From Language to Script: Graphic practice and the politics of authority in Santali-language print media, eastern India

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses the way in which assemblages of technologies, political institutions, and practices of exchange have rendered both language and script a site for an ongoing politics of authority among Santals, an Austro-Asiatic speaking Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) community spread throughout eastern India. It focuses particularly on the production of Santali-language print artefacts, which, like its dominant language counterparts, such as Bengali, has its roots in colonial-era Christian missions. However, unlike dominant languages, Santali-language media has been characterized by the use of multiple graphic registers, including a missionary-derived Roman script, Indic scripts such as Devanagari and Eastern Brahmi, and an independently derived script, Ol-Chiki. The article links the history of Santali print and graphic practice with assertions of autonomy in colonial and early post-colonial India. It then ethnographically documents how graphic practices, in particular the use of multiple scripts, and print technologies mediate a contemporary politics of authority along vectors such as class and generation within communities that speak and read Santali in the eastern state of West Bengal, India.