Colonial rule’s languages of command failed against India’s regional language masses

Evidence

But the actual elaboration of colonial society was contradictory, and both the Christian missionary and the colonial officer were soon to discover that neither Sanskrit nor Persian nor even English could serve at the time as a language of command, in the administration of souls and bodies, so far as the masses of Indians, or even the colonial clerks, were concerned; they had to be spoken to in the languages they themselves spoke - in what we now call ‘the regional languages’ The early history of the printing presses and grids of colonial education demonstrates this fact clearly enough. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1167

Categorization

• QUESTION: What does this material linguistic constraint imply for the high-textuality/classicalist rescuing of Sanskrit and Persian as authentic cultural archives? Undermines the orientation that Indian authenticity lives primarily in Sanskrit/Persian high texts.
• XREF: Echoes Foucault’s point that power’s unifying discourse never fully colonizes the counter-memory beneath; also connects to mass-vs-elite cultural stratification discussed elsewhere in Ahmad. — connects to: Colonial administration simply could not operate in its own imperial languages — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 516; The union’s two colonial languages crippled government communication; Anti-colonial intellectuals could speak in empire’s capitals but not their homelands — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 134 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial administration simply could not operate in its own imperial languages #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 516
• Mass political mobilization, not elite scholarship, drove modernization of India’s regional languages. #expands (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 531
• The union’s two colonial languages crippled government communication #exemplifies (0.80)
• Anti-colonial intellectuals could speak in empire’s capitals but not their homelands #expands (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 134
• State language unification fails to erase regional mother tongues #corroborates (0.75)
• Colonial ethnic categories failed to describe actual mixed refuge communities #expands (0.74) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1095