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7. The Grimm Brothers’ Kahaniyan: Hindi Resurrections of the Tales in Modern India by Harikrishna Devsare
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135 7 The Grimm Brothers’ Kahaniyan Hindi Resurrections of the Tales in Modern India by Harikrishna Devsare MALINI ROY I hope that this timeless achievement of world literature will be welcomed by the world of Indian children’s literature, and by Indian child readers, as a unique gift on the occasion of the golden anniversary of India’s Independence. Devsare I.10 Fairy tales and folklore, whenever discussed in relation to India, usually conjure up visions of ancient folktale collections such as The Panchatantra, whose tales have long circulated in medieval and modern Europe owing to early routes of traffic, trade, and military conquest (Bottigheimer 1). In modern times, however, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm have also found a Heimat in India. The excerpt above is from a selection of tales from the Kinderund Hausmärchen, translated into Hindi as Grimm Bandhuon Ki Kahaniyan (2000, The Grimm Brothers’ Tales) by children’s author Harikrishna Devsare and concludes one of his four essays that accompany the tales.1 Devsare is an award-winning children’s author and holds a doctorate in Hindi children’s literature. He has also translated Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, and his oeuvre for children includes science fiction and television drama.2 Grimm Bandhuon is published by the Sahitya Akademi (the Indian National Academy of Letters); thus, the text bears connotations of a certain measure of literary quality in the Indian book market. Devsare’s translation has won 136 Malini Roy a dedicated readership: there have been successive reprints (in 2004, 2007, 2008, and 2009) as well as plagiaries and piracies in a market with loose enforcement of copyright laws in publications attributed to authors such as Shravani Mukharji and Chitra Varerkar. This chapter aims at a critical appreciation of Devsare’s translation, which addresses reading communities unfamiliar with the Grimms’ tales as direct reading material or in broad cultural circulation through other media. Devsare, advertising the métier of his publication, observes that Grimm Bandhuon is the first comprehensive translation in Hindi, signifying a “supremely important endeavour” to bring out “these achievements of world children’s literature in Indian languages” and aimed particularly at children. Devsare admits that the Grimms’ tales have been known in India but as “expensive sets in English” (Grimm Bandhuon I.7–8). As with many translations of the Grimms’ German collection in Asian languages, these tales were probably introduced to the Indian subcontinent through English translations, particularly through the mechanisms of the former British Empire (Dollerup 278–79; see also Lathey 162–70). However, Devsare overstates his claim for Grimm Bandhuon as a first in “Indian languages”: translations of the tales in Bengali, for instance, have long been available.3 Nonetheless, there is some justice in Devsare’s claim that his Hindi translation, in contrast to “expensive sets in English,” vastly widens access to the Grimms’ tales for “Indian children ” (Grimm Bandhuon I.7). This is a phenomenon that can only be fully understood with reference to the surrounding nexus of linguistic, historical, and sociocultural determinants. Way back in the 1830s, colonial politician and orator Thomas Babington Macaulay famously argued for his program “to form a class” who might become “interpreters between us [the colonial rulers]” and the “millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (“Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education”). The post-Independence educational system in India has largely continued to perpetuate the formation of this “class of persons” with English minds, as demonstrated by postcolonial scholar Gauri Viswanathan in his 1989 Masks of Conquest (3–12). The readers of the Grimms’ tales in English are likely to be children from “English-medium” schools (that is, schools where pupils learn English as a first language), and the tales themselves are often known colloquially as “English Fairy Tales,” despite the historical origins of the collection within the cultural currents of German Romanticism.4 [54.198.34.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:28 GMT) Hindi Resurrections of the Tales in Modern India by Harikrishna Devsare 137 Today, a stark class divide still persists (with some modification) between the English-educated classes and the masses attuned to “Indian languages” such as Hindi: publishers and booksellers observe that English books tend to cost at least twice the price of Indian vernacular-language books, while glitzy pan-Indian lifestyle bookstore chains (such as Crossword) often stock a majority of English titles and a nominal...