Disputing Borders on the Literary Terrain

Abstract for National Seminar on Indian Traditions in Translation 10-11, March, 2006 Department of English Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat-395 007 Disputing Borders on the Literary Terrain: Translations and the Making of the Genre of “Partition Literature” The last two decades has seen a spate of translations of mainly short stories and novels set in the context of Partition. So large are the number of individual novels, anthologies of short stories and new editions of earlier translations of literary writings on Partition that they constitute today a significant body of literature that goes by the name of “Partition Literature”, taught and studied as such today in many universities in India and abroad. While this body of literature includes translations from a wide array of Indian languages – Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, etc. into English, and writers who belong to present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, it is interesting to note the uneasy relationship between the texts/translations that are being so brought together to constitute a body of literature. The uneasy relationship prevails as the translations are imbued with contentious present-day concerns regarding nation, society and polity. The attempt of literature of bringing them together to ‘resolve’ these issues and debates is what I call in this paper “Genre politics”. I argue that in the process of forming, what I call the ‘genre’ of Partition Literature, criteria for selection and omission of texts/translations are being evolved; protocols for reading the texts/translations are being set in place, both in the metacommentaries on the translations (Preface/Introduction/Foreword) and in the actual translations - criteria and protocols that are not necessarily of the literary realm. Looking specifically at two translations – Alok Bhalla’s (1994) and Muhammad Umar Memon’s (1998) - of the same short story by Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi called “Parameshwar Singh”, which is set in the context of Partition, and also at the Preface/Introduction that frames the two translations respectively, I cull out the debates and disputes over borders and boundaries, this time happening in the terrain of literature. - Dr. Nikhila H. Department of English Pondicherry University Pondicherry – 605014 Email: nikhila05@gmail.com