ASIATIC, VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2020

Selma K. Sonntag and Mark Turin, eds. The Politics of Language
Contact in the Himalaya. Cambridge UK: Open Book Publishers,
2019. xiv+181 pp. ISBN 978-1-78374-704-7.

The book under review is a noteworthy publication for two specific reasons. First,
it deals with a unique geo-cultural region which has been gradually coming intowider focus for various reasons including literary-cultural ones. Two prominent“nations” which have attracted global attention in this respect are Nepal andTibet. Secondly, exclusive focus of the chapters in this book is on the linguistic
contact zones in the Himalayan region. The “contact zones” initiate dialogues
between languages but at the same time the very contact generates a battle forestablishing hegemonic control over other competing languages. As the bookdemonstrates, official language policies, coupled with popular perceptions andpractices, create hierarchies between “mainstream” languages and local“dialects,” between written and oral languages, and between systemically“structured” language and poorly structured languages. All the contributors have
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paid attention to this aspect of politics in their studies. The chapters are based onserious empirical researches. Field studies, surveys, interviews carried out by themyield a rich crop of facts and figures related to specific languages and sites oflinguistic exercises and performances. The speech communities are carefully
selected and the chapters are uniformly structured. Although the fields ofdiscussion are approached mainly from synchronic points of view, diachronicinformation also flows in, when necessary, for the sake of wider historical
understanding. The book is interdisciplinary in approach as the contributors
belong to different fields of study such as linguistics, political science,
anthropology and geography.
The introductory chapter is written by Selma K. Sonntag. She sets the toneof the book by observing that “language politics” can be “parsed” in two ways:“the language of politics versus the politics of language” (1; emphasis original), and thatthe contributors mainly dwell on “the second parsing of language politics, thepolitics of language” (3). However, they have kept in mind the role of “thelanguage of politics, or more precisely how language politics is framed bydifferent agents” (3). The book comprises five other chapters which deal with thelanguage communities and language contexts of several areas in the Himalaya:“Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China” with exclusive focus on the rTa’uspeaking “Horpa” of Khams (17), the Ahom language of Assam in India,
language contact in schools in Nepal, “Kaike-Speaking Diaspora of Nepal” (109)and “Dual Linguistic Hegemonies in China’s Tibetan Frontier” (137).
In the first chapter Tunzhi (Sonam Lhundrop), Hiroyuki Suzuki and Gerald
Roche approach the rTáu-speaking “Horpa” people of the Kham region of Tibet
from the theoretical perspective of “recognition.” The socio-cultural context of
the “dialect” group is quite problematic as the language community is widely
considered to be “foreign,” the descendants of the invading Mongol soldiers who
settled down in the region. Besides, in contemporary times the rTáu-speaking“Horpa” people find their language marginalised by the dominant Tibetanlanguage perceived as “a prestige ur-language” (32). The rTáu language, on thecontrary, is viewed either as “degraded” or “fossilised” (32). This perception is
actively sponsored by the institutionalised Tibetan monastery and the official
Chinese language policy. Interestingly, the rTáu-speakers themselves areconvinced by the perception of the superiority of the Tibetan language. This,according to the authors, is the “mis-recognition” of their own spoken language(37). They argue that “the lack of a language system can be seen as one of thefactors that deprives rTáu of social and cultural prestige, and places pressure onspeakers to abandon their language for Tibetan” (39).
The second chapter by Selma K.Sonntag traces the history of the Ahomlanguage in the Indian state of Assam and the language regime’s gradual shift
from Tai-Kadai Ahom language (during the pre-colonial period) to the IndoAryan Assamese language which was later “reified under the colonial language
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Himadri Lahiriregime” (51). Gradually, there was “the vernacularisation of the Sanskrit
cosmopolitics in Assam” (74) which gave way to “postcolonial linguisticnationalism” (51). Sonntag employs the “historical institutionist framework ofstate traditions and language regimes” (51) in analysing the language of politics
and politics of language. Specially interesting is her analysis of the concept of the“indigenous” model of “Mandala state” (52-57) which emphasises power
relations, and not territoriality. Sanskritisation provided an elitist bias to thelanguage used during the later part of the Ahom kingdom. Sanskrit/Sanskritisedform of language was used as the court language. It survived till the colonialconquest which led to geo-cultural mapping of the region, initiating the territorialaspect in the system of governance. She refers to Bengali being made the official
language in 1837 which made Assamese appear as an inferior “dialect” of Bengali,
a “linguistic appendage” (71). The decision generated protests and there wereattempts to revive Assamese as the language of Assam through ‘buranji texts as a
powerful weapon… to assert an Assamese linguistic identity” (Purkayastha qtd.
in Sonntag 72). This created “language-territory-people association” (72)
obviously foregrounding the issue of ethnic identity. She asserts that “linguisticrationalization” which is the “political agenda of states within the Indian union”
in the postcolonial period actually “grates against its [Assam’s] linguistic diversity”(74). The chapter reveals the complicated play of power between the received
state language and different dialects.
The third chapter written by Uma Pradhan is entitled “Transforming
Language to Script: Constructing Linguistic Authority through Language Contact
in Schools in Nepal.” It analyses how, under Nepal’s official Multi-lingual
Education (MLE) programme introduced in 2010, the DangauraTharu language
gained in power and status. Textbooks written by local facilitators on topics
familiar to the children of the community upgraded the local language, although
it had to go through a “purification” and “sanitisation” process (80). This wasaccepted by the DangauraTharu speakers themselves because it would, in theirown perception, upgrade the language. She informs us that despite having awritten tradition, DangauraTharu had not been “systematized earlier” (95). The
policy and the production of locally produced school text books paved the way
for the preparation of a “systematic” written language – it was purged of“profanities, jargon, bad grammar and mispronunciation” (80). Writing thus
became a tool for preventing “a language from being labelled as a dialect ofanother language” (95). This largely provides a picture of how the nation can bereimagined and reconfigured through its new language policy.
The next chapter “The Significance of Place in Ethnolinguistic Vitality:
Spatial Variations across the Kaike-Speaking Diaspora of Nepal” by Maya Daurio
begins with the assumption that “memory of, and language about, place is a formof cultural knowledge which is site-specific [and] processual” (110). The casestudy involves movement of Kaike speakers between their native villages inAsiatic, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2020

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Dolpa region and urban spaces such as Kathmandu, and how this mobility affects
the language of the migrants. Interestingly, she also applies the generational
dimension which affects the choice of language in the contact zones over somedecades. Movement of children outside the “socio-ecological landscapeassociated with the Kaike language serves to lower the practical transmission andretention of that language among younger generations” (129-30) while themembers of the older generation respond in the opposite way. This reviewer
believes that the use of the word “diasporic” throughout the chapter is rather
problematic as the author mostly refers to the cases of migration within the nation
state itself.
The next chapter “Speaking Chone, Speaking Shallow: Dual Linguistic
Hegemonies in China’s Tibetan Border” written by Bendi Tso and Mark Turintakes the case of Chone-speaking people dwelling in the Chone County situatedon the Sino-Tibetan Border. This region was incorporated in the People’s
Republic of China in 1953. It is part of the Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture of Gansu Province. The chapter deals with the effect of the post-1953
Chinese official language policy about the ethnic minority groups. In the face of
the aggressive assimilative drive of the language policy, the Chone language
encounters the dual hierarchy of Chinese and Amdo Tibetan. This creates
possibilities of the language loss. The authors argue that the hegemonic hierarchy
is created through both imposition/coercion and the manufacturing of consent.
The members of Chone-speaking community internalise the “validity” of thehierarchy (154). The authors argue that the case study nullifies any possibility oflocal agency and oppositional, anti-hegemonic tendency so far as language
situation is concerned. The authors employ the concepts of hegemony asproposed by Kathryn A. Woolard and Terence G. Wiley in the field of language
study.
The title of the book mentions “the Himalaya” as the site of “languagecontact” to be dealt with in the work. The Himalaya is, however, a wider zone.
As Mark Turin mentions in the concluding chapter, “Greater Himalayan Region”
covers 3,500 km from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east (164). He
also observes that the region is home to 150 million people (164). This space
nurtures several languages, and the people historically negotiated several
languages simultaneously until recently when in many nation-states language
politics acquired more hegemonic, monolingual orientations, resulting in theemergence of endangered languages. The book, however, covers only a few geocultural areas, mainly Nepal, Tibet and Assam in India, leaving out a large numberof geo-cultural regions in the Himalaya where politics of language is equallyevident. Turin as an editor is aware of this and hence in the concluding chapter
he discusses the problems of Rohingyas who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh
as well as the Sikkimese situation. But the treatment of the areas is sketchy andmany other parts of the Himalaya such as Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh andAsiatic, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2020306

Himadri Lahiri

Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan remain unexplored inthe volume. Perhaps the geo-cultural regions in the Himalaya are too large totackle in a single volume, but the introductory and concluding chapters could
have provided a more comprehensive survey.
All the chapters in the edited volume are scholarly and are supported byproper theoretical frameworks. It is a very valuable addition to the area of cultural
knowledge of the Himalayan region.
Himadri Lahiri
Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, India
Email: hlahiri@gmail.com

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