This monograph is the first in the ‘Bloomsbury studies in linguistic anthropology’ series to focus upon writing and script. The book contributes towards contemporary research on inscription practices, graphic pluralism, and politics in multiscript environments. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with the Santal (adivasi, original inhabitant) ethnic group in rural West Bengal, the volume charts how users of the Santali language and its Ol Chiki script deploy ‘graphic and linguistic registers in visible ways… in order to assert a politics of autonomy’ (47). Through its rendering of a complex multilingual and sociopolitical setting, this study by Choksi adds to the ethnographic record a nuanced account of uses and understandings of scripts in a South Asian indigenous social movement. In particular, the monograph elucidates ‘linkages between the development and propagation of [a minoritarian] script, ongoing struggles over territory and resources’ (47), and the evolution of political autonomy, within, outside, and across state institutions.
The book contains six chapters. Following definitions of script as ideological via Silverstein, Derrida, and others, chapters 1 and 2 offer historical accounts of multilingualism and multiscriptuality nationally in India and regionally in West Bengal. From ancient Sanskrit to modern Hindi and regional languages such as Santali, examples are provided and political ramifications explained for how such languages came to be represented through multiple scripts. Particularly from postcolonial-era India onwards, Choksi highlights how graphic politics became salient across the subcontinent via the ‘the association of script with claim-making on the state, [and] in the creation and transformation of what constitutes community’ (31). From the late eighteenth century to the early 2000s, the book traces the development of the Ol Chiki script per se in the practices and politics of Santal communities.
Chapters 3 to 5 move outwards from ethnographic documentations of roles of scripts in West Bengal fieldsites towards broader scalar analyses. Chapter 3 starts from linguistic landscapes of village markets. Focus is on the bazaar as a sociospatial nexus, where through signage ‘the visual and material [become] a primary site where politics [occurs]’ (130). Ol Chiki script is shown here as ‘emblematic of a trans-regional politics of autonomy’ (130). Chapter 4 addresses school sites and particularly the ‘possibilities and limits of indigenous language [and] script as a medium for education’ (164). Santali and Ol Chiki can be seen to be bound up with institutional discourses of literacy and development as well as Indian caste relations. Chapter 5 turns to Santali-language media, both print and digital. The emphasis is on how these ‘articulate a Santali-specific reading domain in the absence of widespread recognition of the language by state institutions or mass media’ (199). Santal media are also shown to co-exist creatively with other Bengali literatures in the formation of a so-called ‘Jharkhand [adivasi social movement] imagination’ (177). Through these chapters Choksi adds valuably to ethnographic work on writing and multimodality. In conclusion, critically, his study connects South Asian and global movements concerning indigeneity and autonomy.
