The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice

This book offers a situated exploration of the role of language policies in key educational sites in the Gujarat context. Specifically, it discusses ways in which English and ‘vernacular’ language policies are embedded and reified in a host of domains, including textbooks, curricular materials, pedagogic practices, institutional mandates and language ideologies, all of which collude together to privilege the ‘English-medium’ Indian middle class, and shut doors on ‘vernacular-medium’ students. By offering an in-depth ethnographic account of how teachers and learners get positioned in these two educational tracks–‘English-medium’ and ‘vernacular-medium’– the book aims at calling attention to how power flows disproportionately across this most complex canvas. Language policies are inherently ideological and in the Indian context, access to key educational sites and platforms tend to fall along class and caste lines. Given current globalizing surges, the book also raises questions about who is left out and why, and how issues of inequities stretch deep into subordinations that take form in a host of obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Gaining a nuanced, fine-grained understanding of these and related inequities is the first step in finding ways to ameliorate conditions.