M. Ishtiaq, Language shifts among the scheduled tribes in India: A geographical study. (MLBD Series in Linguistics.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, Pp. xii, 183. Rs 450. $32.00.

Abstract

This book, by a geographer, is a rather complete study of the linguistic behavior of an important population group, the so-called Scheduled Tribes of India, numbering 68 million people in 1991, and more than 90 million today, i.e. as much as the population of Germany – but a population split into distinct units, spread in various patches of territory all over India, where they speak more than 60 indigenous languages. Spatially and culturally divided, they have also long been socially marginalized, and despite many official schemes of development, they are still undergoing a very important process of deculturation. The most noticeable manifestation of this process – the language shift that is the subject of this book – had, at the period of the author's fieldwork, already affected nearly 60% of this population and is leading to the gradual disappearance of local languages in many places.