When India attained independence from the British colonial rule 70 years ago and decided to embrace parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage, its survival as a united political entity was suspect in the eyes of the world. While the process of nation-building was an integral part of the freedom struggle that encompassed nearly all the regions and communities, it was certain that the emotional integration would face serious challenges from emerging regional identities. The notions of pan-Indian literature, music, dance and art were all in the air but they were yet to take concrete shape.
It was the far sightedness of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, whose literary sensibilities were finely honed, that came to rescue the situation. Nehru had the vision of an India that was, despite all its diversity, politically and culturally a unified whole. To implement his vision, he began to establish national academies to preserve and promote the country’s literary, musical and artistic heritage and living traditions. Soon after the Sangeet Natak Akademi was established in 1952, Sahitya Akademi came into being in 1954 and became the nodal institution for bringing literatures in various Indian languages together on one platform and foster constant interaction among them. For this, an extensive translation programme was launched with a special emphasis on getting literary works translated from the original language rather than depending on their English translations. As Indian languages have a great deal in common in terms of literary concepts, cultural practices and social milieu, translation from one Indian language into another is always much more authentic and comprehensible than translation into English and then from English into other Indian languages.
Hindi journal
In 1980 Sahitya Akademi took a decision to bring out its journal in Hindi too. Well known Hindi fiction writer Shaani was appointed the editor of the proposed journal “Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya” and he conceived it as a broad platform for literatures of all the Indian languages. The journal began as a quarterly but within a few years, it started coming out after every two months. After Shaani retired, poet Girdhar Rathi, well known for his sharp and pithy poems and excellent translations, took over the reins and edited it with commendable success. These days, Ranjit Saha happens to be the Guest Editor of the journal.
I was reminded of this recently when I came across an old issue of Sahitya Akademi’s Hindi journal ‘Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya’ (November-December 1997 that had focused on contemporary Tamil poetry. It contained a special article on contemporary Tamil poetry written by Venkat Swaminathan and poems of Na. Pichamurthy, Ka. Na. Subramaniam, Nakulan, Tharmu Sivaramu Piramil, Na. Jayabhaskaran, Irattin Karikalan and Sukumaran, along with thirty others. Poems of Kanimozhi, who later followed in the footsteps of her father M. Karunanidhi and became a Union Minister, were also featured in this special number.
Similarly, I also came across even an earlier issue of the Akademi journal (July-September 1995) that had focused on Telugu fiction. It carried an excerpt from the autobiography of Kandukuri Veeresalingam (April 16, 1848-May 27, 1919) who was a great scholar as well as a social reformer. He is widely regarded as the father of the renaissance in Telugu who, despite tremendous opposition from society, promoted women’s education and widow remarriage and valiantly fought against the practice of dowry. In the published excerpt, he gave a graphic description of the troubles he and his associates had to face while getting widows remarried.
Changing nomenclature
From this excerpt, I came to know that Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the famous Bengali scholar and social reformer, used to sign himself as Ishwar Chandra Sharma. After getting two widows remarried, Veeresalingam succeeded in getting a third one too remarried on October 22, 1882. Two days later, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar wrote him a letter:
“My dear Sir,
I am very much obliged to you for the information respecting the celebration of marriage of the third Brahman widow in your part of the country. The friends of the marriage of Hindu widows here have been exceedingly delighted by the happy news. May uniform success attend your benevolent exertions on behalf of the unhappy sufferers is the earnest prayer of.
Yours sincerely,
Ishwar Chandra Sharma
This issue of “Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya” contains short stories of 18 Telugu writers including Sripada Subrahmanya Sastri, Abburi Chayadevi and Palagummi Padmaraju, and an article on the art of short story writing penned by Butchi Babu. Dandamudi Mahidhar prepared an exhaustive list of all the literary works that had been translated from Telugu into Hindi until then. It will be very helpful to those who would like to do research on this subject or read them up. A cursory glance at the list tells us that much before the Sahitya Akademi embarked on this translation project, Saraswati Press, founded by the best known Hindi writer Premchand, had started publishing Telugu literature in Hindi translation in the 1930s.
Tremendous scope
Sahitya Akademi has published translation of all its award winning books in Hindi. Great Malayalam writer Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s “Chemeen”, translated into Hindi as “Machhuare” (Fishermen), is one such example. All this is really heart-warming but there exists a serious lacuna. Most of the translators of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and other languages are native speakers who have learnt Hindi while it should be the other way round. Real national integration will take place only when people in the North start learning South Indian languages and translate their literary works into Hindi.
