Abstract
The direction of socialist, communist, and broadly left politics in India has a lot to do with the material nature of Marxism as a discourse in the subcontinent. It is mediated by a different set of vernacular languages, conceptual repertoire, and regional cultures. Certain scholars have pointed out that it involves a complex process of postcolonial translation that is ongoing. However, this recognition has not come together with a close examination of the texts that are involved in the process, for example, a critical reading of the translated works of Marx and broadly Marxism in the different languages, especially contexts where they became powerful. This essay will offer such a reading in the context of late colonial Bengal and later West Bengal. The first part of the essay will outline a background of the early translations and adaptations, their experiments as well as the setting down of certain rules of discourse on Marxism in the Bangla language. The second part of the essay will offer a close reading of the vernacular translations of Marx’s Capital, especially volume one. We will discuss a certain edition at length, published in the late twentieth century by a communist intellectual, who fell out of favor with the new party leadership. It is the first unabridged Bangla translation of Capital, published in seven volumes. For a close reading of the different dimensions of translation involved in such a process, we are going to look at specific passages from the section on commodity fetishism, which follow in the Bangla edition under the heading PanyaPouttalikata Ebang tar Rahasya. The essay will conclude with some remarks on the comparative strategies of translation and the shifting nature of Marxist discourse in the postcolonial period and its broad relations with politics.
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Notes
- 1.
Musto (2018).
- 2.
Ertürk and Serin (2016, p. 8).
- 3.
This is not a definitive account of the other language translations but largely based on information accessed from sources available in the public domain. I am extremely grateful to Alok Oak, Abhishek Pandey and Nirmala for providing the information on the Marathi, Hindi, and Malayalam translations. Also, see in this regard, the discussion of the first Marathi translation of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ in Shaikh (2011).
- 4.
“200 years of Karl Marx: ‘Capital’ lost in Punjabi translation”, The Tribune, May 11, 2018.
- 5.
Samik Lahiri, ‘Amader Kathaa’ in Nag and Barman (2018, p. 18).
- 6.
Sarkar and Das (1998).
- 7.
For instance, Surendranath Thakur, Biswamanaber Laxmilabh, Biswabharati Granthhalay, Bengali year 1347.
- 8.
Muzaffar Ahmad, ‘Rebati Barman’, in Nag and Barman (2018, p. 22).
- 9.
Nag and Barman (2018, p. 57). The language has been marginally modified in later editions, bringing the use of grammar closer to colloquial Bangla. This excerpt represents a radically abridged version of the discussion in the English translation by Moore and Aveling, and edited by Engels that comes at the end of Chap. 6, titled, ‘The Buying and Selling of Labor-Power.’ The sentences close to Barman’s excerpt read as follows: ‘The price of the labor power is fixed by the contract, although it is not realised till later, like the rent of a house. The labor power is sold, although it is only paid for at a later period’.
- 10.
Interview with Soham Dasgupta, the elder son of Piyush Dasgupta conducted in January and November 2018 and January 2019.
- 11.
Dasgupta (2009, p. 102). The English version of this part, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels, reads as follows: ‘Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post-festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning.’
- 12.
- 13.
For a detailed discussion see Dasgupta (2014).
- 14.
Shramik moolya na niyei gatar khaataate raaji halo. See Footnote 9 for reference.
- 15.
See for an extensive discussion of the controversy around the book, Bhattacharya (2005).
- 16.
Barlow (2016).
- 17.
Serin (2016).
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Dasgupta, R. (2019). Capital in Bangla: Postcolonial Translation of Marx. In: Chakraborty, A., Chakrabarti, A., Dasgupta, B., Sen, S. (eds) ‘Capital’ in the East. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9468-4_2
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