Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India

Moving beyond the existing scholarship on language politics in north India which implicitly or explicitly focuses on Hindi–Urdu debates, this book examines the formation of the Maithili movement in the context of expansion of Hindi as the ‘national’ language. For a long time, the Hindi–Urdu debate has provided an important source to critically asses various facets of the nationalist movement in north India. But much emphasis on this debate has undermined simultaneous developments taking place in ‘minor’ linguistic spheres within the ‘Hindi heartland’ like Maithili, Braj, Awadhi, and Bhojpuri. This work also revisits the dynamic hierarchy through which a distinction is produced between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ languages. Significance of these ‘minor’ linguistic movements lies in the ways through which they resist such domination and appropriations while asserting their own independence. Throughout the history of the Maithili movement, what one finds is not just an opposition to Hindi’s claim of Maithili being its ‘dialect’ or the ambivalent relationship between the two. But more appropriately, one can see a double movement. The authority of Hindi has strengthened within the Maithili-speaking region even when the movement for the recognition of Maithili as an independent language has become more assertive. Another paradox of the Maithili movement has been its increasing politicization—from Hindi–Maithili ambiguities and antagonisms to territorial consciousness and finally demands for a separate statehood of Mithila, along with the persistent indifferent attitude of the masses. This work examines these processes historically since the middle of the nineteenth century until the inclusion of Maithili into the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution in 2004.