1 - Cartographies of Language and Citizenship

Summary

Chapter 1 defines the theoretical homes of this book and shows why and how harm in language has resulted in legislative actions. The chapter creates dialogue between two broad fields: the study of meaning in language and critical studies of South Asia. The chapter provides a brief history of Hindu right in India and an overview of how the government has weaponized language against Indian Muslims in the last three decades. This chapter shows that a critical aspect of understanding the success of the Hindu right in India, a secular democracy whose inception is underlined by massive violence between different religious groups during the partition, is to understand how it slowly and with cunning use of language sowed seeds of sectarian distrust. The chapter argues that while Hindu right has been studied from multiple perspectives, a linguistic perspective is missing. Such a perspective shows how successful the Hindu right has been in taking actions that lead to long-term harm to Muslim communities in India.