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[uddipan dutta]

Abstract of proposal


The Growth of Print Nationalism and Assamese Identity in Two Early Assamese Magazines

									By: Uddipan Dutta


The words although seem innocent has strong associativeness to the growth of nationalism (and sub-nationalism) in many parts of the world. The variation and exclusiveness of words (language) has the potential to germinate a desire to imagine an exclusive geographical space by a mass of people. In fact, a language may have many ‘varieties’, usually called ‘dialects’ which are equally qualified to be termed ‘languages’.  The advent of print has an important influence upon the arbitrariness of the concept of language as well as nation. Speakers of the huge varieties of a single language might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. Print has taken the role of selecting, codifying and finally making a particular variety the standard variety in many of the world’s languages, and thereby enabling the people to imagine to be the members of a particular speech community and later on to assert a common identity in a geographical space. The processes of standardization of language, growth of nationalism and the development of the print culture go in parallel and operate through a rather complex dynamics. This study is an attempt to deconstruct that complex dynamics in two of the earlier magazines of Assam in the colonial context of the province. The Arunondoi, the first Assamese magazine was an effort of the Baptist missionaries and in the common literary and historical discourse credited with revitalizing Assamese language which was almost at the verge of attrition due to the colonial policy of replacing Assamese with Bengali as a medium of instruction and language of the court. Jonaki, on the other hand was the journal brought out in Calcutta in the year 1889 by Axomia Bhaxa Unnati Xadhin Xobha (Association for the Development of the Assamese Language), the students’ body with an ideological slant for a linguistic nationalism. It is the endeavour undertaken by the native middle class grown up with English education. The embryonic form of sub-national identity founded in the pages Arunodoi gets matured in the pages of Jonaki. The study is an attempt to recount this journey from the unconscious to the conscious by reading through the pages of these two magazines.

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