Sangeeta Bhagawati
Independent Researcher.
10.21659/9788197513022.03Abstract
This chapter focuses on the work of Sheelabhadra (Rebati Mohan Dutta Choudhury, 1924-2008), whose writing gives us a critical look at the politics of language and belonging in Guwahati, Assam’s principal urban centre. Guwahati, like many other postcolonial Indian cities, is shaped by the merging of migration, language diversity and social hierarchy. The regional language literature of Sheelabhadra portrays these multilingual urban experiences. His Assamese fiction shows us how language becomes a marker of belonging or exclusion. Drawing on his background in Goalpara, a linguistically distinct region on Assam’s western borders, Sheelabhadra brings the speech of a marginalised dialect community into his representations of urban life. His short story “Apon Manuh” (2007) explores how internal migrants experience Guwahati as a city structured by linguistic hierarchy. Centred on a chance meeting between two migrants from Goalpara, the story reveals how dialect and standardised language operate as registers of identity. In this chapter, I argue that the conversation between the protagonists, where they shift from standard Assamese to Goalparia dialect, reveals two important aspects. First, it allows us to see the need for linguistic conformity in the urban sphere. Second, it makes visible an alternative form of solidarity based on shared marginal speech. Sheelabhadra’s work is valuable to understanding larger debates on how urban identities are shaped through everyday acts of language use.
Keywords: multilingualism, belonging, Assamese literature, dialect, internal migration.
Full-Text Chapter PDF Full Text Book PDF
Urban Imaginaries and Indian Cities in Literature
Table of Contents
Urban Imaginaries and Indian Cities in Literature: An Introduction
Dr. Neethu P Antony and Dr. Arpana Venu
Olivia Joseph
Multilingual Metropolis: The Politics of Language and Belonging in Guwahati Through Sheelabhadra’s Fiction
Sangeeta Bhagawati
Spatial (re)orientations and Epic structures of the urban in Fareeda Mehta’s Kali Salwaar
Elroy Pinto
Between Tramline and Traffic Jam: Mapping Indian City through Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar and Anurag Basu’s Life in a…Metro
Trisha Sengupta & Dr. Sanghamitra Baladhikari
Reimagining Kolkata: Subaltern Narratives and the Colonial Urban Dystopia in Kallol Magazine’s Literature
Nandini Gayen
Walking, Writing and Resisting the City: Spatial Tactics and Postcolonial Reimaginings in Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches
Parvin Sultana
Mimesis, Montage and Mapping: A Spatial Analysis of Gangtok City Scapes in the Select Works of Satyajit Ray and Prajwal Parajuly
Dr. Sudakshina Bhattacharya, Dr. Sulagna Mohanty, and Dr. Ankusha Bandyopadhyay
