Pritipuspa Mishra, Language and the Making of Modern India.

The monograph Language and the Making of Modern India by Pritipuspa Mishra, divided into six chapters and a postscript, traces a history of the creation of Odisha as a discrete linguistic province between 1866 and 1936. The volume proposes an analysis of the role of the so‑called vernacular languages in regional and national politics in both colonial and postcolonial India. This work represents an effort to overturn essentialist notions of weakness and powerlessness around the concept of vernacular by highlighting its political use on the part of regional elites.