by Premchand
20 The following table shows such changes in ‘Hajj-e Akbar/Maha Teerth’ (‘The Greater Pilgrimage’)
Hindi Version Urdu Version
Title of the story Maha Teerth Hajj-e Akbar
Husband Munshi Indramani Munshi Sabir Husain
Wife Sukhada Shakira
Child Rudramani Nasir
Maidservant Kailasi Abbasi
Place of pilgrimage the family intends to visit Badrinath Hajj (to Mecca)
Name for God Khuda, Allah Parmeshwar, Narayan
Apart from Hajj-e Akbar, similar changes can also be seen in stories like ‘The Call of Dawn’ (‘Shankhnaad’) and ‘The Correction’ (‘Pashu se Manushya’).
21 The Hindi original is as follows: ‘Adhdhyan hi ye bataayega ke kis parampara mein kaun si baat kahna zaroori samjha gaya, aur kaun ghair zaroori; kaun si baat kahi ja sakti thi, aur kaun si baat ankahi hi samajh li gayi. Us prarambhik daur mein ubharti mansikataon ke sanket in rupbhedaon mein luke chhipe hain, dekhe ja sakte hain.’ Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali (eds.), Samaksh: Premchand ki Bees Urdu–Hindi Kahaniyon ka Samantar Paath, p. ii.
22 In a recent article in Wasafiri, Boyd Tonkin, former literary editor of the Independent and someone who has worked to give translation a place of honour in several international awards, reinforces this argument when he points out how translated works were profoundly transformative for him even though he did not know the original languages: ‘I can recall the late teen-age and early twenties frenzy of excitement inspired by my discovery of writers such as Kafka and Proust, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Except, of course, that what I discovered were the standard English translations they circulated by Penguin Classics and a couple of other publishers.’ Boyd Tonkin, ‘Labours of Love: Literary Translation Inside and Outside the Market Place’, Wasafiri, Vol. 32, No. 1, (March 2017), p. 9.
23 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘The Politics of Translation’, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, second edition (New York & London: Routledge, 2002), p. 372.
24 The recent works of Amitav Ghosh (particularly his Ibis trilogy), Amitabha Bagchi, Chandrahas Choudhury, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar and others reveal how Indian words of cultural import and regional specificity have been normalized in the English that is being written in India, which embolden translators in English to be innovative and mould the English idiom to their own advantage.
25 ‘Premchand in English: The Story of an “Afterlife”’ in M. Asaduddin (ed.), Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations, (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016).
26 Here, the case of Kamal Kishore Goyanka, a lifelong Premchand researcher who has written close to thirty books on different aspects of Premchand’s life and art, is salutary. Goyanka unearthed a hitherto unavailable story in the Urdu version with the title ‘Roo-e Siyaah’ (Black Face), but he read it as ‘Rooh-e Siyah’ (Black Soul) and translated it in Hindi as ‘Kalooshit Atma’. This story was first compiled in the collection, Premchand ki Aprapya Kahaniyaan (Delhi: Anil Prakashan, 2005), pp. 152–60. On the facing page the Urdu title page is given where the title ‘Roo-e Siyah’ is written in bold, clear Persian script. One cannot attribute this error to any other cause except for the inability to read the Persian script correctly. Now, how this error will impact the readers’ response to the story and falsify the intent of the author is anybody’s guess. This is not intended to undervalue the work of Goyanka, an assiduous researcher, but to underline the fact that we should spare no efforts to eliminate avoidable errors, understand our own inadequacy and seek help where it is needed. Many scholars, including Premchand’s son Amrit Rai, have rendered the Urdu versions of Premchand’s stories into Hindi, as indeed some have rendered some Hindi versions into Urdu. It will be a valid subject of research to examine how accurately these versions have been rendered.
1 A geographical and cultural region, and also a mountain range in central India. It is now divided between the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
1 The complete mantra appears later and is translated thus: ‘The eternal, the utmost, the fulfiller of all desires/It is for Ram’s grace that the heart aspires.’ The centrality of this mantra is emphasized in the Urdu version when the narrator refers to it as the only sign of life in Mahadev, who is otherwise described as a ‘moving statue’. He even tries zealously to teach this mantra to the parrot. A few more lines are added in the Urdu version, mildly caricaturing Mahadev as a toothless, bent-backed ‘lone warrior in the battlefield of life’.
1 Hindu school of philosophy that foregrounds logic.
1 The God of rain.
1 During the Indian independence movement, the extremists were known as ‘garam dal’, implying ‘hot heads’, and the moderates were known as ‘naram dal’, meaning ‘softies’.
2 Part of the story only makes sense if one follows all the ways that gaurav (which means pride, honour, dignity, prestige) is used, both as the title of Ishwarchandra’s newspaper and also as a metonym for all his accomplishments. I’ve left the title of the newspaper untranslated, but have translated gaurav in its other instances in the narration. [Translator]
1 Traditional worship of serpents on the fifth day of the bright half of the lunar month of Sravana observed by Hindus throughout India, Nepal and other countries.
1 Refers to both, the fifteenth century saint poet Kabir and his bhajans.
2 Songs sung during Holi.
1 Angel of Death.
1 The phrase refers to a type of protest in which protesters would go unshaven to depict the despicable double-crossing nature of those against whom they were protesting. There is possibly also a Hindu–Muslim communal connotation in the reference to the growing of the beard in the sense that the bearded Congressists (now posing as Muslims) would be a constant eyesore to the Hindu bania (trader) community.
2 Rai, Raja and Khanbahadur are empty honorific titles given during the Raj to the erstwhile ruling upper-caste and upper-class males who would agree to serve their British masters as a result of which the people in their principality or province would automatically be colonized.
3 The phrase ‘dharma aur niti’ refers to a range of attributes whose meanings sometimes overlap. Dharma has all these meanings: social/caste/religious custom, right behaviour, law, justice, duty, and virtue. And niti might mean all these: guidance, moral conduct, public and private morality, and ethics.
4 The name Moteram is used as a pun; ‘mota’ in Hindi means one who is obese.
1 One of the gods of the Hindu trinity (Brahma, Vishnu and Mahavir), often invoked for protection.
1 In the Hindi story, Mirza Sajjad Ali’s maid is named Hariya while in the Urdu story, she is named Abbasi.
2 In the name of Imam Husain, who was killed by the forces of Yezid in the battle of Karbala. Shias are accustomed to taking oaths in his name.
Notes
Premonition
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Khwab-e-Pareshan’ in Kahkashan (August 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the title ‘Anisht Shanka’ in Aaj (June 1921), and later collected in Mansarovar 8 (1950).
The Urdu version is larger than the Hindi version. In Urdu there are five sections indicated by the Arabic numbers 1 to 5. In Hindi, there are no section breaks. What is Section 2 in Urdu has been left out entirely in Hindi. The following is the English translation from Urdu:
Kunwar Amarnath was a bundle of contradictions. He was independent but restrained, a man of wealth but enlightened, an aristocrat but humble, influential but a friend of the poor. His parents had died when he was still a child and he was brought up by officials. He was deprived of parental love. He got whatever he asked for, he didn’t have to cry and howl. Indeed, seeing his peers crying he would often want to do just that. He sometimes yearned to be reprimanded, even beaten. In his mind, a beating was just another form of love. He longed for the kind of love which also involved getting bea
ten. He saw children trailing their mothers even after getting beaten by them. And when mothers picked up the children on to their laps after finishing their chores, how happy the children felt! How they felt totally secure in their mothers’ laps and how they hid their faces in their mothers’ aanchal. But for him, there was no mother’s lap or aanchal. If he had no occasion to cry, he had no opportunity to laugh either. His childhood was cheerless and devoid of any sweet memories.
When he came of age, he began to receive proposals of marriage from the families of rajas and aristocrats. As dowry, he was offered land estates and huge amounts of money. But Kunwar Sahib’s heart was hungry for love. He had been looking for this fruit of paradise for years. He got to know beautiful women, became familiar with their bewitching ways. He also met women who were enterprising and had a sense of humour. But he didn’t find love.
Having despaired of women from palaces he turned his attention towards poor men’s huts, and here he got what he was looking for. Manorama was the daughter of a poor Brahmin. Her father was an attendant at the court of Kunwar Sahib. She used to play with Kunwar Sahib from early childhood. Even the gods didn’t know that one day she would become Kunwar Sahib’s wife. Kunwar Sahib chose her to be his wife. His relatives and friends objected to the alliance. But Kunwar Sahib had a mind of his own. He married her and made her a queen.
Extract translated from the Urdu by M. Asaduddin
The Murder of Honour
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Khoon-e Hurmat’ in Subh-e Ummeed (September 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the title ‘Izzat ka Khoon’ in Gupt Dhan 2 (1962).
The Bookbinder
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Daftari’ in Kahkashan (October 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 1 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the same title in Aaj (1921), and later collected in Mansarovar 8 (1950).
The Urdu version is more expansive, fluent and rich in detail. The Hindi version is comparatively stark, and less fluent, shorn of interesting details that make the story in Urdu much more enjoyable. The aphoristic statement—‘A person who endures family conflicts is in no way less brave than a soldier who fights in battlefields’—with which the Hindi story ends is missing in the Urdu story.
In the Urdu story, the reader gets to know that the bookbinder’s colleagues in his office contributed a sum of money to meet the domestic expenses of Rafaqat, the protagonist, for a month. The Hindi version is silent about this. It seems that the Hindi story is an abridged version of the Urdu story. As the details are woven into each paragraph, they cannot be extracted in a coherent way. The full extracts that have been left out in the Hindi version are as follows:
Although Rafaqat had retained his outspokenness, no one now appreciated it. It was now treated as a waffle, like the harangue of a helpless widow. An insecure person is quick to take offence. One day, when some of his neighbours made some funny remarks about his new wife, he lost his temper. He was bare in his upper body and was wearing tattered pyjamas. He was in a rage, the veins in his throat dilated and his ankles aflutter. His addressees were sitting and playing cards, scarcely paying him any attention. It was as though a dog was barking. He had reached the lowest state of degradation where people treated even his anger with contempt.
. . . Once, at my initiative, the office colleagues, out of sympathy, contributed money and bought him provisions for a month. But the provisions meant to last a month disappeared in a week. The rice was bartered for mango, dal for jamun. The oven was lit three times a day, and then . . . the same story of starvation and want. Eventually, people lost all sympathy for him, so no one lent him even a paisa now. He stood there praying and blessing people, but no one even cared to look at him.
. . . ‘Spend less than you earn, however compelling the circumstances. And why do you start borrowing from the first day of the month? Thinking of you, once I had arranged for a month’s provisions for you. But you have gone back to your old ways. You were a reasonable person. You know very well that people do not always have ready money in their hands. Everyone has his own needs to take care of. And even if someone has money, why should he lend and thus invite trouble for himself? You have to go begging to ten persons to get one favourable response. How embarrassing is all this! What is the matter with you, after all? You have been reduced to this condition for the last two-and-a-half years. Earlier, you looked so contented.’
Extract translated from the Urdu by M. Asaduddin
Atmaram
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Atmaram’ in Zamana (January 1920), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the same title in Aaj (May 1921), and later collected in Mansarovar 7 (1947).
The Urdu story is longer by two pages, but as the lines do not occur in one place but are interspersed in different paragraphs in the story, they cannot be extracted without creating confusion. The Urdu version fleshes out Mahadev’s character and his philosophical bent of mind in a more substantial way than the Hindi version.
It is only in the Urdu version, which is more expansive, that the reader gets to know that Mahadev and his sons fight over liquor. The Hindi version remains non-committal. There is only one line towards the end that says that Mahadev had quit drinking.
The conclusion in the Hindi version is far more ambivalent than in the Urdu version. The narrator in the Urdu version extols Mahadev’s transformation from an ordinary sinner to a divinely inspired man, whereas the Hindi version seems cynical about it.
The Correction
First published in Hindi with the title ‘Pashu se Manushya’ in Prabha (February 1920), and later collected in Prem Pacheesi (1923), and Mansarovar 8 (1950). It was published in Urdu with the title ‘Islaah’ in Kahkashan (April 1920), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).
The Urdu title is neutral but the Hindi title has strong moral and ideological implications. This is also reflected in the text. About a dozen sentences from the third section of the story in Urdu are missing in Hindi, making the Urdu story longer by half a page. Moreover, while the Urdu version refers only to farmers, the Hindi version mentions farmers, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, tanners and bricklayers thus expanding the ambit of professions encompassing the moral and ideological issue that is the central theme of the story. The ideological slant in the Hindi version gets more intense when the narrator suggests that any dispute among the people of these professions should be resolved through ‘panchayat’ and not law courts. The narrator drives the point home by asking why a farmer should be paid five rupees for his wages while a doctor or a lawyer five thousand! Several paragraphs are the ‘rewriting’ of the other version, with differing inflections, rather than plain translation or transliteration. Dr Mehra, the employer of the gardener Durga, has been changed to Dr Irfan Ali in the Urdu version.
The Prime Dharma of Man
First published in Hindi with the title ‘Manushya ka Param Dharma’ in Swadesh (March 1920), and later collected in Prem Pratima (1926), and Mansarovar 3 (1938). It was published in Urdu with the title ‘Insaan ka Muqaddas Farz’ in Prem Batteesi 1 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).
Black Face
First published in Hindi with the title ‘Pratigya’ in Shree Sharda (March 1920), and not compiled in any volume for a long time. It was first compiled in Premchand ka Aprapya Sahitya 1 (1988). It was published in Urdu with the title ‘Roo-e Siyah’ in Subh-e Ummeed (November 1920), and collected much later in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).
Banter
First published in Hindi with the title, ‘Brahm ka Swang’ in Prabha (May 1920) and later collected in Prem Pacheesi (1923) and Mansarovar 8 (1950). It was published in Urdu with the title ‘Nok-Jhonk’ in Zamana (December 1920), and
later collected in Khwab-o Khayal (1928). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).
The endings of the stories in Hindi and Urdu are somewhat different. One version seems to be a rewriting rather than an exact translation of the other. Also, the tone of the Hindi version seems morally more strident than the Urdu version.
The Old Aunt
First published in Hindi with the title ‘Budhi Kaaki’ in Shree Sharda (January 1920), and later collected in Prem Pacheesi (Hindi 1923), and Mansarovar 8 (1950). It was published in Urdu with the same title in Kahkashan (July 1920), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).
The Urdu story is divided into three sections whereas the Hindi story is in five sections, though the content is the same in both. In the Urdu story, the old aunt is said to have seven sons who died. The Hindi story simply says all her sons died young, without specifying the number of sons.
A Father’s Love
First published in Hindi with the title ‘Putra Prem’ in Saraswati (June 1920), and later collected in Gupt Dhan 2 (1963). It was published in Urdu with the title ‘Mehr-e-Pidar’ in Zamana (July 1920), and collected much later in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001).