Language and Politics: Writers of India

Описание: For many Indian authors, choosing which language to write in is an important and sometimes perilous decision, with broad-ranging repercussions that can influence local and international book sales.

Participating writers in this fascinating and wide-ranging discussion about language include: novelist and short-story writer Geetanjali Shree, who writes in Hindi, and catapulted into fame when her novel Mai was translated into English; Geetanjali’s French translator, Annie Montaut; Uday Prakash, a poet, scholar, journalist, and short story writer, who writes in Hindi and has also translated many writers into Hindi, including Pablo Neruda; Novelist Shumona Sinha who lives in France and now writes in French, although her native tongue is Bengali; Salma, a poet who writes in Tamil, one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world.

In conversation with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, and founding member of Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.


00:00: Introduction: A Lapsed Communist from Bengal
00:40: Session Overview and Multilingual India
02:30: Language, Identity, and Translation Tensions
04:00: English vs Vernacular Literature
06:00: Salma’s Poetry and Translational Disconnection
09:00: The Mother Figure in Anjali’s 'Mai'
13:00: Writing in French as an Indian Author
18:00: The Politics of the Word 'Mai' in Translation
22:00: Translating the Impossible
30:30: Translation as Trace and Political Tool
36:00: Uday Prakash: Writing in Vernacular Hindi
43:00: Language Hierarchy and Sanskritization in India
49:00: Whose Voice Is Heard Internationally?
54:00: Mother, Nation, and Religious Symbolism
56:00: Who Owns a Language?
1:00:00: Language Without a Script: India’s Marginal Tongues
1:05:00: Salma: Breaking Silence as a Muslim Woman Writer
1:11:00: Final Reflections: Translation, Power, and Responsibility
1:16:00: Audience Questions: Politics, English, and Code-Switching
1:23:00 - Closing Thoughts: Language and Power in Literature

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