Book Talk | SAC | Mother Tongue and English: The Politics of Language in Indian Higher Education

The Moynihan Institute’s South Asia Center presents Chaise LaDousa from Hamilton College and Christina Davis from Western Illinois University.

The National Democratic Alliance government of India advocates for education in the mother tongue in its National Education Policy 2020. The policy discusses English, which has become aspirational in India for people of all class and regional backgrounds, only in the context of its offering as a subject of study and the need for bilingual textbooks. Based on a forthcoming co-authored book, this talk draws on participant observation and interviews at three higher education institutions—Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University—to offer the first consideration of how students wrestle with ideologies of mother tongue and English.

The talk examines education policy and a campus cultural event to trace ideological constructions of mother tongue and English. Student reflections show that their constructions of mother tongue are far more complex, varied, and critical than what is possible in national or performative contexts. They also demonstrate the struggle students engaged in to make sense of the crucial place of English in their academic and social lives. Students’ digital practices show that they embody creative capacities with respect to languages they identify as mother tongues and English.

Chaise LaDousa is the Sidney Wertimer Professor for Excellence in Advising and Mentoring and professor of anthropology at Hamilton College. His interests include language and education in the United States and India. He is the author of Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India (Berghahn Books, 2014) and the co-author (with Christina P. Davis) of Mother Tongue and English: The Politics of Language in Indian Higher Education (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is also the co-editor (with Christina P. Davis) of Language, Education, and Identity: Medium in South Asia (Routledge, 2022). He also recently published “The Agency of ‘Doing Something’: Ethnographic Research on Subject Positions at Predominantly White Institutions” (Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 2024).

Christina P. Davis is professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on multilingual education, language policy, and digital media practices among youth in India and Sri Lanka. She is the author of The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, 2020) and the co-author (with Chaise LaDousa) of Mother Tongue and English: The Politics of Language in Indian Higher Education (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). She is also the co-editor (with Chaise LaDousa) of Language, Education, and Identity: Medium in South Asia (Routledge, 2022). Her recent articles include “The Language Politics of Aragalaya: A Trilingual Protest Movement in Postwar Sri Lanka” (Anthropological Quarterly, 2025) and “Memes, Emojis, and Text: The Semiotics of Differentiation in Sri Lankan Tamil Social Media Groups” (Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2021).