Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi

“Translating Political Economy in mid-nineteenth century Pune-Bombay”

Abstract

We know that colonial pedagogy functioned primarily as ‘tuition by double translation’. Focusing on early efforts to create textbooks on political economy in Marathi , the main aim in this paper is to foreground colonial bilingualism and translation as fundamental to the imagination of the social science enterprise in India.

The paper explores the early renderings of political economy in Marathi in the pre-1857 period, just prior to the stablishment of a full university system in colonial India. Embedded within paradigms of modern translation at the core of colonial pedagogy that served significantly to shape the hierarchies of the emerging social order, the production of these texts significantly foreshadowed, firstly, the opening up, by the closing decades of the 19th century, of a critical public space for a reflection on issues of pan-Indian importance, and subsequently, the impulses to circumscribe such public discourses into realms of academic expertise.

Bio

Veena Naregal is based at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Her research interests include language and Indian democracy, disciplinary/institutional histories and regional theatre histories. A co-edited volume of essays on Language Movements, Federalism and the Democratic Imagination in India is forthcoming in 2017.

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