Krishna, the chief protagonist from Mrinal Pande's My Own Witness (2000:156) records her experiences as a Hindi newspaper journalist, marked and marginalized, in the English-dominated media world of post-independence India.

It is only too true that language shapes identity, especially in India. One of the first and perhaps the most divisive battles fought in post-independence India was over language (Memon and Banerji, 1997:98). Language became a way of providing a base, a ground for laying down roots. This by itself is not new to any culture—languages have always been strong markers of identity. What is significant however, is the strong conflation between what may be called ‘mothertongue’ and identity that became evident in the wake of Indian independence. Before we come to discuss the changes in India's linguistic economy in postindependence India, it is useful to underscore the inextricable link between language and translation. It goes without saying that translation is not merely a linguistic activity. At the same time, perceptions of and relationships with specific languages give rise to translation. The following discussion throws light on a reconfigured relationship in post-independence India between (some) Indian languages and the English language, determining the context for a necessary bilingualism and biculturalism. While the previous chapter showed apreponderance of Sanskrit and to a certain extent, Persian, as SLs for English, the present one indicates a marked shift in the story of English translation. The movement away from classical languages towards more homespun ‘mother-tongues’ in postindependence India is manifest in translation, among other things.