Graphic Politics in Eastern India

Toward a non‐binary semiotics of intersectionality: linguistic anthropology in the wake of coloniality

“…As such, the articles in this collection do not simply seek to delineate the stakes of interactional politics beyond the monolingual presuppositions of liberal speech genres that still owe a significant debt to the language of John Stuart Mill—notwithstanding excellent work in linguistic anthropology and allied disciplines that has offered rich empirical and conceptual contributions to the study of fractionally convergent histories of linguistic contestation and their entailed speech strategies across media, sites, and scales: for instance, in multiscriptal practices, graphic politics, and performances of indigeneity in eastern India (Choksi, 2015, 2021); in the constructed rivalries and incommensurabilities within and across Tamil and Québécois diasporas (Das, 2008, 2016); in trilingual state policy in postwar Sri Lanka (Davis, 2019); and in classic studies of media practices in the west and south‐central African continent (Spitulnik, 1998a, 1998b; Newell, 2012), as well as in Bakhtinian analyses of bi‐ and multilingual practices (Woolard, 2008). Together, the contributors seek to build on, but certainly also to extend, this work by demonstrating what raciolinguistic intersectionalities analytically afford beyond the settler‐colonial encounter, as well as by demonstrating how an understanding of their affordances compels a reconsideration in turn of what we take the ethnographic to be.…”

Structure, Ideology, Distribution: The Dual as Honorific in Santali

“…The script movement and the Jharkhand movement, though not entirely overlapping, informed each other in the construction of an idea of "autonomy" in which language, culture, and territory were viewed as a site of emancipatory struggle (Choksi 2021). The generalized honorific dual therefore, arising in the same regional and social milieu as Ol-Chiki, assumed a new political importance, marking allegiance to the cause of an idea of Santal autonomy that Ol-Chiki, ASECA, and Murmu represented.…”

“…The script became especially popular in the 1960s with the growth of the steel plant in the nearby city of Jamshedpur, and was eagerly embraced by the Santali‐speaking workers in that area as a marker of what Orans has called a Santal “great tradition” (Orans 1965). There are several reasons that the script became popular, not least its relations with Santal ritual life (Choksi 2018) and the politics of autonomy embodied in the political movement for an independent Santali state of Jharkhand (Carrin 2008; Choksi 2021). However, another reason was that for the educated Santal class, particularly migrants, it raised the status and legitimacy of the language, which was seen by upper‐caste Bengali speakers as a substandard or backward variety of Bengali, often referred to with the pejorative term for dialect, thar 8 .…”

“…The spread of Ol‐Chiki was associated with an increasing awareness of the importance of education and literacy in the Santal community that also came with an uneasiness that by getting educated, the language and culture will succumb to values of the dominant, non‐Adivasi society. The script gained popularity at the same time as many Adivasis, including Santals, were mobilizing across the region of Eastern India, to advocate for a separate federal state for Adivasis known as “Jharkhand.” The script movement and the Jharkhand movement, though not entirely overlapping, informed each other in the construction of an idea of “autonomy” in which language, culture, and territory were viewed as a site of emancipatory struggle (Choksi 2021). The generalized honorific dual therefore, arising in the same regional and social milieu as Ol‐Chiki, assumed a new political importance, marking allegiance to the cause of an idea of Santal autonomy that Ol‐Chiki, ASECA, and Murmu represented.…”

“…8 8 Thar is a general word for backward dialect or substandard speech, but it also has associations with sign languages or the vocalizations of deaf–mute persons (see Choksi 2021, Chapter 4 for a more extended discussion). …”