Presenter
P. Veetil Akhil - Department of South Asia Studies; Comparative Literature Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United StatesPanel
113 – What Shade of Red?: Footprints of Socialism in South Asian Intellectual and Political HistoryAbstract
This paper examines the analysis of Indian multilingualism by the Hindi-speaking Socialists in India during the 1950s and 1960s. Initially focused on economic issues, by the height of language politics in the late 1950s, the Socialist Parties were compelled to evaluate multilingualism in India. One notable attempt was Rammanohar Lohia’s critique of English hegemony through the Banish English (Angrezī Hatāo) movement. This paper focuses on how Lohia assessed Indian multilingualism using concepts from moral psychology and sought to align it with traditional Socialist concerns regarding economic rights. Lohia’s critique of English and his advocacy for Hindi as a pan-Indian language is sometimes perceived as Hindi chauvinism. However, this analysis overlooks his insights into the psychological processes that assign values to languages and linguistic groups. This paper will highlight how Lohia’s exposure to psychology in Berlin helped him demonstrate how sociolinguistic inequalities shaped Indian societies.
