Language Policy and Education in India: Documents, Contexts and Debates

This book presents a history of English and development of language education in modern India. It explores the role of language in colonial attempts to establish hegemony, the play of power, and the anxieties in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century India. The essays in the volume discuss language policy, debates and pedagogy as well as larger overarching questions such as identity, nationhood and sub-nationhood. The work also looks at the socio-cultural and economic factors that shaped the writing and publishing of textbooks, dictionaries and determined the direction of language teaching, specifically, of English language teaching.

Drawing on a variety of archival sources - policy documents, books, periodicals - this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of linguistics, language teaching, cultural studies and modern Indian history.

M. Sridhar is former Professor, Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, India and is currently Secretary of the Alladi Memorial Trust that renders educational, medical and legal help to the underprivileged. With experience of teaching English at higher secondary and research levels for more than two decades, he is now engaged in teaching school children. He has keen interest in multilingualism and linguistic creativity, and has published in the areas of language, English literature, comparative literature and literary theory.

Sunita Mishra is Professor, Centre for English Language Studies at the University of Hyderabad, India. She has published on communication skills, discourse analysis, English in India and English language education. Presently, she is working on the history of English language education in India and critical pedagogy.