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Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

David Lelyveld
David Lelyveld
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Towards the end of Paul Scott's A Division of the Spoils, the final novel of The Raj Quartet, and in the television series as well, Indian people make an appearance and commit acts of unmotivated and horrible violence. The British heroine comments, “Such a damn, bloody, senseless mess … the mess the raj had never been able to sort out.” Making sense, sorting out, was supposed to be the special vocation of British rule, yet here were all the seething, primordial conflicts rising to the surface again in the Hindu versus Muslim partition of India in 1947.

Type
The Identity of Language
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 665 - 682
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1993

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References

An earlier version of this essay was presented in July 1989 at a conference on “Culture, Consciousness and the Colonial State,” at the Isle of Thorns Conference Center, University of Sussex, sponsored by the South Asia Committee of the Social Science Research Council, which also funded some of the research with the American Institute of Indian Studies. I am particularly indebted to Bernard S. Cohn, Shahid Amin, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Sandria Freitag for their comments and encouragement.

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21 Ibid., 154.

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23 Kidwai, , Gilchrist, 89–96Google Scholar; Siddiqi, , Origins, 153–55Google Scholar; Das, Sisir Kumar, Sahibs and Munshis: An Account of the College at Fort William (New Delhi: Orion, 1978), 65, 82–84Google Scholar.

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29 (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co.)

30 Rolland King, Christopher, “The Nāgarī Prachārinī Sabha (Society for the Promotion of the Nagari Script and Language) of Benares, 1893–1914: A Study in the Social and Political History of the Hindi Language” (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1974)Google Scholar.

31 GOI Home/Political 311–329, 1887; reprinted in Singh, R. A., “Inquiries into the Spoken Languages, of India, from Early Times to the Census of 1901,” Census of India (1961), vol. I, pt. XI–C(i)Google Scholar.

32 GOI Home/Public A, 43–54, 1886, in Singh, R. A., Inquiries, 126Google Scholar; see also 267–71.

33 GOI, Finance and Commerce/Bonuses and Honorariums 143, 1887, in Singh, , Inquiries, 133Google Scholar.

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36 Singh, , Inquiries, 107–14Google Scholar.

37 See Grierson, , The Linguistic Survey of India and the Census of 1911 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1919)Google Scholar; and his Index of Language Names (Calcutta: Superintendent of Printing, 1920)Google Scholar and the General Reports in the 1901, 1911, and 1921 censuses.

38 Baines, J. A., “General Report,” Census of India, 1891 in Singh, Inquiries, 319–20Google Scholar.

39 Risley, , The People of India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1915), 8–10Google Scholar.

40 Middleton, L. and Jacob, S. M., Report: Punjab and Delhi, Census of India, 1921, vol. XV, pt. I (Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1923), 310–2Google Scholar; Conn, Bernard S., “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia” [1970], in his An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 250Google Scholar; see also my Aligarh's First Generation, 9–16.

41 Das, Durga, ed., Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945–50, vol. IV (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 60–91Google Scholar.

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43 The relevant records are in the archives of All-India Radio, New Delhi; see also Luthra, H. R., Indian Broadcasting (New Delhi: Publications Division), 255–73Google Scholar. I have discussed this at greater length in “Transmitters and Culture: The Colonial Roots of Indian Broadcasting,” South Asia Research, 10:1 (05 1990), 41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See correspondence between Bukhari and S. N. Agganval of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha, Wardha, in P(l)2–5/45, 1945 (AIR Archives). See also Richards, and Ogden, C. K., The Meaning of Meaning, 10th ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1966)Google Scholar and numerous other works; for Firth, see Terrence Langendoen, D., The London School of Linguistics: A Study of the Linguistic Theories of B. Malinowski and J. R. Firth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), 37–48Google Scholar. Bukhari, 's essays are collected in Patras ke Muzāmīn (Lahore: Maktaba-i Urdū-i Adab, n.d.)Google Scholar; see also his brother's autobiography, Alī Bukhārī, Ẕulfiqār, Sarguzisht (Karachi: Maarif, 1966)Google Scholar.

45 A. I. R. Lexicon (New Delhi: All-India Radio, 1946) [Library of Congress]Google Scholar; PZ–3/42 (Coll I), 1942; P(l)Z–2/46–II, 1946 (AIR Archives); interview with Vatsyayan in Bombay, 1982.

46 Directorate-General, All India Radio, “Basic Plan for the Development of Broadcasting in India” (first draft, November 1944; revised, September 1945) in Home-Public 179/1946 (National Archives of India).

47 See Cohn, Bernard S., “Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation to the Study of Modern Indian History” [1967], in his Anthropologist Among the Historians, 100–35Google Scholar.

48 See Ahmad, Aijaz, “Some Reflections on Urdu,” Seminar (No. 359), “Literature and Society” (07 1989), 23–29Google Scholar.