Enumeration and the Linguistic Identity Formation in Colonial North India

Abstract

A number of enumerative practices and discourses were instrumental in defining the politics of linguistic codification, quantification and gradually the shaping of the linguistic identity formation of various communities and groups in colonial north India. The British colonial state systematically pursued the ‘logic of numbers’ through regular census operations, data release in gazetteers, and linguistic survey reports and records of various kinds to standardize and construct new modes of ‘disciplining’ the linguistic diversity and its communicative rationale. It is important to critically engage with this genre of enumerative writings to further understand the politics of identity con-struction based on language in its dialogical relationship with other social categories of religion, caste, region, gender and class, etc.