Book contents
8 - Summing Up
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2012
Summary
As I conclude the last chapter of Translating India on a note of optimism for Gujarat's new openness to English translation, the state itself is embroiled in the worst-ever communal violence. Judging by externals alone, it is not possible to see any incongruence because a cultural/intellectual/literary activity such as translation and Gujarat's increasingly fundamentalist outlook, laid bare after February 2002, have really no connection at the moment. However, Translating India has consistently maintained a stand that literary and para-literary forces do interact in big and small ways although the effects are not always visible for theorization in the present. Translation scholars and social-literary historians may have to wait and see what implications the Gujarat of this moment has for literary activities in future. Will state-sponsored institutions like the Sahitya Parishad and the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi monitor the selection of texts to suit the dominant point of view? Will a strengthening of narrow religious and linguistic outlooks determine the ethnicity of authors or translators or even the content of texts? The previous chapter outlined the trajectory of Gujarat's relationship with English in terms of its shift from hostile indifference to an urgent acceptance manifest in the roaring business of English coaching classes, among other things. While the shift is ungainsayable, it co-exists with residual prejudices against English, again made more pronounced during the state's perception of the media coverage of the recent riots. Reacting to the English visual and print media's scathing criticism of the establishment's complicity in the violence, the state denounced the “English educated, convent-bred journalists” who ‘maligned’ the reputation of Gujarat (See Vishwa Hindu Samachar, April 2002).
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- Translating India , pp. 92 - 95Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2005