Through a close analysis of an Indian woman's unsuccessful romance narrative, this article examines how class-based ideologies and prejudices concerning English and vernacular medium education sustain and perpetuate dismissive and disparaging attitudes toward people educated in the vernacular. The analysis utilizes theoretical understandings of…

This chapter offers a situated account of English and vernacular literacy practices from a postcolonial perspective. Situated in ongoing endeavors in a variety of local contexts in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, where the author was raised and schooled, this chapter calls attention to some key educational sites through which these policy-related…

The unavoidability of language makes it critical that language policies appeal to some notion of language neutrality as part of their rationale, in order to assuage concerns that the policies might otherwise be unduly discriminatory. However, the idea of language neutrality is deeply ideological in nature, since it is not only an attempt to treat…

This dissertation examines the ideological connections between schooling, mobility, and social difference among students in New Delhi. In it, I argue that educational mobility, especially with regard to English-language education, is an ideology which seems to offer a path to reduce social difference while in fact protecting it. I also argue that…

This paper qualitatively documents and analyses the attitudes and identities of female students from the urban disadvantaged social class towards English and Hindi in the city of New Delhi. These attitudes include not only instrumental views of English but also the impression that it creates a new personality for an individual. English is part of…