Translating Caste: Essays, Criticism

Translating Caste is, first and foremost, intended to fulfill a pedagogical function. It proposes to bring the issue of caste and its textual representation in contemporary Indian literature into the classrooms of universities in India and abroad. The textual representation of caste in contemporary Indian literature is, of course, to be made available and accessible to university students through their translations into English. But the issue of Translating Caste is not only an issue of communicating certain narratives about caste across languages or, even, across cultures. The narratives about caste which constitute the core of this collection, in themselves are engagements in the enterprise of translation – the translation of caste as a social institution into an assortment of cultural discourses. The volume comprises an eclectic selection of eight short stories (six of them Katha Publications) on the theme of caste in seven different modern Indian languages namely, Asomiya, Bangla, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil, the aim being to erect a framework for the study of the treatment of the caste theme in an all India literary arena.