Redrawing frontiers

Abstract

The emergence of an Assamese linguistic identity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw its proponents drawing from the colonial linguistic project as well as from indigenous cultural reserves to create a political community that threatened to subsume imagin-ings of smaller regions. This article looks at some of the ways in which resistance to the im-position of a standardised vernacular from Goalpara's traditional elite and the newly-emerging urban intelligentsia transformed language into a symbol for these sections, while also becoming associated with other social roles and group identities. It looks at some of the connections between speech, political culture and economy in the region, focusing on the tensions involved in the relocation of the boundaries of language and the construction of linguistic autonomy, frequently in opposition to both colonial and Assamese nationalist imaginations. It locates these attempts at challenging dominant narratives within the context of both the emergence of a vernacular print culture and a public space, and changes in the material context, in Goalpara and Assam. The article argues that language reflected this material context, and hence reiterates the significance of economic forces in determining discursive practices. Equally importantly, it emphasises the relevance of regional history writing, underscored in this article in the formulation of Rajbansi as the language of a ‘Pranto’ or frontier, for demon-strating larger propositions about the nature of colonial rule.