SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0262728012469387 Vol. 32(3): 233–256 Copyright © 2012 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC LITERARY SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES OF HINDI LITERATURE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY Sujata S. Mody Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA abstract This article examines Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi’s project of literary self-determination, as articulated in two programmatic essays published in the Hindi journal Sarasvati under his editorship (1903–1920), scrutinising his construction of literature as a culturally embedded category of national consequence. His theorisation of Hindi literature as broadly inclusive in terms of its basic definition and function supported the growth of what he considered a national treasury of literature. His discussion of its historical and linguistic parameters and his emphasis on a prioritised plan of literary production, reified the notion of a modern discipline oriented towards a narrowly constructed national collective that sought to establish its sovereign identity via literature in Khari Boli Hindi. Though not explicit in its anti-colonial nationalism, this project nevertheless privileged Hindi as the projected lead language of a modern sovereign nation, with all the risks that delimitation entailed. keywords: Bengali, Braj Bhasha, Hindi, literature, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, modernisation, nation, public sphere, sahitya, Sarasvati, Urdu The Linguistic Landscape of Northern India Language and literature, by the turn of the twentieth century, had become two of the most politicised benchmarks of modern national identity in colonial North India. The English East India Company’s decree in 1837 to replace Persian as the language of the courts and administration with English at the higher levels and regional vernaculars at the lower levels had sparked considerable debate and political mobilisation over the question of an ‘official’ vernacular in regions such as the Northwest Provinces and Awadh, where more than one language and script was