[Reader-list] Abstract

[uddipan dutta]

The Growth of Print Nationalism, Politics of Language and Dialect, Fear of the Outsiders and the Formation of Assamese Identity in the Pages of Two Early Assamese Magazines- Arunodoi and Jonaki
								
						By: Uddipan Dutta

“A language is a dialect which has an army and a navy” commonly told in the linguistics classroom as there is no linguistic parameter to differentiate a language from a dialect except the power relationship. But language- dialect difference is often invoked in the imagination of a nation. The advent of print has the most significant influence upon the arbitrariness of the concept of language as well as nation. Speakers of the huge varieties of a ‘single language’ might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. Print has taken the role of selecting, codifying and finally making a particular variety the standard variety in many of the world’s languages, and thereby enabling the people to imagine to be the members of a particular speech community and later on to assert its identity in a geographical space. The processes of standardization of language, growth of nationalism and the development of the print culture go in parallel and operate through a rather complex dynamics. The issue “whether Assamese is a ‘language’ or a ‘dialect’” and the advent of printing press to influence this issue was quite important for the growth of Assamese nationalism within the British India and later within the Indian Union. Arunodoi, the first Asssamese magazine/ newspaper was published in 1846 from the Mission press Sibsagar by the American Baptist Missionaries. Jonaki, on the other hand was the journal brought out in Calcutta in the year 1889 by Ax omiâ Bhâxa Unnati Xâdhini Xobhâ , the students’ body with an ideological slant for a linguistic nationalism. It is the endeavour undertaken by the native middle class grown up with English education. The embryonic form of Print Nationalism founded in the pages of Arunodoi gets matured in the pages of Jonaki. The present study is an attempt to recount this journey from the unconscious to the conscious by reading through the pages of these two magazines. Another important aspect of Assamese nationalism is fear of and hatred for the outsiders in the collective unconsciousness of the people. We can trace this fear and trauma to the massive migration leading to a drastic alteration of the demography of the region in a period of not more than 150 years. We can also see how well this massive migration was prognosticated in the pages of Jonaki. 


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