CSAS Lecture Series | Antar: Translation and the Afterlives of Gandhi’s Autobiography
Rita Kothari, Ashoka University
Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography,
An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, is one of the most translated texts in the world. Written primarily in his mother tongue, Gujarati, the autobiography is a hybrid amalgamation of the personal, political and spiritual in Gandhi's life. Examining how the autobiography has traveled into most world languages in the past hundred years makes for a fascinating history.
However, Kothari chooses to tell a different story - one that is not only one of translation - but in translation. The genre of autobiography, as we know, was new to India in the nineteenth century. The notion of self-telling its own story, being both the tale's creator and the object of telling, required many forms of negotiation in a society of collectivities.
In Gujarati, the beginning had been made with varying outcomes, and M.K. Gandhi could have simply based his autobiographical endeavor on the existing examples. However, Gandhi's experiment was unique to him. How did he reconcile the communal with the individual and contain, as it were, the egotism threatened by the form? One of the ways to think of what Gandhi does is by looking at what he does with the form - an act of roopantar, or changing the form. The suffix antar is crucial to our discussion - a word that signals difference and interiority. Through a close reading of Gandhi's framing questions in the autobiography and moving back and forth between Gujarati, English, Sindhi, Hindi and many other translations, this talk will show how the autobiography translates and how it does not.
Rita Kothari is an English professor at Ashoka University and directs the Ashoka Centre for Translation. A distinguished translator, Kothari is also a leading theoretician of translation studies; internationally known for books such as Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English and A Multilingual Nation and Chutnefying English and Decentring Translation Studies.
Her translations of note include Angaliyat: The Stepchild from Gujarati, Unbordered Memories from Sindhi, and the Patan Trilogy by K.M. Munshi from Gujarati. Her work on partition and borders intervened to bring the unusual Sindhi experience in books such as The Burden of Refuge and the study of the Indo-Pak border region in Memories and Movements.
Kothari is a multilingual scholar, and her interest in translation manifests in the way she moves between various languages through research and pedagogy. She also writes extensively on language politics, partition, and literary and social traditions of Gujarat and Sindh and Hindi cinema. Her recent book is Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience, and Indian Literature.
Made possible with the generous support of the Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Free and open to the public
However, Kothari chooses to tell a different story - one that is not only one of translation - but in translation. The genre of autobiography, as we know, was new to India in the nineteenth century. The notion of self-telling its own story, being both the tale's creator and the object of telling, required many forms of negotiation in a society of collectivities.
In Gujarati, the beginning had been made with varying outcomes, and M.K. Gandhi could have simply based his autobiographical endeavor on the existing examples. However, Gandhi's experiment was unique to him. How did he reconcile the communal with the individual and contain, as it were, the egotism threatened by the form? One of the ways to think of what Gandhi does is by looking at what he does with the form - an act of roopantar, or changing the form. The suffix antar is crucial to our discussion - a word that signals difference and interiority. Through a close reading of Gandhi's framing questions in the autobiography and moving back and forth between Gujarati, English, Sindhi, Hindi and many other translations, this talk will show how the autobiography translates and how it does not.
Rita Kothari is an English professor at Ashoka University and directs the Ashoka Centre for Translation. A distinguished translator, Kothari is also a leading theoretician of translation studies; internationally known for books such as Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English and A Multilingual Nation and Chutnefying English and Decentring Translation Studies.
Her translations of note include Angaliyat: The Stepchild from Gujarati, Unbordered Memories from Sindhi, and the Patan Trilogy by K.M. Munshi from Gujarati. Her work on partition and borders intervened to bring the unusual Sindhi experience in books such as The Burden of Refuge and the study of the Indo-Pak border region in Memories and Movements.
Kothari is a multilingual scholar, and her interest in translation manifests in the way she moves between various languages through research and pedagogy. She also writes extensively on language politics, partition, and literary and social traditions of Gujarat and Sindh and Hindi cinema. Her recent book is Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience, and Indian Literature.
Made possible with the generous support of the Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Free and open to the public
| Building: | Weiser Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Asia, India |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Center for South Asian Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures |
