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Language as Identity in Colonial India pp 81–101Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Construction of Plural Selves in India

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the construction of diverse selves in India. It asserts that plurality is the necessary condition for conceptualizing India. Nineteenth-century India was a period during which developed the varied identities that were to shape Indian politics in the future. The chapter presents a scrutiny of construction of plural selves from the perspective of caste, gender, nationality, religion and class.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Biswas Bidisha (2010) “Negotiating the nation: Diaspora contestations in the USA about hindu nationalism in India”, Nations and Nationalism 16 (4), 2010, 696–714. Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century, ed. Patrick O’Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, and Matthew Krain (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Simon Ravinovitch (2012) Jews and Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and United States, Brandeis University Press, New England, USA; Adogame, Afe (ed.) (2014) The Public face of African New Religious Movements in Diaspora: Imaging the religious ‘Other’, Ashgate Publishing, England; Catarina Kinnvall and Ted Svensson (2010) “Hindu nationalism, diaspora politics and nation-building in India”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Volume 64, No. 3: 274–292; Michael Vicente Perez (2014) “Between religion and nationalism in Palestinian diaspora”, Nations and Nationalism, Volume 20(4): 801–820.

  2. 2.

    See Jaffrelot, Christopher (1996) The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of identity building, implantation and mobilization, Penguin Books, Delhi. 

  3. 3.

    For a detailed account of the Moplah Rebellion, Robert Hardgrave (1977) “The Mappilla Rebellion, 1921: Peasant Revolt in Malabar”, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 11(1): 57–99.

  4. 4.

    On Puroshottam Das Tandon, see William Gould (2002) “Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy: Sampurnanand and Purushottam Das Tandon in the Politics of the United Provinces, 1930–47”, Modern Asian Studies, 36 (3):619–655. For K.M. Munshi, see Manu Bhagavan (2008) “The Hindutva Underground: Hindu Nationalism and the Indian National Congress in late colonial and early post-colonial India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43(37) 39–48.

  5. 5.

    Swadeshi means “produced in one’s own country.” The movement generated the nationalist feeling of buying only goods and clothes made in India and boycott was a corollary to this; that is all British-made goods were boycotted.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Papia Sengupta

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  1. Papia Sengupta
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Sengupta, P. (2018). Construction of Plural Selves in India. In: Language as Identity in Colonial India. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6844-7_5

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