`This book offers a clear, eloquent account of various facets of multilingualism in India. It addresses the challenge of managing, maintaining and promoting multilingualism in this case, offering a wealth of information on topics ranging from acquisition of multilingualism in family, social and professional settings, multiple identities, educational policies and language modernisation, to language conflict, minority-language maintenance and language mixing. The eighth in a series of excellent SAGE publications on language and development, the book presents a fine collection of the author's published and unpublished papers…. The analysis presented is insightful from both linguistic and scholastic viewpoints… this book is an invaluable resource for linguists, social and political scientists, policy-makers and those concerned with cultural studies' - Tej K Bhatia, Multilingual & Multicultural Development

This book addresses the sociolinguistic scene in India and explores the maintenance of multilingual speech communities and its promotion; progress and exclusion and how this can be avoided; and looks at what multilingualism does to linguistic purity.