Framing the Future

Peggy Mohan describes this book as a thought experiment, a way of wondering about a future she herself will not live to see. Language has shaped her thinking for most of her life, and she sees it at the center of India's biggest questions about identity, community and what lies ahead. Language can bring people together, but it can also split them apart, trapping them in separate worlds and narrowing their opportunities.

She believes India is at a rare moment of possibility. New technologies now make it possible to bridge linguistic divides without wiping out the country's remarkable diversity. Rather than pushing everyone toward one common language, they could let people speak across languages while keeping their own.

Drawing on history and linguistics, and on a bold sense of what could happen, Framing the Future imagines India's many languages becoming a source of connection instead of division. It sketches a future that is more connected, more confident and unmistakably India's own.