Censorship and Translation in India

Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman

Abstract

When censorship acts as a means to restrict information in India, translation plays a significant role in bringing the knowledge of texts and updating readers despite linguistic and cultural diversities. In this situation, censorship and translation have become exciting aspects of studying in a developing and changing India. From the second half of the 20^th century, Indian writing in all languages has been influenced by political ideologies such as communist, free, non-aligned, and gradually right-wing. Another factor that made everyone understand the aspects of translation and censorship in India is the emergence of predominant access to the internet and the invincible flow of information through media and social media. At this point, studying the concept of censorship and translation is highly significant, mainly to understand the nuances of changing scenarios in the writings of the Indian subcontinent. The hypothesis of the present paper is to study the notion of translation and censorship with reference to Maadhurobaagan (2010), written by Perumal Murugan, and its translation in English as One Part Woman, which won the Sahitya Akademi award for translation by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. This paper explores the authors’ recollections and depictions of various situations in the texts. It examines the notion of censorship and translation under the impact of media and social media from different perspectives. The study also analyses cases before and after translation, evaluating many questions around marginalized literature, their translations, and readership.