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Karthik Venkatesh

Mint Correspondent

ARTICLES BY KARTHIK VENKATESH

Gandhi’s objection to English was that it was alienating and, as the language of government, created an unbridgeable distance between the rulers and the ruled. (Photo: Alamy)

Mahatma Gandhi and the language games

6 min read . 21 Sep 2019

Brass and copper stores in Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar; (Alamy)

The strange and little-known case of Hindko

5 min read . 06 Jul 2019

A file photograph of a boy in an English class at a school in Rajasthan. Photo: iStock

The many voices of the subcontinent

6 min read . 17 Mar 2019

Initially, the Brahmi script was known as the ‘Pin Man’ script owing to the way its letters looked. Photo: Alamy

How the ‘pin man’ script evolved

5 min read . 27 Oct 2018

A 1925 impression of Prakrit inscriptions on an Ashokan pillar at Lumbini in Nepal. Photo: Alamy

Prakrit: The forgotten ancestor

5 min read . 02 Sep 2018

‘English Vinglish’, starring Sridevi, highlights a Hindi-speaking woman’s struggle to learn English.

Hinglish, Inglish: An Indian story

6 min read . 04 Aug 2018

A man in traditional Naga dress. Nagamese is a hybrid of Naga languages and Assamese. Photo: Alamy

Bhasha focus: When Indo-European met Tibeto-Burman

6 min read . 08 Jul 2018

Kapila Venu performing ‘koodiyattam’, which also used Manipravalam. Photo: Getty Images

When Malayalam met Sanskrit, many centuries ago

6 min read . 02 Jun 2018

The worldwide web of the Indo-European language family

6 min read . 25 Mar 2018

The tyranny of the blank page

5 min read . 18 Mar 2018

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Photo: HT

Copy... and paste: Plagiarism in literature over the years

5 min read . 17 Feb 2018

C.N. Annadurai and E.V. Ramasamy. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Language troubles in Tamil Nadu

7 min read . 20 Jan 2018

To put it simply, Dakhani is the language of the Deccan—a version of Urdu/Hindi spoken across a swathe of peninsular India.

When a northern tongue moved south...

5 min read . 02 Dec 2017

Urdu dominated Delhi’s cultural life for centuries. Photo: HT

Other tongues: the stunning lingual diversity of India

6 min read . 28 Oct 2017

Hebrew is the only instance of a dead language that has undergone a complete revival. Photo: iStock

Of ‘standard’ languages and ‘impure’ dialects

6 min read . 16 Sep 2017

A file photo of Damodar Mauzo, who was a part of the movement for a separate Konkani identity and language. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Konkani vs Marathi: Language battles in golden Goa

7 min read . 05 Aug 2017

The big banyan of languages in India reveals many treasures on closer inspection. Photo: iStock

Wanderings in the world of Lingua Indica

6 min read . 16 Jul 2017

Photo: Popperfoto/Getty Images

A language buried by Partition

6 min read . 24 Jun 2017

Of little-known Indian languages and scripts

5 min read . 16 Jun 2017

Naxals and their international counterparts

7 min read . 13 May 2017

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