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FEB
28
India: A Multilingual Nation
Date:
Tuesday, 28 Feb 2017
Time:
3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Location:
303 International Center
Department:
Asian Studies Center
Event Details:

Given the hectic nature of multiple languages in India, how does a nation sustain itself without a consensus upon a 'national' language? The talk will begin with the disputes regarding Hindi and English as two possible choices for the newly formed nation-state in 1947, and take the reader through the discourse on India's recognized and unrecognized languages/dialects to give a bird's eye-view on its everyday forms of multilingualism. It will also interweave into the narrative the production and reception of literature produced in Indian languages and the challenges to imagining an "Indian" literature.


Rita Kothari is a professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India. She is the author of Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English and The Burden of Refuge.
This is the second of a 3-part series centered around Rita Kothari's visit to MSU, coordinated with the Asian Studies Center and James Madison College, which includes: History of India through Bollywood on February 27 and Scarred Nations : Partition in the India Subcontinent on March 1.  More information on these programs can be found here.