Language, emotion, and politics in south India the making of a mother tongue - Mitchell, Lisa (Indiana University Press, 2009)
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-269) and index
Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Note on Transliteration and Spelling; Introduction: A New Emotional Commitment to Language; 1. From Language of the Land to Language of the People: Geography, Language, and Community in Southern India; 2. Making a Subject of Language; 3. Making the Local Foreign: Shared Language and History in Southern India; 4. From Pandit to Primer: Pedagogy and Its Mediums; 5. From the Art of Memory to the Practice of Translation: Making Languages Parallel; 6. Martyrs in the Name of Language? Death and the Making of Linguistic Passion
What makes someone willing to die, not for a nation, but for a language? In the mid-20th century, southern India saw a wave of dramatic suicides in the name of language. Lisa Mitchell traces the colonial-era changes in knowledge and practice linked to the Telugu language that lay behind some of these events. As identities based on language came to appear natural, the road was paved for the political reorganization of the Indian state along linguistic lines after independence