I grew up in a small town named Bhor in Pune district. Bhor was a one-time“Princely State”, but the prince was really a minor prince. Among thearchitecturally interesting “monuments” he created out of his negligible revenuewere a small palace, a temple, a high school, and a library. As a middle-schoolstudent, I used to go to the library. It had a few thousand books, mostly in Marathi.Among them, many were translations of English, European, and Bangla books.
Among the translations were a biography of Abraham Lincoln, a translation ofVictor Hugo’s
Les Miserables
, a prose rendering of one of Alfred Tennyson’s poems,and the Tarzan stories. I was not aware that they were translations. It did notstrike me at that age, but to bring a book from the US or France or Africa tomonolingual readers in a small town inhabited by people who had rarely evercrossed the borders of their State was quite a miracle.
A few years later, when I started reading newspapers, I wondered how the Marathireporters could get the details of things happening all over the world so fast. I wasnot aware that the editorial desks had to depend on translation of news in otherlanguages, mainly English. I had not realised how important a role the invisibletranslators play in the spread of information and culture. And it was not just thespread of information but also the spread of empires where they played a key role.
The dubhashis
I do not know if enough documentary evidence exists to support the story I haveheard about the fi rst encounter between offi cers of the East India Company andthe people in Surat where the EIC wanted to begin its trading operations. It seemsthe Englishmen, who obviously did not know either Gujarati or Persian, had toemploy Armenian translators. The Englishmen knew some Portuguese; theArmenians also understood Portuguese.
Thus an English sentence was translated fi rst into Portuguese, then thePortuguese was translated into Armenian, followed by its Persian translation fromArmenian, and fi nally the Persian was translated into Gujarati. In reply to thecommunication, the whole chain of translations was played back. Yet, despite thislong linguistic journey along the path of translation, the communication did takeplace.
I often wonder if the European powers could have built their colonial empires ifthat anonymous translator had not come to their rescue. Later, the Company
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created an offi cial position of dubhashis or multilingual functionaries. Twocenturies later, the EIC offi cials were fi rst trained in a few Indian languages beforebeing posted to India. By the end of the 18th century, many of them translatedtexts from Persian and Sanskrit into English. Some, like Sir William Jones (1746-1794) and Charles Wilkins (1749-1836), became world famous.
Over the last fi ve decades, I have come across innumerable scholars andenthusiasts who have translated from or into their own languages. In comparison,the numbers of those interested in translation in England or in other English-speaking countries is much smaller. I often think of poets like A.K. Ramanujan,Dilip Chitre, and Arun Kolatkar, whose ease with several languages wasremarkable, as being characteristic of the Indian attitude to language andliterature. Ramanujan translated from Tamil and Kannada into English. He wrotehis poems in English as well as in Kannada. Chitre had an ease with translation andwriting both in English and Marathi. When I was in Gujarat, I translated a fewcomplex texts from Gujarati to English. I have also translated from Marathi toEnglish and from English to Marathi without becoming too self-conscious.Besides, when it came to writing in Gujarati, Marathi, and English, I did notexperience any great unease.
This is not to say that one has complete mastery over all these languages. The fewexamples I have given are brought in to point to the sense of ease that Indianshave in dealing with several languages. Millions of workers and traders in Indiawho work in States other than their own engage with several languages as easily asfi sh swim in water. We can perhaps say that the Indian Consciousness is aTranslating Consciousness.
“What myths describe as “Parakaya-prvesh” (getting under another’sskin), is a way of life for us.”
Metamorphosis, or what myths describe as
Parakaya-prvesh
(getting underanother’s skin), is seen as no great deal by Indians who are used to beingmultilingual. It is a way of life for us. It is an important soft power India hasinherited, the importance of which we have not fully assessed.
Fortunately, we have a long tradition of considering translations as equally sacredas the original texts. We also have an amazing diversity of languages which makesmultilingualism a natural cultural practice. The convention of bestowing a sacredstatus on translations emerges in the circumstances under which many of ourmodern languages were born.
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Most of them have translations of Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata or theRamayana as the fi rst or early texts in the initial phase of their emergence. The
Jnaneshwari
for Marathi, the
Gita Govinda
for Oriya, the
Charyas
in Assamiya, theMahabharata translations in Telugu and Kannada and the
Ramcharitamanas
forHindi exemplify this peculiar phenomenon. These texts are as sacred for thespeakers of those languages as the King James version of the Bible is forEnglishmen.
Language diversity
As far as language diversity is concerned, data on “Mother Tongues” in successiveCensus reports may suffi ce. The 1961 Census had listed 1,652 mother tongues asreported by Indian citizens. In 2011, 1,369 mother tongues were reported. The highdensity of languages in India provides a favourable social context for anyone toaccept bilingualism or even multilingualism as a natural way of life. In turn,multilingualism supports translation as a mental habit in day-to-day life. Theenormous advantage that such a society has over a purely monolingual societyshould not be underestimated.
When I grew up reading Marathi translations of books from many countries, Hindiwas not an easily understood language in Maharashtra. Later, the popularity ofHindi fi lms and Hindi songs brought Hindi closer to the Marathi-speaking people.During the same period, the Marathi language kept distancing itself fromnumerous tribal languages in Maharashtra and either marginalised them or plainfi nished them off. I have noticed a similar process in Gujarati during the last sixdecades.
At this juncture in our national history, Hindi is being presented as the linguistic“Big Brother”. An insistence on displaying Hindi signboards in southern States isthe beginning of an intended diminishing of Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, andMalayalam. The Language Committee’s recommendation that Hindi be made thelanguage of inter-State offi cial communication in the name of national unity is anill-advised step towards linguistic social engineering. It may look like a desirablemove for a myopic nationalism, but it will spell the beginning of the decline ofIndia’s multilingualism and inherent translation ability. It will, in simple words,erode the soft power that our ancestors have handed down to us.
Recently, I was in Chennai for the International Book Fair organised by the TamilNadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation. The fair attractedparticipation from a large number of publishers from various continents. I learntthat plans are afoot to have a number of Tamil works translated into several Indianlanguages, English, and other global languages. I fi nd this an extremely imaginative
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cultural move. It is bound to increase the prestige of Tamil the world over. Besides,it will strengthen the age-old institution of translators.
To my mind, the BJP’s ham-handed imposition of Hindi and the DMK’s imaginativestrategy to increase its soft power stand in sharp contrast. One betrays impatienceand inadequate understanding of India’s cultural past, the other showsstatesmanship and a good grasp of the cultural make-up of India. After all, the onlyNobel Prize for Literature given to any Indian was for a translation, RabindranathTagore’s Bangla
Gitanjali
in its English version.
The ability to translate, transform, and transmigrate and the ability to get underanother’s skin with complete empathy, which are at the heart of India’s culture andpast, cannot be easily understood by an ideology that thinks of every “other” as anenemy within. The working of the invisible hand cannot be grasped by those whobelieve that hands are made only for wielding lathis.
Ganesh Devy is a cultural activist and founder of Dakshinayana.
Source; Frontline Magazine, 24/02/23
