Bilingualism and Political Attitudes in South India

• In Event: Political Attitudes and Coalitions in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Language has been seen as integral to nationhood, not only as a symbol, but also as a medium of shared culture. Thus, language standardization has been integral to state-building in early European states as well as more recent post-colonial states. An important challenge to a unified national identity then is the politics of multilingualism and associated regional autonomy, particularly as language takes on symbolic dimensions that shape identity. This paper seeks to explore whether and how bilingualism in the dominant language of a state affects the political attitudes of individuals of ethnicities associated with non-dominant or minority languages. It does so through the Indian case and focuses on how bilingualism in Hindi, the dominant national language, affects political attitudes in Tamil Nadu, a state that is not Hindi-dominant. It argues that greater exposure to the dominant language leads to greater support for ideologies associated with that language. Through an online survey experiment conducted on Amazon MechanicalTurk, respondents are randomly exposed to non-political vignettes in English, Hindi and Tamil so as to evaluate the hypothesis that for individuals of the non-Hindi speaking ethnicity (Tamil) who are bilingual in Hindi, greater exposure to Hindi leads to stronger national identity, as well as greater support for Hindutva ideology. This paper contributes to the literature on ethnicity and nationalism by assessing the role of language in the convergence of a national identity. Second, in the context of right-wing nationalism in India, it advances a theory on Hindi language ability increasing the likelihood of individuals of non-Hindi ethnicities espousing Hindutva ideology; therefore, it contributes to the literature on the determinants of support for Hindutva politics in India. Third, it advances our understanding of how immediate exposure to a language affects the political behavior of bilingual individuals.

Author

• Deepika Padmanabhan, Yale University