Wanderers, Kings, Merchants by Peggy Mohan

 

Wanderers, Kings, Merchants by Peggy Mohan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cher sang Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, that is what the title sounds like. Seriously, this is an intriguing book – it traces the history of what is now India from the perspective of the evolution of languages in various parts of the country – Kerala, Nagaland, Maharashtra and, of course, the so-called Hindi speaking ‘cow-belt’.
Rather dense prose, at times pedantic and incomprehensible with all the scientific terms used in linguistics – koines, ergativity, calques etc. can make the going rather heavy.
I did not know that it was the recognition of Hindi/Devnagri and rejection of Persian/Urdu by the ruling British that sparked the stirring of the Partition of India along communal lines. Another bit of trivia

India is on its way to becoming, by a few orders of magnitude, the largest English-speaking nation on Earth.

And to supplement this Tower of Babel is our own unique creole Hinglish - Yeh dil maange more

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