As usual, I should begin with some preliminaries. First of all, I would like to" thank Prof. Udaya Narayan Singh, Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CllL) for inviting me to give the Foundation Day Lectures. It is indeed a matter of great joy to see an erstwhile student of my own department as director of this premier institute in the country. I have no doubt that under his leadership this institute will explore new horizons. Secondly I would like to dedicate these lectures to Prabodh B. Pandit, Robert B. Le Page and Rajendra Singh -three scholars who through their. work and personal interactions have influenced me most in my struggle to understand the nature and structure of language. Thirdly, though not always explicitly acknowledged, the influence, among others, of Noam Chomsky, Dell HyJI1es, William Labov, John Gumperz, Marx, Gramsci, Bourdieu, Bakhtin and Foucault will be obvious throughout the lectures. Fourthly, though there will invariably be considerable overlap between the two lectures, I propose to structure them in the following way: in the first lecture I try to share with you, partly biographically, the evolution of my own understanding of the nature and structure of language, in the process, doing a critique of the primary concerns of linguistic theory. In the second lecture, I attempt to give some alternative proposals and try to examine their implications for the work of CIIL. May I also add that I feel deeply honoured that such distinguished teachers, colleagues and friends as Professors Annamalai, Pabitra Sarkar , Hans Raj Dua, Anathnarayana and B. Mallikarjun, Ranjit Singh Rangila, Rekha, Basanti and Rajyashree among others are apart of the audience. I of course miss the presence of Prof. D.P. Pattanayak, the founder Director of the Institute, the man who built it all to a great extent. May I also take this opportunity to thank all the members of the audience, particularly those who made very useful comments and suggestions. I am indeed grateful to Prof. Annamalai, Prof. Sarkar, Prof. U. N. Singh, Dr K. Narayan and Ranjit Singh Rangila who made very critical and insightful suggestions most of which have been incorporated. I would also like to thank four people who extremely carefully read the pre-publication draft of these lectures and sent their detailed comments. They are Prof. Rajendra Singh, Prof. Aditi Mukherjee, Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya and Vandana Pori. The responsibility of all that is contained in the lectures is of course entirely mine. Prof. Rajendra Singh urged me to 'nuance' my proposals further, Prof. Mukherjee insisted on a greater theoretical depth on several sociological issues and Dr. o Bhattacharya wished me to clarify some of the concepts I had introduced. I thank Vandana Puri who brought to my notice the missing Freudian thread from my lectures. As you would notice she ii essentially right. But the specific issue I am trying to address in these lectures is the one of the relationship between language and power; of the plight of starving homeless millions and the role language along with several other factors plays in constituting that situation and of the relative failure of linguists to actively: engage in that issue. I of course agree with her that along with Marx and Darwin, Freud is certainly one of the most important thinkers who laid the foundations of contemporary thought. However, I have not been able to work out the relevance of the division of the human mind between the unconscious, foreconscious and conscious and the 'warfare among the ego, id and superego' for the kind of questions addressed in these lectures and this in spite of Lacan' s insistence that what is important is not dreams but the language in which they are reported. I would also like to thank Vandana Puri who very kindly took the trouble of not only word-processing the lectures but also agreed to do the copyediting and the blbllography. Along wlth Raj and Aditi and Rimli, Vandana enjoyed reading the lectures and in their joy I saw some reward the legitimacy of which I hope the readers will judge.

R.K. Agnihotri