A Language on the Move: Gujarati as an Internal Agency for Formations and Transformations of Identity of an Indian Regional Culture

 

Speaker :Dr. Sitanshu Yashaschandra, eminent Gujarati poet, playwright, translator and academic; recipient of  the Sahitya Akademi  Award (1987) for his significant opus, Jatayu, and the Padma Shri (2006) 

 

Chair: Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, President, IIC

 

There are many ways in which one could try to understand the structurality and dynamics of India of our times. One way is to focus on one of its regions and to look at its local genesis and regional identity. The ‘linguistic re-organization of the States’ in India led to the formation of new States which were defined by the language that the majority of each region declared as its own. This lecture examines the ontological and epistemological status of one such language, Gujarati, in its actual and enriching context and in its historical relationships with other languages of India, which was somewhat clouded over in the heat of the formation days