Multilingual Practices, Education, and Identity in Pune, India by Jessica
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Multilingual Practices, Education, and Identity in Pune, India by Jessica Sujata Chandras B.A. in Anthropology, March 2010, University of Washington A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 19, 2019 Dissertation directed by Joel Kuipers Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs © Copyright 2019 by Jessica S. Chandras All rights reserved iii The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Jessica S. Chandras has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of February 28, 2019. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Multilingual Practices, Education, and Identity in Pune, India Jessica Sujata Chandras Dissertation Research Committee: Joel Kuipers, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Rashmi Sadana, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Committee Member Marilyn Merritt, Professorial Lecturer of Anthropology and Research Associate, Committee Member ii Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to Madhukar Narasinha Chandras, or as I knew him, Uncle Baba iv Acknowledgements As Pune became my home for almost three years, the list of individuals who helped me with my many tasks and transitions there is long and varied. The language study portion of my work was made possible by the constant and patient dedication of my Marathi teachers and the administrators at the American Institute of Indian Studies, principally Sujata Mahajan and Shantanu Kher. I thank my relatives in Pune for ample support in getting settled, studying and practicing Marathi, and for being the first to make Pune feel like a second home to me. Among my relatives, I am endlessly grateful to Jyoti Mutalik for always providing me with a home base, hot tea, and my favorite thalipeeth and homemade dahi. I also felt exceptionally loved and welcomed watching cricket with my uncle Shayamrao and enjoying wonderful tomato soup with my Auntie Viju, in their warm home that sits in the same place as the old wada from my childhood. I also am very grateful to the many, many friends and acquaintances who have come and gone throughout my time in Pune, all of whom were instrumental in connecting me to schools, organizations, interlocutors, and in general in helping me learn the city, country, language, and find my footing in my research there. Out of these individuals, I found a sister in Gandhali Kulkarni, an amazing pillar of support and perseverance, and a wonderful coffeeshop and salon companion throughout various trials and tribulations in Pune. This project would be incomplete without me thanking my parents, Karen and Prakash, and sister, Emalie, for supporting me and acting as ever-enthusiastic sounding boards for my ideas throughout my tenure as a PhD student. I thank Kevin Davis for the bottomless support he gives to my work, as he has read many iterations of my writing v with a keen and gently critical eye that I am grateful for. I also thank my father, Gandhali, and fellow student thriving and striving to finish a PhD, Abhijit Pendse, for careful consideration of my translating efforts. Any misrepresentations I have made in my writing and in my translations are my mistakes alone. Among the community of scholars who address the topics I attempt to approach here, I thank Dr. Philip Engblom and Dr. E. Annamalai from the University of Chicago for constructive conversations with a Marathi scholar and for perspectives from an Indian educationist and linguist. At the George Washington University, I recognize the unflinching support of my colleagues, and the faculty and administrators who assisted me in various ways in my teaching, research, and as a student. I am especially grateful to my advisor, Dr. Joel Kuipers, for guidance navigating my topic from one end of the world to another, encouraging me to “hit the ground running,” and for advice on all other aspects of academia that I encountered with bewilderment. I am extremely grateful to the rest of my committee, Dr. Rashmi Sadana, Dr. Alex Dent, Dr. Marilyn Merritt, and Dr. Fida Adely, for patient guidance, thoughtful revisions, extensive comments, and support in my abilities to complete the degree, work, and writing. This project would also not have been possible without financial support from the National Academy of Education, the Institute for Ethnographic Research, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Jane B. Hart Endowment in Anthropology, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences dissertation completion fellowship, and the Lewis N. Cotlow fund. I endlessly appreciate their support and the assistance of many others throughout the process of completing this project. vi Abstract Multilingual Practices, Education, and Identity in Pune, India This dissertation tells a story from the points of view of students, parents, educators, artists, and activist interlocutors of the contemporary educational and linguistic context of Pune, a mid-sized urban city in the state of Maharashtra in India. In relation to language use in education, this study reveals the ways in which middle class residents assign meanings and values to Marathi (the regional language of Maharashtra), Hindi, and English, their use, and how middle-class and largely upper caste urban Indian residents use languages as markers of aspects of their identities to shape understandings of the city and aspirations. The project views social change through the lens of linguistic repertoires in and around education through an analysis of language use in Pune, captured through ethnographic methods such as participant observation and structures/unstructured interviews. Implicit questions that undergird this collection of chapters is to discern the boundaries of languages and the relevance of mother tongues in India today. With a focus on the contemporary urban, middle-class and upper caste Indian linguistic context this is an ethnography through the lens of language use in and about education and educational institutions. The data and analysis address contribute to ongoing debates of the implications, benefits, and compromises made in different language mediums of education in multilingual, postcolonial societies in today’s world and nuances the role of English in processes of language shift. More generally, I address topics from a grass- roots level from parents and students and teachers in their classrooms rather than from a top-down approach through vii educational policy and administration to present a picture of contemporary mother tongue or regional language use in India. viii Table of Contents Dedication ……………………………………………….…………….……….………. iv Acknowledgements…..…………………………...………….…………….………..….. v Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………... vii List of Figures ………………………………….……………………………………..… x Preface: Research inspiration/“Mesearch”……………………………...……………..… xi Chapter 1: Introduction ………..………………………………………...……………..….1 Chapter 2: Identity in the Classroom ……….……………………………………….……48 Chapter 3: Learning English while Learning in English…….…………………………..98 Chapter 4: The Aksharnandan School …………….………..………………..…….……150 Chapter 5: Multilingual Practices and Language Experiences in Pune………………..… 194 Chapter 6: Marathi Language Activism……….………………………….………….…264 Chapter 7: Concluding Epilogue …………………………..………………….………...299 Bibliography ……………………………..…………….……..……………..…….……319 Appendices ……………………………….…………………..………….………….… 336 Permissions ……………………………….…………………..………….…….……… 339 ix List of Figures Figure 1. Map of peths, rivers, and outlying neighborhoods in Pune..……….…….… 34 Figure 2. Location of schools in Pune included in this study………………………….…65 Figure 3. Mini KG Students sit with the maushi during a video activity ……………..….103 Figure 4. English words written in Devanagari script that start with the “M” sound….…185 x Preface: Research inspiration/“Mesearch” A breath leaves the sentences and does so that they can be admired somewhere not come back farther and farther away yet the old still remember something that where nothing that is here is known they could say we have little to say to each other but they know now that such things are no we are wrong and dark longer believed in the eyes of the new owners and the young have fewer words the radio is incomprehensible many of the things the words were about the day is glass no longer exist when there is avoice at the door it is the noun for standing in mist by a haunted foreign tree everywhere intead of a name there is a lie the verb for I nobody has seen it happening the children will not repeat nobody remembers the phrases their parents speak this is what the words were made somebody has persuaded them to prophesy that it is better to say everything differently here are the extinct feathers here is the rain we saw W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees, 1988 This project started from an exploration of my own identity from personal questions about language. Similar to the sentiment expressed in Merwin’s poem, I felt a heavy loss at not being able to speak my father’s mother tongue— knowing I was a cog in the process of language shift and language loss over generations. More personally, I could not speak with my cousins, aunts, and uncles in India. As I gained curiosity over my identity and the impact language has on identity, I began to merge my interests in my xi personal life with my interests in studying