Another Idea of India: Indian Literatures in the Bhashas

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the translation of Indian narratives in the bhashas, the vernacular languages of the Indian subcontinent into English through a  politics and poetics of translation that gives voice and visibility to cultures that, otherwise, would be restricted to a very close range of dissemination. In this way, not only the Indian literatures of the front yard, i.e., Indian narratives written in the English of the diaspora become visible, but also the narratives of the backyard of the Indian literary tradition written in the vernacular languages. In the process the term vernacular comes under erasure in the sense that what is actually vernacularized is the English language as it becomes a vehicle through which these bhasha literatures gain visibility. To illustrate this process, the article also brings a critical reading of the short story “Thayyaal”, written in Tamil, one of the languages from the South of India.