The enforced standardization of Konkani through the exclusive official recognition of the Devanagari script ( I have referred to it as referred to as Nagrization) represents a textbook case of French thinker Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of linguistic capital in operation. Bourdieu conceptualized linguistic capital as a subset of cultural capital: the ensemble of linguistic resources, including varieties, accents, registers, and orthographic systems, that individuals and groups possess and deploy within social fields. These resources derive their value not intrinsically, but from the structure of the linguistic market, the institutional arenas (education, bureaucracy, literature, media, law) where dominant authorities confer legitimacy on particular forms while disqualifying others.
In Goa and among Konkani-speaking communities, the linguistic market has been decisively reshaped since the Official Language Act of 1987 and the subsequent inclusion of Konkani in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, both of which privilege Devanagari as the sole legitimate script for official and educational purposes. This policy effectively derecognizes four other scripts with deep historical and communal roots in Konkani: Roman (Romi), Kannada, Malayalam, and Perso-Arabic. Each of these scripts embodies distinct forms of linguistic and cultural capital accumulated over centuries through regional, religious, colonial, and migratory histories.
The Roman script, for instance, is inseparable from the Goan Catholic community’s experience under Portuguese rule, carrying the imprint of ecclesiastical literature, diaspora correspondence, modern cultural production in print and digital media, and everyday expressions of identity among Christians in Goa and the global diaspora. The Kannada script anchors Konkani speakers in coastal Karnataka, integrating the language into the broader linguistic ecology of the region and facilitating interaction with local Kannada-dominant institutions. The Malayalam script serves Konkani communities in Kerala, enabling seamless engagement with the Dravidian linguistic environment and preserving distinct southern variants. The Perso-Arabic script preserves the literary and religious heritage of Muslim Konkani speakers, linking them to centuries-old Indo-Islamic textual traditions, poetry, and religious scholarship.
By designating Devanagari as the exclusive norm, state institutions exercise what Bourdieu terms symbolic power: the capacity to impose one variety as the universal standard of competence and to render alternative varieties illegitimate or deficient. Speakers and writers whose primary or exclusive proficiency lies in non-Devanagari scripts suffer a direct devaluation of their linguistic capital. In official domains—government offices, schools, courts, competitive examinations, literary recognition schemes, and public broadcasting—their orthographic competence is disqualified. Publications, petitions, educational materials, or creative works produced in Roman, Kannada, Malayalam, or Perso-Arabic scripts are sometimes marginalized, denied official status, or excluded from prestigious platforms such as state-sponsored literary awards and school curricula.
This exclusion produces multiple layers of impoverishment for the language as a whole.
First, there is a contraction of expressive capacity. Each script has historically adapted to the phonological, morphological, and lexical specificities of the dialects and sociolects it serves. Roman script, for example, often captures Portuguese loanwords, Christian liturgical terminology, and colloquial Goan expressions with greater fidelity to pronunciation and cultural nuance; Perso-Arabic preserves Perso-Arabic vocabulary, orthographic conventions, and stylistic features central to Islamic discourse. Enforcing convergence toward Devanagari flattens these nuances, homogenizing a language that has long been celebrated for its syncretic, plural character into a narrower, often Sanskritized or North-Indian-aligned variant that privileges certain phonological and lexical preferences over others.
Second, the policy generates exclusion and alienation among entire speech communities. Writers, journalists, educators, and cultural practitioners tied to non-Devanagari scripts face structural barriers to participation in the public sphere. The reproduction of Konkani literature, journalism, and pedagogy in these scripts becomes increasingly difficult and economically unsustainable, leading many to shift production toward Marathi, English, Hindi, or other dominant regional languages that offer greater pragmatic returns in terms of audience reach, institutional support, and career opportunities. Over time, this accelerates intergenerational language shift and weakens the vitality of Konkani as a living, multi-scriptal tongue capable of expressing the full diversity of its speaker base.
Third, the monopoly on legitimacy reproduces and amplifies social inequalities. Linguistic capital is convertible into economic capital (access to government jobs, scholarships, contracts), social capital (networks within elite institutions and cultural circles), and symbolic capital (prestige as an “authentic,” “educated,” or “modern” speaker). Those lacking mastery of Devanagari are positioned as less competent, less modern, or less authentically Konkani—echoing Bourdieu’s insight that linguistic devaluation often translates into broader perceptions of diminished social worth. In Bourdieusian terms, the dominated groups internalize this hierarchy through symbolic violence: they come to accept the inferiority of their own linguistic practices, consenting to a structure of domination they did not design and which disadvantages their communities.
Critics of Nagrization frequently describe the process as “dekonkanizing” the language, stripping away the plural heritage that has defined Konkani across religious, regional, and historical boundaries. In Bourdieu’s framework, this amounts to a monopolization of the linguistic market: capital is concentrated in the hands of those whose habitus (the embodied dispositions acquired through socialization into Devanagari norms, often aligned with certain caste, class, and regional positions) most closely matches the dominant standard. The result is a narrowed field of legitimate expression that privileges particular voices while systematically marginalizing others.
A genuinely democratic linguistic policy would recognize all five scripts as equally legitimate within the Konkani linguistic market. Such an approach would preserve the full ecology of the language, allowing diverse forms of capital to circulate without hierarchical disqualification. It would sustain Konkani’s expressive richness, strengthen community participation across religious and regional lines, resist the homogenizing pressures of standardization, and affirm the language’s capacity to reflect the lived realities of all its speakers.
Until that plural recognition occurs, the Nagrization of Konkani continues to enact Bourdieu’s central proposition: language is never merely a neutral medium of communication. It is a site of power, stratified by who holds the authority to define what counts as legitimate speech and who pays the price when that definition excludes them.
