[Linganth] Graphic Politics in Eastern India

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues, Today on the CaMP anthropology blog
<https://campanthropology.org/>, Nishaant Choksi discusses his book *Graphic
Politics in Eastern India: Script and the Quest for Autonomy *with Erika
Hoffmann-Dilloway.

Best,
Ilana
Press blurb:  Investigating the communicative practices of indigenous
Santali speakers in eastern India, Nishaant Choksi examines the overlooked
role of script in regional movements for autonomy to provide one of the
first comprehensive theoretical and ethnographical accounts of 'graphic
politics'.

Based on extensive fieldwork in the villages of southwestern West Bengal,
Choksi explores the deployment of Santali scripts, including a newly
created script called *Ol Chiki*, in Bengali-dominated local markets, the
education system and in the circulation of print media. He shows how
manipulating the linguistic landscape and challenging the idea of a
vernacular enables Santali speakers to delineate their own political
domains and scale their language on local, regional and national levels. In
doing so, they contest Bengali-speaking upper castes' hegemony over public
spaces and institutions, as well as the administrative demarcations of the
contemporary Indian nation-state.

Combining semiotic theory with ethnographically grounded
investigation, *Graphic
Politics in Eastern India *provides a new framework for understanding
writing and literacy practices among ethnic minorities and points to future
directions for interdisciplinary research on indigenous autonomy in South
Asia.
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