Linguistics and the intellectual challenge of diversity

Abstract

The status of modern linguistics within the modern disciplinary order isunclear, as it is neither a recognizable natural science, nor primarily a hermeneu-tic, interpretative discipline. In seeking to understand the intellectual history ofcolonial linguistics and its impacton polities suchas India,this ambiguous statusisacomplicatingfactor,inparticularwhenweconfrontquestionsofuniversalism,cultural difference, and identity politics. The key concept in this history is ‘Aryan’.The intellectual confidence with which nineteenth century comparativismsoughtto map the world’s languages, races, and cultures has largely disappeared, un-der assault from a range of ideological and intellectual opponents. In particu-lar, the racial model of Indian civilization, reflected in Herbert Risley’s readingof a bas-relief at Sanchi, has been completely discredited. Yet colonial linguistics,which had arguably a much greater and more long-lasting impact on India, re-mains largely unchallenged, with the exception of critics associated with Hindufundamentalism. For these critics, the distinctions drawn within colonial linguis-tics led to a schism within Indian society, by conceptualizing a historical dividebetween invading Aryans and indigenous Dravidians. A set of difficult questionsarise from this. On the one hand, the rejection of western science is today linkedto Hindu fundamentalism, and is driven by a xenophobic form of cultural rela-tivism; on the other, linguistics is not a science in any universal sense, and its rolein creating divisions in Indian society has arguably been a highly destructive one