Fiction and an Indian Polyglot Anthropology

Each of the 29 officially recognized languages of India has its own script as well as oral and written traditions. In the realm of Hindi fiction, a genre called anchalik upanyasa (broadly regional novels) has grown; it purports to narrate holistically the linguistic and cultural ethos of a region. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Anthropological quarterly 2015-09, Vol.88 (4), p.1085-1099
Main Author: Jain, Ravindra K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Attitudes
Ethnicity
Ethnography
Factionalism
Fiction
Hindi language
Identity
Keywords
Language attitudes
Migration
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Muslims
Novels
POLYGLOT PERSPECTIVES
Prestige
Rural areas
Traditions
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Summary:Each of the 29 officially recognized languages of India has its own script as well as oral and written traditions. In the realm of Hindi fiction, a genre called anchalik upanyasa (broadly regional novels) has grown; it purports to narrate holistically the linguistic and cultural ethos of a region. This piece focuses on one Hindi regional novel, Adha Gaon (Half a Village), which presents the life-world ofShia Muslims in rural Uttar Pradesh in north India; the author, Rahi Masoom Raza, is himself a native of this village. Since there is no extant professional ethnography of the Shia Muslims of rural north India, I use Adha Gaon's narrative to describe and interpret Indian Muslim ethnicity in this regional setting. My description and analysis proceed by way of contextualization and comparison, two key anthropo logical methods.
ISSN:0003-5491
1534-1518
1534-1518
DOI:10.1353/anq.2015.0052