Spelling Desire in the Coloniser’s Tongue: Locating Multilingual Female Writers in Twentieth-Century India

South Asia manifests a unique socio-linguistic identity that celebrates a paradox of what I call singular pluralities. Within it, India is a democratic country built on multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism, multilingualism, secularism and on a tainted history of colonial rule. In the years that have followed the colonial era, the English language has been embraced by India as her own. According to Ethnologue, India is home to 398 vernacular languages and over a thousand local dialects. Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal further filter these vast numbers into more quantifiable measures to problematise India’s multilingual existence: