About the event

Dr G N Devy, India’s foremost linguist and literary critic, will explore ‘Language, Civilization and Hegemony’ in the 2025 Nehru Memorial Lecture hosted by the King's India Institute. The Nehru Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture hosted by King’s India Institute and endowed by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust. We also maintain an archive of past lectures since 1966.

In his talk, Dr Devy will make a case for treating language as the most useful prism for comprehending the many histories of India. It will detail the major language shifts in South Asia's history since the onset of the Holocene, and describe the contemporary linguistic composition of the sub-continent. If language has been the backbone of India's civilization, it has also been the primary instrument of social dominance and subjugation of a large number of communities. The lecture will offer an account of the close connections between language and hegemony in the context of India's encounters with Sanskrit, Persian and English.

Join us for a tea reception at The Arcade, Bush House 6 pm onwards. The lecture commences at the Bush House Auditorium at 7 pm.

This is a free event and in-person, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and avoid empty seats. Admission is on a first come, first served basis. Those without tickets will not be admitted. 

About the speaker

Dr G N Devy

Dr G N Devy is a distinguished scholar, writer, and public intellectual, renowned for his contributions to literature, linguistics, and cultural studies. Writing in Marathi, Gujarati, and English, he has dedicated his career to exploring India’s linguistic and literary heritage. He was the driving force behind the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), a monumental project that documented over 700 languages across 50 volumes.

Over a literary career spanning decades, Dr Devy has authored or edited over 100 works in diverse fields, including literary criticism, history, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Some of his notable books include In Another Tongue (1992), After Amnesia (1992), Of Many Heroes (1997), A Nomad Called Thief (2007), The Crisis in Knowledge and Education (2018), and India as a Linguistic Civilization (2024). His work has been widely recognized, earning him prestigious honors such as the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Durga Bhagwat Award, the Prince Claus Award, the Linguapax Award, and the Padma Shri. Dr. Devy has been associated with esteemed academic institutions, including M. S. University of Baroda, DAIICT Gandhinagar, CMDR Dharwad, and NCBS-TIFR, and currently serves as the Director of the Somaiya School of Civilization at Somaiya Vidyavihar University, Mumbai. 

About the chair

Niraja Gopal Jayal

Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal joined King’s India Institute as Avantha Chair in October 2021. She was formerly Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and presently also Centennial Professor (2019-23) at The London School of Economics, in the Department of Gender Studies.

Her book Citizenship and Its Discontents (Harvard University Press and Permanent Black, 2013) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. She is also the author of Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (OUP, 1999). She has co-edited The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, and edited, among several others, Democracy in India (OUP, 2001) and Re-Forming India: The Nation Today. (Penguin Random House, 2019) Her most recent book is Citizenship Imperilled: India’s Fragile Democracy (Permanent Black).

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