Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue

What makes someone willing to die, not for a nation, but for a language?
In the mid-20th century, southern India saw a wave of dramatic suicides in the name
of language. Lisa Mitchell traces the colonial-era changes in knowledge and practice
linked to the Telugu language that lay behind some of these events. As identities
based on language came to appear natural, the road was paved for the political
reorganization of the Indian state along linguistic lines after
independence.