Power in Print

By trying to explore a narrative of dissent, struggle, and conflict among various contending speech communities, this MS tries to have a re-look at some fundamental debates in the cultural experience of the educated middle classes in nineteenth century colonial Bengal. More specifically, it tries to study power and representation in colonial Bengal through the print-language and literature and its impact on the resultant identity formations. In the nineteenth century, language and its written literature was more than anything else, object of immense debate, scrutiny, and surveillance among the Bengalis and the colonial administration. But what is often less understood is that print languages and literature were also vital instruments for crafting social identities, and in a competitive environment like colonial Bengal, they offered substantial opportunities to indigenous groups to consolidated power along multiple axes of class, gender and community. By trying to relocate within the world of Bengali print groups previously thought to inhabit the peripheries of literate cultures, the volume also tries to challenge the conventional understandings of social formation in the nineteenth century.