Language and the Making of Modern India: Nationalism and the Vernacular in Colonial Odisha, 1803–1956.

Chapter 3 turns to the Utkal Sammillani, a pan-Odia forum created in 1903 to improve the welfare of Odia-speaking communities and push for better representation, which eventually evolved into a demand for amalgamating all Odia-speaking areas into one administration. Contrary to the overstated title, I Language and the Making of Modern India i is a comprehensive and important study of the regional Odia language movement and the creation of Odisha (formerly Orissa), the first province organised on a linguistic basis under British rule. The author points to a concerted intellectual effort to write a history of Odisha which imagined the Odia-speaking community and non-Odia Adivasi communities as long existing "side by side" but with a clear hierarchy which justified their lesser position under a liberal, paternalistic Odisha. [Extracted from the article]