Journal of Postcolonial Writing

ISSN: 1744-9855 (Print) 1744-9863 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjpw20

INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Anisur Rahman

To cite this article: Anisur Rahman (2007) INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION,
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 43:2, 161-171, DOI: 10.1080/17449850701430499

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449850701430499

Published online: 25 Jul 2007.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 616

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjpw20
Anisur Rahman

INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH

TRANSLATION
The discourse of resistance and
representation
AnisurRahman
anis.jamia@gmail.com
anis_r@rediffmail.com
Journal
10.1080/17449850701430499
RJPW_A_242933.sgm
1744-9855
Original
Taylor
202007
43
00000August
and
&ofArticle
Francis
Postcolonial
(print)/1744-9863
Francis
2007Ltd Writing
(online)

This paper discusses issues of resistance and representation with reference to Indian texts and
their English translations. Although Indian literatures have been widely translated in the
past, translating Indian literature has become a serious academic engagement only in recent
decades. Considering this tradition of translation, this paper argues that the contextualiza-
tion, theorization and canonization of Indian literature in English translation need atten-
tion in today’s fast-changing literary scene, and all the more so since postcolonial writing
represents a new literary culture.

Keywords resistance; representation; contextualization; theorization;

canonization

Text, translation, representation

Let me begin by claiming that the word “representation” has rarely before been used in
the variety of contexts and with the range of meanings that it has today. It has found a
niche for itself in diverse areas such as literature and the arts, media and popular culture,
pure and applied sciences, social and behavioural sciences, and so on. In fact, it has been
appropriated by all areas that concern broad human perception, action and experience.
Interestingly, most usages of the word “representation” cover its general lexical mean-
ing, “to represent” but when used in specific disciplines it refers to more complicated
areas of human knowledge.
The question of “representation” in a creative text has recently been discussed and
debated with particular reference to postcolonial literature. This expression has gained
currency in postcolonial discourse essentially because it is related to problems that
concern the following: (i) individual identity, (ii) power and language, (iii) hegemony
and resistance, (iv) nationalism and hybridism, and (v) ethnicity and indigeneity. Since
translated texts have also become an integral part of more general postcolonial literary
capital and canon formation, the question of representation has acquired yet another
dimension. One may thus assert that just as the colonial and postcolonial source text(s)
raise a variety of issues concerning representation, the text(s) in translation make the
literary/critical discourse more complex. This is particularly true of a multilingual and
multicultural nation like India.

Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol. 43, No. 2 August 2007, pp. 161–171
ISSN 1744-9855 print/ISSN 1744-9863 online
© 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/17449850701430499
162 JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL WRITING

Further questions may be asked with reference to this special context. For example,
what do our literature(s)/text(s) represent? Nation(s), paradigm(s), issue(s)? Or racial
hope(s) and fear(s)? Or even our personal desires and dilemmas? One could further ask
whether they represent our histories and historiographies, our concern for constructing
a certain kind of knowledge, our longing for a new form, or even that classic quest for
a contemporary idiom and text. It would be difficult to formulate even a general
answer, as none could be held with certainty and none would underpin the problems of
our multifaceted existence. One that may be considered appropriate is that our creative
aspirations broadly underline the kinds of representation that we wish to make, given
their diversity, and furthermore represent our racial, historical, cultural and individual
conditions.
Furthermore, the quest for individual expression produces a text that may
appropriately be called collaborative. Such a text, whether a source or a target text, is
neither an isolated nor a wholly independent entity but originates, is sustained by and
survives through a collaboration with other literary traditions, linguistic norms and
canonical formulations. This text acquires its vitality in the way it creates an enquiring
readership and calls for scholastic or critical interventions. In substantial ways these
collaborations are neither noted nor acknowledged because they create texts which
depend upon co-texts and subtexts.
Let me also assume that in deciphering the mysteries and histories of a nation, we
may profitably choose to draw upon literary representations of its peoples. These repre-
sentations in a multilingual and multicultural site like India must be replete with rare
complexities. The complexities develop if one chooses to look at historical periods and
attempts to situate oneself in the larger framework of time and space. Just as the idea of
this variously represented India is elusive, so is the idea of an Indian literature that is
written in several languages and that, of late, has lent itself to a broad definition which
has long eluded us. This definition has been made possible only because of the strength
of negotiation that translation between India’s languages and their literatures has made
possible. Indian literatures in English translation, as such, form a vast body of literary
heritage even though they are diverse, heterogeneous and still distinct.
The very phrase “Indian literature” has traditionally represented to the western
world two contradictory or conflicting notions of identification—the spiritual and the
profane—encouraging readers in turn to look for such content in this literature. There
is no doubt that the reiteration of simple perceptions or impressions over a period of
time contributes to the development of certain myths and stereotypes further generating
essentialist positions which prevent alternative representations or discourse. It takes
even longer to revise old notions and establish new ones. It is also true that representing
essentialisms is easier than resisting them by calling for yet another kind of representa-
tion. Essentialist representations, therefore, survive longer than even a period or periods
of history as they are politically motivated and are made to appear crucial, critical, even
fundamental to their society. Resistance in order to project another kind of representa-
tion, on the other hand, presupposes conflict, confrontation and long struggle. Even a
brief and non-detailed review of Indian literatures in English translation during the
colonialist, nationalist and post-independence—or the pre-modern, modern, and post-
modern—phases, would strengthen this argument. These literatures would tell the
story of how an essentialist representation becomes entrenched and how, in the course
of time, it comes to be questioned, making space for newer representations.
 INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 163

Indian text, English translation

It should come as no surprise to find that British as well as Indian translators frequently
chose to translate texts of a similar nature. Examples can be found in past practices such
as Akbar, the great Mughal emperor who had texts from Sanskrit, Turkish and Arabic
translated into Persian, with the intention of promoting dialogue and bringing together
the followers of various faiths. All-time, popular religious texts like the Ramayana, the
Mahabharata, the Bhagwad Gita, the Bhagwat Purana, the Atharva Veda, and so on. were
selected. A Mughal descendant, Dara Shikoh, extended this great tradition and sought
the assistance of Pundits from Benares to have a translation made of the Upanishads as
Sirr-i Asrar or Sirr-i Akbar (1657). These texts later found favour with western translators
and readers. In translating the Bhagwad Gita (1785) near the end of the 18th century, for
example, Charles Wilkins made the first Sanskrit text available to Europe. Similarly, in
translating Abhijnansakuntalam (1789) just four years later, Sir William Jones made the
first literary text available to the West. In the early 19th century, Nathaniel Halhead
translated the Upanishads, a religious text, while Horace Hyman Wilson chose to trans-
late Meghduta (1813), a literary masterpiece. He outlined his aims in his “Preface”:

The dramas of Sacontala and the songs of Jaydeva have prepared the readers of the
West, for the character of Sanscrit poetry [ … ] the profane poetry of the Hindus
affords better specimens of style and taste, than are to be found in the poems which
are considered by them as sacred: such as the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana, the portions of these works therefore, which [ … ] have appeared before
the public, cannot be allowed to detract from the general merits of Sanscrit
composition, even though it should appear that they have more charms in the eye
of literary curiosity, than of public taste. (Mehrotra 369)

The late 19th century saw new translations of the Bhagwad Gita by Mohini Chatterjee
and of the Ramayana (1870–75) by T.H. Griffith, and again by Manmatha Nath Dutt and
Romesh Chundur Dutt (1899). Dutt comments in his “Epilogue”:

Ancient India, like ancient Greece, boasts two great epics. The Mahabharata, based
on the legends and tradition of a historical war, is the Iliad of India. The Ramayana,
describing the wanderings and adventures of a prince banished from his country, has
something in common with the Odyssey. Having placed before English readers a
condensed translation of the Indian Iliad, I have thought it necessary to prepare the
present condensed translation of the Indian Odyssey to complete the work.
(Mehrotra 370)

Both Wilson and Dutt were trying to hand over the “literary curiosity” of India to the
West. While Wilson acknowledged the character of Sanskrit poetry, Dutt went a step
further in venerating the Mahabharata and the Ramayana as the Iliad and Odyssey of India.
The postcolonial critic, however, would not agree with this kind of comparison and
would not excuse Dutt for seeking the identity of an Indian text by drawing upon
western examples and parameters. These 18th- and 19th-century translators chose to
work on profane/folk/secular texts as well as Hindu religious texts. They distinguished
between religious and so-called profane texts by considering religious texts as
164 JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL WRITING

“literature” and translating them for a western readership. For them such texts had both
literary and spiritual worth. W. Franklin’s decision to translate a Braj text of the 18th
century called the The Love of Kamarupa and Camalata (1793) and C.A. Elliot’s choice of
a collection of Urdu Hindi ballads of the early 18th century, Chronicles of Oonao (1863),
fall into this category. Here, too, one might include Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s trans-
lations of his own Bengali plays made in the mid-19th century and Romesh Chundur
Dutt’s translation of his novel The Lake of Palms at the beginning of the 20th century.
During this period Lord Wellesley and his College of Fort William, Sir William Jones
and his Bengal Asiatic Society and H.T. Colebrook and his Royal Asiatic Society,
emerged as the most powerful centres of “knowledge construction” in which translation
played a major role.1 Orientalists like William Jones, John Gilchrist, J.T. Platts and
Duncan Forbes translated texts from Persian and Sanskrit for an English readership. On
the other hand, works like Gulsitan, Bagh-o-Bahar, Dastan-i Amir Hamza and the Qissa-i
Alif Laila were rendered in simple Urdu under the patronage of Gilchrist for the colo-
nialists who had come to rule over India, so they could be informed about Indian life and
letters. It was with this purpose that the British administration encouraged the transla-
tion of novels into English for British officers. Examples are translations of Nazir
Ahmad’s Taubat-un-Nusooh by M. Kempson as Repentence of Nusooh (1884), Bankim
Chand Chatterjee’s Kapalhundala by H.A.D. Philips as Kapal-Kundala: A Tale of Bengali
Life (1885) and Chandu Menon’s Malayalam novel Indulekha by W. Dumorgue (1890)
using the same title. Pre-1947 translations of Indian texts into English were thus gener-
ally directed towards the western reader.
In the 20th century is another remarkable example of Tagore translating his own
poems and publishing as many as six anthologies between 1912 and 1921. Tagore is also
greatly indebted to his translators such as Rajani Ranjan Sen, C.F. Andrews, Surendra
Nath Tagore, W.W. Pearson, William Radice, Sujit Mukherjee, Sukanta Chaudhuri and
many others, for translating his Gitanjali: Songs Offerings (1912) and other writings into
English. Self-translations made earlier of work by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Romesh
Chundur Dutt and, at a later date, Tagore, as well as translations of other texts like the
Ten Principal Upanishads by Purohit Swami in association with W.B. Yeats in the mid-
1930s, clearly illustrate the desire to represent India to the western reader as a land of
spiritualism, exotica, romance and grandeur. These efforts may be interpreted first as
the wish to represent India to the West for all its perceived value, and second to essen-
tialize India for that value. It was clearly the case that the West mattered and that trans-
lators sought acceptance from western quarters. The postcolonial critic would look at
this phenomenon as yet another move towards the acceptance of a colonial hegemonic
power which was favoured, quite often, by writers of Indian origin themselves. In his
essay “Indian Tradition and the Western Imagination”, Amartya Sen says that western
attempts to interpret India fall into three distinct categories: exoticist, magisterial and cura-
torial. The exoticist approach, he says, underlined the “wondrous aspect of India” (141),
the magisterial approach examined India as “a subject territory” (142) and the curatorial
approach included “various attempts at noting, classifying, and exhibiting diverse aspects
of Indian culture” (142). Although we may place many efforts at understanding the Indian
context by translating the Indian text into the curatorial category, nevertheless they all
reiterate a certain image of India and represent the land as the interesting “other”.
The mid- to late 20th century offers more complicated contexts of translation. The
need to evolve a definition of Indian literature and establish its relevance has been a
 INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 165

major factor informing the work of conscientious, informed translators. They are
concerned to voice postcolonial concerns that include questions of universality and
difference, representation and resistance, nationalism and hybridism, ethnicity and
indigeneity, production and consumption. As such, the translation of Indian literatures
into English has become a serious undertaking for young academics, established writers,
and translation experts who have collaborated, albeit unconsciously, in creating a new
literary culture. A.K. Ramanujan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, William Radice, Ralph
Russell, Qurrutulain Hyder, Agyeya, C.M. Naim, Mohammad Umer Memon, Girish
Karnad, Dilip Chitre, R. Parthasarthy, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Vinay Dharwad-
ker, among others, figure in the formidable list of translators. This is only a random list
but it shows how creative writers, critics and academics have chosen to work as trans-
lators and to represent a poetics characterized by typical postcolonial concerns. In his
Poems of Love and War, Ramanujan chose to revive an ancient Tamil poetic tradition,
asserting in the Translator’s Note: “These poems are ‘classical’, i.e. early, ancient; they
are also ‘classics’, i.e. works that have stood the test of time, the founding works of a
whole tradition. Not to know them is not to know a unique and major poetic achieve-
ment of the Indian civilization” (ix). His other anthologies of verse translated from
Tamil—The Interior Landscape (1967), Speaking of Siva (1993), Hymns for the Drowning
(1981) and the prose text Folktales from India (1992)—also underlie his aim of reviving
the Indian literary heritage. Similarly, when Dilip Chitre chose to translate Tuka Ram
[Says Tuka] or Linda Hess selected Kabir [The Bijak of Kabir], these were acts of retrieval
and revival for the contemporary reader. Such endeavours involve more than merely
translating texts because they require revisiting the classics for contemporary relevance,
reliving a tradition and reinventing a form for the modern reader. Gayatri Spivak’s
translation of Mahasweta Devi’s work falls into an entirely different category. As well
as translating one of Devi’s stories, “Stanadayini” [“Breast Giver”], Spivak has also
written a long essay entitled “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta
Devi’s ‘Standayini’”, using her work to exemplify her theoretical formulations about the
subaltern.
Spivak’s translations and studies are efforts at representing a political agenda and
constructing a discourse of resistance. Other examples showing the variety of Indian
texts and their translations could be given, for both the aim and manner of this activity
of conscious translating in order to develop a new literary tradition for India are now
well defined. In fact it would be possible to go beyond Amartya Sen’s three categories
and suggest a further three categories by which to appreciate Indian writing in English
translation. These categories might be (i) philosophical and mythical, (ii) cultural and the
multicultural and (iii) socio-economic and political. One might contextualize, theorize and
canonize Indian writings located in these categories to enable a better construction of
the broader Indian reality. Finally, this India or Indian literature that eludes categoriza-
tion, or sometimes even a definition, may be seen in terms of strikingly relevant and
contemporary identities. The new Indian nation and its literature(s) are manifestations
of new cultural icons, upward mobility and incoming prosperity, fake and genuine
godheads, love and hatred, adjustments and imbalances.
These ventures in translation would have proved futile had not publishers 2 in India
treated the entire phenomenon with such remarkable seriousness. Penguin India, OUP
India, Macmillan India, Orient Longman India, Permanent Black, Ravi Dayal, Stree,
Kali for Women, Writers Workshop, Katha, Seagull, Manas, among others, provide
166 JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL WRITING

the most reliable outlets for today’s new generation of translators. Their support may
be traced back to the pioneering role that Asia Publishing House, Jaico, Hind Kitab,
Orient Paperbacks and Arnold Heinemann played in this direction in the 1960s. A
significant move was made in 1996 by Macmillan India when it published a series
of modern Indian novels in English translation. By 2003 it had published 80 novels of
repute from almost all Indian languages. Sahitya Akademi, the national academy of
letters, which promotes translation activities in a major way, has developed its pres-
ence in a much more planned manner. Apart from publishing translations in its journal
Indian Literature, it has published individual and award-winning authors in translation
and also accomplished a massive 10-volume project where noted Indian writers find
their space in English translation. An analysis of the data of writers, translators,
languages, genres and ages would yield interesting results and would establish that
translation is fast formulating its canon and posing an alternative discourse on resis-
tance and representation. The editors of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry
rightly recorded in their “Preface” that these are “attempts at transmission—and more
than transmission” and “if they succeed, they change emphasis, attack old biases and
introduce new ones, even remake [ … ] a reader’s sense of his or her literary tradition”
(vii). The guest editor, Aditya Behl, and the editor, David Nicolls, in their introduc-
tion to the special issue on “Contemporary Indian Literatures” of the Chicago Review
(1992) underline yet another facet of this phenomenon: “What has emerged in this
collection is an ‘India’ whose literary scene is vital, diverse, and changing” (6). Finally,
the validity of the translated text is emphasized in the Introduction to The Picador Book
of Modern Indian Literature:

If there is anything this anthology says, it is that it is possible, in this time of postco-
lonial theory on the one hand, and trivial curiosity on the other, to place authors
and their texts at the centre, rather than on the margins, of a discussion and a reas-
sessment of how we think about India. (xxxiv)

Considering these observations on the aims in translating and contents of translation

through various phases of history, it is clear that the theory and practice of translation,
especially with reference to the Indian text and context, have now emerged as major
areas of academic engagement in India. The curricula in departments of languages and
literatures have also changed and author, translator and reader have entered into a new
relationship.

An academic engagement
Translation of Indian literatures in English is one of the major concerns in India today.
The growing number of publications every year shows that translations into English
from various languages of India are far more popular than the translations within the
Indian languages. It is only appropriate that we should take the opportunity to rethink
the state of Indian literatures in English translation and the state of English studies in
India, a closely related issue. This includes sharing ideas and experiences, taking stock
of Indian literatures in English translation with reference to the Indian contribution to
English studies and initiating debates about its possible academic significance. 3
 INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 167

Much has changed during the past few decades in Indian academia as the result of a
more mobile intellectual milieu, new technologies and improved conditions for
disseminating knowledge. Privileged universities in the metropolitan centres open to
academic inquiry have introduced revisionary approaches such as reforming the canon.
An effort is being continuously made to relocate to India from the West the western
body of knowledge and modes of dissemination. As such, the whole question of
English studies in India, a site of multiplicities, has been under renewed scrutiny over
the past two decades in a number of academic debates and publications, for like the
postcolonial English-speaking world in general, now enriched with a variety of
Englishes, it faces a number of questions. Academics in India have treated as a serious
challenge those which relate broadly to three important areas: contextualization, theori-
zation and canonization.
The new literary scenario in India is decidedly complex. A contemporary Indian
writer writing in one language will be read in several others. Similarly, an Indian reader
reads across languages and conditions. This implies that both writer and reader operate
beyond the frontiers of a given language and literary culture. This has been made possi-
ble by the emergence of the translator as an important negotiator between the two. As
such, the writer and translator constitute an inseparable duo and try to relocate them-
selves and redefine their relationship vis-à-vis the reader. Their combined effort is
directed towards evolving a new literary culture of greater homogeneity and richness,
one which will inevitably empower the reader and encourage greater self-assertiveness.
Situating such a reader who increasingly combines several roles into one is a complex
proposition. The common reader is also a competent academic, a keen learner and a
significant link between the writer and the translator. The reader’s engagement with a
text is a kind of activity in which s/he both learns and unlearns by shedding traditional
notions and developing contemporaneous ones. The act of reading as an act of free
enquiry thus provides the opportunity to develop any reading of the text, however naïve
or provocative, but always worth the effort if the reading can be both contextualized and
theorized.
The construction and dissemination of knowledge depends on how people wish to
engage with these issues. This has been amply demonstrated by comparison with the
way English and English studies emerged in the early 19th century as part of the colo-
nial project. In India during the subsequent nationalist phase in the first half of the 20th
century, the Quit India and Progressive Writers Movements in the domains of politics
and literature inflamed the Indian imagination. Even though English studies continued
during this period, Indians started finding their place as teachers, and possible curricu-
lum revision was considered. The passage from Anglo-Indian to Indo-Anglian to Indian
writing in English and ultimately to Indian English literature marked a basic, though
difficult, transition in hierarchical cultural relationships. In the post-independence era,
texts and issues other than the question of the English language found their space in
literary topography. This can be seen as an important historical period because Indians
themselves evolved a new academic agenda in postcolonial India. As such, an entirely
new space has been created for a variety of non-British literatures with a clear focus on
texts in translation and on translation studies. Increasingly over decades the dynamics
of linguistic diversity and cultural unity have affected English language and literary
studies in India, making these disciplines a different kind of enterprise now. The hege-
mony of the language remains unaltered even as it offers a vastly liberated canvas of an
168 JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL WRITING

interdisciplinary nature in which the study of Indian literatures in English translation

has received special attention.
The regional or vernacular literatures in English translation which display a differ-
ent set of identifiers from Indian English literature have, in this process of indigenous
appropriation, acquired a new strength and readership. The hegemony of English does
not necessarily take us to neo-colonialism; it offers, in fact, an opportunity to create a
counter-discourse by resisting the western narrative and its correlates and by evolving
its own narrative. Indian writing in English and in translation together form a large body
of writing and this body of rich and complex writing has the potential to endure and
become central in new canon formation.
While this may all be true, a contrasting view may also be presented. One may
claim that English is not understood by the great majority of people in India and that it
divides them into English and non-English (i.e. superior and inferior), urban and non-
urban (i.e. more and less cultured), powerful and less powerful (i.e. privileged and less
privileged). Further, it may also be argued that it impinges upon the multilingual literary
tradition of India, which is thousands of years old and has not yet established a place for
itself in the larger Indian psyche. All this can be said, despite the long life of English in
India as a language of interaction and writing and its contribution to Indian life and
letters. While these two views may not necessarily be reconciled, English and English
literary studies have survived the vicissitudes of change with positive results.
What are our points of reference in the given location, India and in the given,
modern, postcolonial condition? We could answer this if an appropriate direction for
English studies in India could now be established. Our studies are becoming more
interdisciplinary and intertextual, increasingly inflected by historical, political and social
concerns. They are developing a comparative perspective with the help of translation
and evolving their own contexts, sites and canons. With a pan-Indian status, this
literature is acquiring contemporary relevance to academic aims as its own emerging
pedagogy—one which may differ from time to time and text to text—testifies. In sum,
we are finding a context and evolving a way of reading our text(s) both independently
and also in comparison with other Indian texts, leading ultimately to the creation of a
new canon.
All academic debates over curriculum during the past two decades have invariably
given substantial space to Indian literatures in English translation. The University Grants
Commission Model Curriculum of 2001, which is essentially holistic in nature, also makes
a strong case for supporting Indian literatures in English translation as well as compara-
tive studies which would benefit from literatures in English translation. For example,
these would afford readers the opportunity to reconstruct histories of survival, of
nation-state and of cultural ambience. It argues:

… in the sixth decade of independence, there is neither need nor justification for
the wide continuance of traditional English programmes of British or Anglophile
bent. Rather, it is felt, the skills traditionally imparted through such programmes
should now be applied to a wider range of cultural material, especially that of Indian
provenance or relevance. (15)

The inclusion of Indian literatures in English translation into the curriculum has
helped identify our context, which is so very central to the postcolonial understanding
 INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 169

of the text. This also gives a theoretical framework and a structure for the develop-
ment of a canon, apart from imparting a certain Indian identity to the whole business
of teaching and learning. It is, in conclusion, a matter of relocating a whole new body
of literature which still requires translation and proper dissemination for these
academic purposes.

Issues in question
The discussion in this article raises a number of issues which are related to problems of
contextualization, theorization and canonization. For example, it points to the status of
marginalized discourses in bhasha 4 literatures and the need to make space for them in
English translation. It underlines the significance of textual choice, the need for more
discriminating readers, interdisciplinary concerns and the possible emergence of a new
poetics. Questions relevant to relocation, identity, history, nation and language
occupy centre stage. This engagement may best be viewed in terms of the specific
Indian context rather than the broad and amorphous postcolonial context, which incorpo-
rates too many shades of postcoloniality without necessarily identifying any of the
precise locations precisely. Both translators and readers are now required to reflect
upon how they are viewed and read by their reading publics, and furthermore
whether they agree with this identity. Another related question is whether we are
more willing to translate our Indian literatures than others are to receive the transla-
tions, for our aims are to translate more for ourselves than for others although we
look forward to a possible readership outside India. This is all part of the process of
making a different kind of representation by evolving a new poetics through transla-
tional activities. A standard curriculum in a western university usually includes writers
such as R.K. Narayan, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry
and Arundhati Roy, and Anantha Murthy and Mahasweta Devi in translation. The
Indian English novelists retain a more recognizable frame of reference than those who
write in the bhashas. The subtext of the bhasha writers is more alien to the western
reader, but this makes it all the more necessary for this literature to reach out in
English translation. Western resistance to what is alien, although it may be native for
those of us in India, should be viewed in this new perspective of greater possibilities of
dissemination. Finally, the distinction between Indian English literature and Indian
literature in English is rapidly disappearing in India, particularly in the academy where
canons are revised and new frames of references are established. The strength of
Indian literatures lies in the heterogeneity of perceptions, narrative forms, cross-
cultural communications, interconnections and intertextualities. One may now safely
assert that postcolonial translation is in itself an act of resistance against the essentialist
paradigms of colonialism and colonial writing because it examines the broader ques-
tion of representation and is able to create a new canonical framework. The translator
of Indian literatures in English is rediscovering a past, turning the historical into
contemporary and the exotic into the strikingly real. S/he, like all other translators, is
seeking a new readership but is doing so with the determination and ability to make
cross-cultural representations rather than homogenizing a variety of literary traditions.
The translator is contributing towards an understanding of the new dynamics of life
that include cultural norms and political systems.
170 JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL WRITING

Notes
1 For a detailed discussion of the paradigms of empowerment, construction of knowl-
edge, the College of Fort William, texts, authors and translators see Rahman.
2 A checklist of the titles in translation from publishing houses such as Penguin India,
Permanent Black, Ravi Dayal, Stree, Kali for Women, Macmillan, Oxford University
Press, Orient Longman, Katha, Seagull and Manas would bear this out. The number
of publishers with an interest in translation has grown, as has the number of titles.
3 The question of English and English studies in India has been widely debated. Seminars
include: (a) “The Study of English Literature in India: History, Ideology, Practice”,
Department of English, Miranda House, University of Delhi, April 1988; (b)
“Perspectives on the Teaching of English Literature in Indian Universities”, British
Council and Centre for Linguistics and English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi, 29 March–3 April 1990; (c) “Teaching of English Literature in India”, British
Council and Department of English, University of Hyderabad, March 1991; (d) “New
Directions in Language and Literature Teaching”, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolk-
ata, 28–29 November 2003; and (e) English Studies, Indian Perspective, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi, 23–25 March 2004.
Publications that focus on these issues include: C.D. Narasimhaiah, Moving Frontiers of
English studies in India (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1977); M. Manuel and K. Ayappa
Paniker, eds., English and India: Essays Presented to Professor Samuel Mathai on his Seventi-
eth Birthday (Madras: Macmillan, 1978); Svati Joshi, ed., Rethinking English: Essays in
Literature, Language, History (New Delhi: Trianka, 1991); Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan,
ed., The Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1992);
Sudhakar Marathe, Mohan Ramanan, and Robert Bellarmine, eds., Provocations: The
Teaching of English Literature in India (Madras: Orient Longman in association with the
British Council, India, 1993); Harish Trivedi, “Panchadhatu: Teaching English
Literature in the Indian Literary Context”, Colonial Transactions: English Literature and
India (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995); Report of the Curriculum Development Centre
in English (New Delhi: University Grants Commission, 1989); Susie Tharu, ed.,
Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties (New Delhi: Orient Longman,
1998); UGC Model Curriculum: English and Other Western Languages (New Delhi: Univer-
sity Grants Commission, 2001).
4 In the “Nativist Criticism” sense used in India today this means Indian languages. Marg
or mainstream in the Indian classical period referred to Sanskrit. Today the Marg or
Power language is English, and the bhashas are the underprivileged Indian languages.

Works cited
Behl, Aditya, and David Nicholls, eds. Contemporary Indian Literatures. Special issue of
Chicago Review 38.1/2 (Winter 1992). Reprinted as Penguin New Writing in India.
New Delhi: Penguin India, 1992; rev. ed. London: Penguin, 1994.
Chaudhuri, Amit, ed. The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. London: Picador, 2001.
Dharwadker, Vinay & A.K. Ramanujan, eds. The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry.
New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1996.
Guha, Ranajit, ed. Subaltern Studies V. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2005.
Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna, ed. An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.
 INDIAN LITERATURE(S) IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 171

Rahman, Anisur. “Paradigms of Empowerment and the College of Fort William.” CIEFL
[Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages] Bulletin NS 12.1/2 (December
2002): 59–70.
Ramanujan, A.K. Poems of Love and War. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1985.
Sattar, Arshia. “Translations into English.” An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English.
Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. 366–76.
Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
University Grants Commission. Model Curriculum: English and Other Western Languages. New
Delhi: University Grants Commission, 2001.

Anisur Rahman is Professor in the Department of English and Modern European

Languages, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He works on the postcolonial literatures of
India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and literary translation, including translations
of poetry from Urdu into English and vice versa. His publications include Form and Value
in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel (1981), Expressive Form in the Poetry of Kamala Das (1981),
New Literatures in English: Tradition and Modernity in the Literatures of Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand (1996), and Fire and the Rose (1995), an anthology of modern Urdu poetry
in English translation. He has edited Translation: Poetics and Practice (2001), essays on the
Indian text and context. Address: Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi,
India. [email: anis.jamia@gmail.com or anis_r@rediffmail.com]