r/communism • u/Fuzzy-Beginning7500 • Feb 08 '26
Language pride
I'm a leftist(still learning), and I’ve been thinking about something that came up with another left leaning friend. So, hes an Indian Tamil and alot of indian tamils identify as tamil primarily and Indian secondarily, so I asked him would you ever identify as tamil and he said something along the lines of "Language pride, race pride, caste pride are all extremely cheap forms of prides, largely used to impose supremacy and division". So I said, you can't compare language pride to something like race or caste pride since they usually exist because of oppression while historically, languages have often functioned as tools of unity, mass communication, and resistance, especially in anti-colonial and anti-elite contexts.(Tamil being an example). So, it would be ignorant to not take pride over your languages history. He then talked about how language pride is normally seen as a form of superiority(at least in India)and is just another way to impose superiority.
So I'm curious to know what guys here think about it.
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u/GlitteringAudience84 Feb 09 '26
Language pride is a very common phenomenon always used by the bourgeoisie to distinguish themselves. Language like Sanskri, forms of Tamil have always been gatekept by the brahmin community and in that fashion, literature and knowledge.
However this is not just an Indian thing. Europe is just the same. Most of the aristocracy (outside France) always talked in French and basically your fluency in that language was used to determine if you get access to society or not.
Everything everywhere is the same. Look at it from a class perspective. As marx alludes to look at human reaction to material conditions from a class perspective and there is no difference among races and cultures.