nation-building. In recent decades the South Asian region as a whole has become an active theatre of such traumatic developments. The holocaust arising out of the frenzy of the "two- nation" doctrine resulting into the partition of the British India into two sovereign states-India and Pakistan-is still fresh in the minds of people. Since the Independence many regional movements have been questioning state policies concerning the nature of relations between the "mainstream" and "minority" cultures, between "developed" and "developing" languages, between fundamental human rights and the provisions of Personal Law as per the dictates of the clergy.

Such volatile issues raise an alarm in the minds of helpless masses and also among the intellegentisia questioning the role of cultural identities in building a strong nation. Attention to many of these issues was focused in a national seminar "In search of India's Renaissance", held in Delhi in December 1988, to evolve an integrated approach in response to the challenges faced by the Indian polity.

The present study attempts to provide a perspective from a vantage point of language and culture which are of direct relevance to the processes of nation-building. My association with the scholars visiting the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 1987-90 has stimulated me to further reflect over the questions initially raised in the "epilogue" of my earlier study Plural Languages, Plural Cultures.

The study is presented in two parts: "Parameters of diversity", and "Case studies". Part One highlights the characteristics signifying vital reality of cultural and linguistic variation in Indian life. Chapter 1 discusses the concept of kshetra "region" in the Indian tradition, and identifies major cultural ranges in the country, parallelled with the interflow of colours in a rainbow. Chapter II surveys the phenomenon of cultural pluralism on the global scene distinguishing "organic" characteristics of South Asian pluralism from the "structural" components of pluralism associated with the western societies; it also makes a critical appraisal of the developments taking place in the contemporary India. Chapter III examines the role of State in dealing with the primordial loyalties such as ethnicity, language, ancestry, tradition which have a significant bearing on the processes of building a strong nation. Chapter IV probes into the nature of play manifested through different facets of language in a plural society-its cultural, societal, and political dimensions; it reviews the characteristics of identity-preservation and diverse communication patterns in the country.

Part two illustrates the intricacies of verbal interaction on the Indian subcontinent by presenting profiles of a few speech communities. Chapter V reviews the contours of semantic acrobatics surrounding the controversy over the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani amalgam. Chapter VI examines some of the changing perceptions of ethnic and sociolinguistic identities of the Panjabi diaspora spread across India and Pakistan. Chapter VII presents a diagnosis of the "transplanted" Sindhi language in pluralistic India, identifying its new role in an environment vastly different from its original habitat in Sind, now in Pakistan. Chapter VIII brings into focus the on-going debate about the role of English in the country, and pleads for creating a trust among the masses about a constructive partnership between English and Indian languages in the process of nation-building.

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study has, over the past twentyfive years, published monographs submitted by its Fellows, proceedings of the seminars it organised, lectures delivered by its Visiting Professors, and "occasional papers" presented by Fellows and other scholars to its weekly seminars. Recently a few of the Fellows, apart from completing their monograph, submitted additional work as a "by-product" of their research to be considered for publication. It was agreed in principle that such additional work may also be got evaluated from an expert as it is done in the case of all monographs.

To the category of "additional work" belongs the present publication. Its author, Professor L.M. Khubchandani, has been associated with the Institute for a long time and some of his work already published by the Institute has been well received. I have every hope that Language, Culture, and Nation-Building: Challenges of Modernisation will also be received well by the social scientists, scholars of language and literature, and by policy planners.