In his foreword to Bernard Cohn's magisterial book Colonialism and its forms of knowledge, Nicholas Dirks commented that for the British, in India, "Language was to be mastered to issue commands and ...

In a bizarre recent development, the Delhi Police, in an official FIR, claimed that alleged illegal Bangladeshi residents in the city were communicating in “Bangladeshi” language rather than Bengali.

Voices from the south and west of India have risen in condemnation of the Delhi police’s description of Bengali, the language of more than 10 crore people living in India, as “Bangladeshi national ...

We usually understand language as a means of communication between people. But language is not limited to communication alone; it also affects or shapes power structures and sociocultural identity. In ...