'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Sage publications on language and development, the book presents a fine collection of the author's published and unpublished papers'e¦. The analysis presented is insightful from both linguistic and scholastic viewpoints'e¦ 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.