Genesis of Proto-Indo Languages in the Light of Neo-Nationalism in India: Problem, Challenges and Possibilities
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
India’s multilingual landscape, characterized by profound linguistic diversity and historical stratification, has long been structured around persistent binary oppositions that shape both linguistic practices and academic discourse. Prominent among these are the hierarchical distinctions between Sanskrit (as the refined, classical, and “cultured” language of sacred texts and elite knowledge) and Prakrit (the “natural,” vernacular forms associated with everyday speech and the masses), as well as the postcolonial tensions between English and indigenous/regional languages. This article interrogates these oppositions not as natural or fixed categories but as constructed hierarchies embedded in cultural, political, and ideological discourses, revealing their instability, mutual interdependence, and role in perpetuating exclusionary structures within Indian languages and knowledge production.
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
Campbell, L. (2013). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (3rd ed.). MIT Press.
Campbell, L., & Poser, W. J. (2008). Language Classification: History and Method. Cambridge University Press.
Emeneau, M. B. (1956). India as a linguistic area. Language, 32(1), 3–16.
Kolipakam, V., et al. (2018). A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family. Royal Society Open Science, 5(3), 171504.
Krishnamurti, B. (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Mahadevan, I. (2021). Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization: Ultraconserved Dravidian tooth-word reveals deep linguistic ancestry and supports genetics. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 193.
Mallory, J. P., & Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press.
Masica, C. P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Narasimhan, V. M., et al. (2019). The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. Science, 365(6457), eaat7487.
Pagani, L., et al. (2024). Novel 4400-year-old ancestral component in a tribe speaking a Dravidian language. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 1934.
Parpola, A. (2015). The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization. Oxford University Press.
Southworth, F. C. (2005). Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia. RoutledgeCurzon.