INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSLATION

VOL. 28, NO. 1-2, JAN-DEC 2016

Understanding Translation of Indian Literature

into English: A Historical Perspective
SUSHIL KUMAR
Punjabi University, India

ABSTRACT

The present research paper is an attempt to understand the

Translation of Indian Literature into English from historical
Perspective. India has long tradition of translating the texts
from one to another language. It begins with the translation of
Ramayan and Mahabharat from Sanskrit to local Indian
languages. Doubtlessly, English is the language of global
market and also well accepted in the multinational country like
India, therefore Indian literature translated into English has
its unique place. Besides, in order to accelerate the interest in
translation, many agencies and institution like Sahitya
Academy, National Book Trust, and National Translation
Mission have been established for this purpose.
The translation of India literatures into English language
is a vital transformation for providing a space for sharing the
Indian literature with not knowing Indian languages readers.
By using the tool of translation, Indian rich literary traditions
has been relocated and reasserted in world literature scenario.
Besides, an attempt is made to comprehend the colonial
designs behind the translation of that era and similarly the
compulsions (market) of the postcolonial era are to be
discussed.

The present proposal is an attempt to understand the translation

of Indian literature into English during the colonial and
postcolonial era particularly in socio-political and historical
contexts. Even though colonial and postcolonial eras have their
own historical and socio-political specificities, various aspects
related to translation of Indian Literature into English can be seen
184 SUSHIL KUMAR

in continuation. As John McLeod, Professor of Postcolonial and

Diasporic Literatures University of Leeds England, has pointed
out in Beginning Postcolonialism, “Postcolonialism recognises
both historical continuity and change. It acknowledges that the
material realities and modes of representation common to
colonialism are still with us today even if the political map of the
world has changed through decolonization” (McLeod 2000: 33).
At the same time, an attempt will be made to comprehend the
colonial designs behind the translation during that era alongside
compulsions (say from the viewpoint of market) of the
postcolonial era have to be unravelled.
In colonial period, English was the language of colonizers,
therefore it had the hegemonic status in India. In the present
scenario, also, English is the language of global market and also
well accepted in the multilingual country like India, therefore
Indian literature translated into English has its unique place
because of the colonial past and the politics of the supremacy of
English. Besides, in order to accelerate the interest in translation,
many agencies and institutions like Sahitya Academy, National
Book Trust, some publication houses and National Translation
Mission have been established for this purpose. They have been
engaged in the promotion of Indian books to the wider readership
as part of their mandate. Sahitya Academy has established four
centers for translation at Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi and
Santiniketan. These centers have translated Indian books into
English in collaboration with the National Book Trust.
Translation has always been a significant part of Indian
Literature. It begins with the translation of Ramayana and
Mahabharata from Sanskrit to local Indian languages that are
easily understood by the people in medieval times. In the Indian
tradition there is an exalted notion of translators. Tulsidas,
Krittivas, Pampa or Kamban who translated great epics are
regarded as great poets. This is in keeping with our multilingual
and multicultural set up which allow translation to evolve freely
as a creative activity and not to be tied down by theories. The
translator, on the other hand, is a reader and co-author at the
same time.
TRANSLATION OF INDIAN LITERATURE INTO ENGLISH 185

But the significant translations took place at the time of

Emperor Akbar. In his effort to promote understanding among
religions and promote interfaith dialogue, Akbar sponsored
debates among scholars of different religions and encouraged the
translation of Sanskrit, Turkish, and Arabic text into Persian.
Persian translation of Sanskrit texts including Ramayana,
Mahabharata, Bhagavat Gita, Bhagavat Puran, Athrava Veda etc.
had taken place in this era. Prince Dara Shikoh’s (1615-1659)
interest in comparative understanding of Hinduism and Islam
encouraged him to take assistance from the Pundits of Banaras
with a Persian translation of Upanishda was completed in 1657
with the title Sirri Akabar or Sirri Asrar (The Great Secret). This
text was translated into English by Nathaniel Halhead (1751-1830)
and into French and Latin by Anqetil Duperron (1731-1805). His
own work, Majmua Al-bahrain written in 1654-55, was translated
into English by Mahfuzul Haq in 1929.
Harish Trivedi divided Indian literature translated into
English into four categories as following:

1. Indological phase: This phase consists of the literature

written in Sanskrit or Pali in ancient and medieval era and it
is translated into English.
2. Neo-Orientalist or Post Orientalist phase: It includes the
Bhakti Kaal texts translated into English.
3. National Allegory (Fredrich Jameson): In this phase, the
translation of the realistic writers like Munshi Prem Chand is
occurred.
4. Internationalism/Universalism: Modernist writers are being
translated into English

Similarly, G. N. Devy (1993: 120) divides history of translation

into four parts in his book In Another Tongue: Essays on English
Literature:

1. The Colonial Phase (1776-1910)

2. The Revivalist Phase (1876-1950)
3. The Nationalist Phase (1902-1929)
4. The Formalist Phase (1912 onwards)
186 SUSHIL KUMAR

The great moment for translation in India came in 1750 during

colonial period under the guidance of Warren Hastings who was
the Governor of Bengal. He encouraged the young officers and
merchants to understand Indian languages and cultures in order
to be successful in Commerce and trade. Charles Wilkins
published a Sanskrit grammar in 1779. He is considered as the
first Englishman to learn Sanskrit. He translated The Bhagwat
Geeta in 1785, and this is the first Sanskrit text available in
English through translation. John Marshal translated Sama Veda
from Bengali to English and the Bhagwat Purana from Persian to
English. He played a great role in establishing printing in Indian
languages. William Jones (1764-94) founded the Asiatic Society
of Bengal in 1784 to understand Indian culture and he translated
Kalidas’ Sacontala (1789) the GeetaGovind (1792) the
Manusmriti (1794), and the Hitopadesha into English during this
period. This text was widely appreciated by the western
readership. William Jones is believed to be the founder of
Indology. John Gilchrist along with his colleagues translated
simple Urdu works like Gulistan, Dastan Amir Hamza, Qissa Alif
Laila o Laila. These translations were being done in order to
make British officers familiar with the Indian culture, who came
to India to rule the country. Omar Khayam was one of the most
famous and beloved Persian poets of the middle ages. The most
famous translation of the Robaiyat from Persian into English was
undertaken in 1859 by Edward J. Fitzgerald. Prof. Max Muller
(1823-1900) edited and translated fifty one volume of The Sacred
Books of the East which enclosed translations by various scholars
from different locations and backgrounds.
All the translations of the above said texts include perceptive,
astute forewords and appendices. These commentaries clearly
indicate that almost all the translations by the colonizers of this
era were designed to construct, propagate and perpetuate
hegemonic ethnographic agenda of the promotion of the
superiority of their race. By adding the western cultural status to
the works translated, they intended to colonize the Orient and
control the native. It was the part of an approach to understand
colonized people by asserting the superiority of colonizers’
cultural and literary canons. Edward Said rightly observes in his
TRANSLATION OF INDIAN LITERATURE INTO ENGLISH 187

well known book Orientalism, “Orientalism is not mere political

subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture,
scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection
of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive
of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the
“Oriental” world. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical
awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological,
historical and philosophical texts” (p. 12). The primary aim was
to provide necessary cultural information to colonial officers in
order to manage and rule natives. Bassnett and Trivedi also
indicate the similar notion about the motif of colonial
translations, “colonialism and translation went hand in hand”
(p. 3). According to Tejaswini Niranjana translation had to serve
“to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of
European learning” (1995: 12).
Mahasweta Sengupta in her essay ‘Translation as
Manipulation’ recognizes this potential:

While choosing texts for rewriting, the dominant power

appropriates only those texts that conform to the pre-existing
discursive parameters of its linguistic networks. These texts are
then rewritten largely according to a certain pattern that denudes
them of their complexity and variety; they are presented as
specimens of a culture that is simple, natural, and in the case of
India other worldly or spiritual as well. (1995: 159)

Such a rendition clearly justifies the colonizer’s “civilizing

mission,” through which the inherent superiority of the
colonizer’s culture is established. Translation involves distortion,
subversion, manipulation and appropriation.
One can easily sense the intention of the colonizer scholars
like James Mills and Macaulay in the discipline of history,
culture and literature. Tejswini Niranjana cited James Mill in her
book Siting Translation that “India must discard his Indianness in
order to become civilized” (1995: 58). Lefevere quotes Rubaiyat
translator Edward Fitzgerald’s comment in his letter to his friend
E. B. Cowell in 1851: “It is amusement to me to take what
liberties I like with these Persian who….are not poets enough to
188 SUSHIL KUMAR

frighten one from such excursions and who really do want a little
art to shape them” (p. 3-4). Iran B. Hussani Jewett also points
“Fitzgerald’s British arrogance his belief of his inherent English
superiority” permitted him to assume that his insufficient
familiarity with Persian would be enough for his translation
project. Further, she asserts that, “enabled Fitzgerald to compose
his masterpiece in his own ways” (p. 143).
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), known as the morning
star of Indian Renaissance, was greatly influenced by the liberal
outlook of the colonizers. He translated Upanishads into English
in 1830s, similarly Indian translators like Romesh Chunder Dutt
(1848-1909) translated Indian classic texts like Ramayana,
Mahabharata and the Rigveda in English. Pali Jatkas was
translated into English by TW Rhys David in six volumes from
1877 to 1896. Bankim’s novels, Anandamath (1882) in
particular, were translated into most of the major Indian
languages. The Punjabi legend of Heer-Ranjha (Heer) written by
Waris Shah (1722-1798) was translated into English under the
title of Waris Shah: The Adventures of Hir and Ranjha by
Charles Frederick Usborne (1874-1919).
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) translated the poems of
Kabir. He understands the hegemonic status of English and
translates his own poems in Gitanzali from Bengali to English.
He got Nobel Prize for this anthology in 1913. Sri Aurobindo
translated Gita in the colonial era and Vidyapati in 1956. It can
be noted that many Indian scholars and translators helped the
western translators but they are not mentioned seriously in these
translated texts. In the post-colonial period, the need is felt to
reconstruct, rethink and rediscover various new perspectives on
the relationship between source and target texts. Bassnett argues,
“Both original and translation are now viewed as equal products
of the creativity of writer and translator….it is up to the writer to
fix words in an ideal unchangeable form and it is the task of the
translator to liberate those words from the confines of their
source language and allow them to live again in the language into
which they are translated” (2010: 5). The Translation from one
Indian language to another Indian language was very rare just
after the Independence. However, even though the postcolonial
TRANSLATION OF INDIAN LITERATURE INTO ENGLISH 189

moment belonged to translation from Indian languages into

English, the translation scene even in English was fairly
desultory in the first three decades after independence.
Aside from the Akademi, some significant translations
during this period were those sponsored by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO is
an organization of the United Nations and its Collection of
Representative Works is a translation project that has been
executed from 1948 to about 2005. The purpose of the project
was to translate masterpieces of world literature into English and
French. Foremost among them are: Bibhutibhushan
Bandopadhay’s Bengali novel Pather Panchali: Song of the
Road (1968, trs. T.W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji), known
world-wide for its film version by Satyajit Ray; Manik
Bandopadhyay’s Bengali novel, The Puppet’s Tale (1968, tr. S.L.
Ghosh); Munshi Premchand’s Hindi novel, Godaan: The Gift of
a Cow (1968, tr. Gordon Roadermal) and Aziz Ahmad’s Urdu
novel, The Shore and the Wave (1971, tr. Ralph Russell). Dalip
Chitre, A. K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarthy, and Arun Kolatkar
translated their own works in English.
In the globalised capitalistic phase during 80s,
market/business emerged as one of the forceful sectors in this
neocolonial era. With the expansion of education, a class of
readers emerged from middle class who were comfortable in
English language. Consequently, many publishing houses start
translation projects for instance, the birth of Penguin Books India
in the mid-1980s marked a significant moment in the history of
Indian literature in English translation. When it began publishing
Indian authors in English translation, mainly fiction, translated
fiction attained a kind of visibility it never enjoyed earlier.
Among the many success stories of Penguin the most notable are
the short stories and novellas of Satyajit Ray from Bengali,
beginning with Adventures of Feluda (1988), and then running
into several other volumes, Bhisham Sahni’s novel, Tamas:
Darkness (1989) from Hindi, Classic Telugu Short Stories (1995)
edited by Ranga Rao, all of which went on to become bestsellers
and have registered steady sales ever since they were published.
Penguin’s foray into translation and their growing clout actuated
190 SUSHIL KUMAR

others like Rupa & Company (which later tied up with Harper
Collins) of Delhi, Seagull Books of Kolkata to expand their
corpus in translation. Rupa’s three-volume Stories About the
Partition of India (edited by Alok Bhalla, 1997) which
showcased 63 short stories in English translation from 9 Indian
languages and became an instant bestseller, as it came out bang
on the occasion of the completion of fifty years of India’s
partition, a tragic event that changed the complexion of the
Indian sub-continent forever. Seagull Books, Kolkata has been
running a project of translating the entire corpus – including
short stories and novels – of Mahasweta Devi, of which nearly
twenty volumes have come out so far.
The most ambitious and systematic project of translating
Indian novels into English was launched by Macmillan India Ltd
in 1996 in a series called Modern Indian Novels in English
Translation By now, it has published more than 100 novels.
These translations are accompanied by an elaborate editorial
apparatus – a scholarly introduction by a critic of the original
language, a Translator’s Note and an elaborate (compensatory)
glossing in footnotes. Some of these novels have already been
put on the syllabi of universities in India and abroad. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, literary critic, scholar and Professor at
Columbia University, has translated a number of stories by
Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926). She provides translator’s analysis and
notes to every story. She claims that her translations are not only
for the western audience, she writes in her ‘Translator’s Preface
to Imaginary Maps’ that she caters to both, her words, “This
book is going to be published in both India and the United States.
As such it faces in two directions, encounters two readerships
with a strong exchange in various enclaves. As a translator and a
commentator, I must imagine them as I write. Indeed, much of
what I write will be produced by these two-faced imaginings,
even as it will no doubt produce the difference, yet once again”
(xvii-xviii).
The fiction of Gurdial Singh (b. 1933) who is a Jananpeeth
Awardee Punjabi writer has been translated into English by Rana
Nayar, Pushpinder Syal and Ajmer Rode. Rana Nayar points out
the reasons for his inclination towards translation from Punjabi to
TRANSLATION OF INDIAN LITERATURE INTO ENGLISH 191

English, “Every time I thought about English, I found it hard to

shed this consciousness of it being a historical burden, a legacy
of the colonial rule and hegemony. With time, it became
increasingly difficult to shake off this burden, as it slowly
became an inseparable part of my professional responsibilities,
even my breath and being. So, translation seemed to be the only
natural way out of his bind, the only way of harnessing
professional knowledge of English in service of my own
knowledge and culture-Punjabi” (2012: ix). Harish Trivedi
translated the poems of well known Hindi writer Kedarnath
(1934). Omparakash Valmiki’s (1950-2013) autobiography
Joothan (1997) was translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee and
Balbir Madhopuri’s (b. 1955) autobiography Chhangai Rukh
(Against the Night) by Tripti Jain in 2010. The works of Lal
Singh Dil (1943-2007) are translated by Nirupma Dutt.
Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha’s works have been translated
into English. The Painful experiences of Dalit writers in their
autobiographies reach to wider readership through translation.
The translation of these autobiographies in English provides a
new idiom to English language.
Translation plays a noteworthy role in the understanding,
analyzing and examining the socio-political aspect of Indian
literature in colonial and postcolonial era. The translation of
Indian literatures into English language is a vital transformation
for providing a wider space for sharing the Indian literature with
not knowing Indian languages readers. It is a well established
fact that translation skips the barriers and brings people closer.
With the emergence of Globalization, Privatization and
Liberalization, the world has become a kind of village. The
distances have been reduced rapidly due to easily accessible
Information Technology. Being social creatures, it is significant
to know about the cultures of the cosmos. Besides, in the
multilingual and multicultural country like India, the rich cultures
of entire India can be comprehended with the help of translation.
By using the tool of translation, Indian rich literary traditions
have been relocated and reasserted in the world literature
scenario. The Internet, new technologies, machine translation and
the emergence of a worldwide, multi-million dollar translation
192 SUSHIL KUMAR

industry have dramatically altered the complex relationship

between translators, language and power. In the recent times, the
studies, discussions and debates at the world level have been
emerging rapidly, in the words of Susan Bassnett:

The 1980s was a decade of consolidation for the fledging discipline

known as Translation Studies. Having emerged onto the world
stage in the late 1970s, the subject began to be taken seriously, and
was no longer seen as an unscientific field of inquiry and secondary
importance. Throughout the 1980s interest in the theory and
practice of translation grew steadily. Then 1990s, Translation
Studies finally came into its own, for this proved to be the decade
of its global expansion. Once perceived as a marginal activity,
translation began to be seen as a fundamental act of human
exchange. Today, interest in the field of translation is taking place
alongside an increase in its practice all over the world. (2010: 1)

The absence of any dialogue among translators about their craft

and the lack of any tradition of documentation of problems
encountered by individual translators meant that they worked in a
kind of vacuum, depending mainly on their instincts and their
own resources. However, the institutions like National Book
Trust and Bhartya Anuvad Parishad, University Publications and
Central Institute of Indian Languages are playing significant role
in breaching the barriers and creative dialogue through
translation. And more recently, with the help of National
Translation Mission under the Ministry of Human Resource
Development, Govt. of India, there is a kind of boom in
translation. Translation is at the centre of the intellectual climate
of the time. Any Ism may begin or end but the translation goes
on. Translation is the representation of Indian plurality. In the
recreation of texts in different languages, spaces, situations, are
also created memories, newer paradigms, ideologies, politics,
always subject to further translations. Translation need not
always be the act of negotiation with or intervening into a text to
re-create and rewrite it in a different language. It could be
manifest as a cultural enterprise with social bearing, such
flexibility in the usage helps to locate the idea of translation at
the level of social commitment.
TRANSLATION OF INDIAN LITERATURE INTO ENGLISH 193

On the basis of the discussion, it can be concluded that British

translators of Indian writings into English in the colonial era
were highly conscious about their economic interests, their so
called civilizing mission, their culture superiority, and the motif
of the spreading Christianity. In the post colonial era the
translators are deeply aware of the market compulsions of their
translation works. Their translations can be seen as postcolonial
reclaiming of India’s history, culture and politics. They are also
well familiar with the hegemonic status of English within India
and abroad and at the same time they attempt to become counter-
hegemonic in relation to the West. But it is also true that the
translators keep Western and Indian elite target readership in
mind consciously or unconsciously when they make choice to
translate into English. In the end, it can be said that translators
have granted significant contribution not only to Indian literature
but also to literature as a whole providing an alternative
perspective to the representation of the third world in the
literature.

REFERENCES

Bassnett, S. 2010. Translation Studies. London: Routledge.

Brower, R. (ed.) 1959. On Translation. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Devy, G. N. 1993. In Another Tongue: Essays in Indian Literature.
Madras: Macmillan India.
Jewett, I. B. H. 1977. Edward FitzGerald. Boston: Twayne.
Lefevere, A. 1991. Translation, Rewriting, Manipulation: Texture of
Power and Power of the Text. London: Pinter.
——. 1992. Translation: History, Culture. London: Routledge.
McLeod, J. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester
UP.
Mukherji, P. 1981. Translation as Discovery. New Delhi: Allied
Publisher.
Niranjana, T. 1995. Sitting Translation History, Post-Structuralism,
and the Colonial Context. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
Nayar, R. 2012. Inter-Sections: Essays on Indian Literatures,
Translations and Popular Consciousness. New Delhi: Orient
Black.
194 SUSHIL KUMAR

Sengupta, M. 1995. Translation as manipulation: The power of images

and images of power. In Anuradha Dingwaney & Carol Maier
(Eds.), Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-
Cultural Texts (pp. 159-173). Pittsburgh and London: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Spivak, G. C. 1995. Imaginary Maps. New Delhi: Routledge.
Sattar, A. 2008. Translations into English. In Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
(Ed.), A Concise History of Indian Literature in English. New
Delhi: Permanent Black.
Trivedi, H.1993. Colonial Translations: English Literature and India.
Calcutta: Papyrus.
——. 1996. The politics of post-colonial translation. In A. K. Singh
(Ed.), Translation: Its Theory and Practice (pp. 46-55). New Delhi:
Creative Books.

DR SUSHIL KUMAR
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR (ENGLISH),
PUNJABI UNIVERSITY CAMPUS,
TALWANDI SABO, 151302,
BATHINDA, PUNJAB, INDIA.
E-MAIL: <[email protected]>
PH: 91-09417405636