Weaponizing Language

Legislating a Hindu India

Ila Nagar (The Ohio State University)

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English

Cambridge University Press
28 August 2025

Sociolinguistics; Interfaith relations; Gender studies: women; Nationalism

Small linguistic tricks can have big footprints. This book examines how India's current Hindu nationalist government uses language as a weapon against its Muslim citizens. Each chapter provides a discursive history of matters that have been a source of conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India, highlighting the potent relationship between language and politics. The book explores four issues, Ramajanmbhoomi temple, Muslim Personal Law as it pertains to Indian Muslim women, Kashmir and revocation of Article 370, and Citizenship (Amendment) Act/National Registry of Citizens, whose histories in courts and legislative bodies are written in linguistic trickery. Offering novel ways of understanding why the Hindu right has claimed victories on these legislative and judicial matters that impact the lives of minority citizens, it is essential reading for key insights for academic researchers and students in sociolinguistics, as well as South Asia studies, gender studies and Indian politics and culture.

By: Ila Nagar (The Ohio State University)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781009480291
ISBN 10: 1009480294
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 28 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ila Nagar is Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. Her recent publications include Being Janana: Language and Sexuality in Contemporary India (Routledge, 2019). She studies how language represents familiar and unfamiliar social hierarchies.

Reviews for Weaponizing Language: Legislating a Hindu India

'Nagar's lucid and compassionate volume introduces 'linguistic trickery' as a powerful analytic for understanding the subtle yet consequential maneuvers that so often characterize political discourse. Encompassing a range of rhetorical strategies, the concept reveals how India's Hindu right has weaponized language to construct threatening images of Indian Muslims-paving the way for the tragedies of the nation's ethnonational present.' Janet McIntosh, Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University