Editorial Collective Nusrat Chowdhury Ritu Khanduri Shubhra Sharma Eduardo Contreras (Online Editor) Editorial Advisory Board Richard Barnett, The University of Virginia Manu Bhagavan, Manchester College Nandi Bhatia, The University of Western Ontario Purnima Bose, Indiana University Raza Mir, Monmouth University Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Paula Richman, Oberlin College Eleanor Zelliot, Carleton College The University of Texas Editorial Advisory Board Kamran Ali, Department of Anthropology James Brow, Department of Anthropology Barbara Harlow, Department of English Syed Akbar Hyder, Department of Asian Studies Janice Leoshko, Department of Art and Art History W. Roger Louis, Department of History Gail Minault, Department of History Veena Naregal, Department of Radio-Television-Film Sharmila Rudrappa, Department of Sociology Martha Selby, Department of Asian Studies Mark Southern, Department of Germanic Language Kamala Visweswaran, Department of Anthropology Editors’ Note This issue of Sagar focuses on the politics and practice of translation. It offers some respite to our concerns over the cultural geography of South Asia which indeed has a wider reach than has been conventionally represented. It is an endeavor of the present editorial collective to overcome a recurring trend in which South Asia is being limited geographically and linguistically to India and Hindi, respectively. By featuring translations of comparatively under-represented languages, this volume of Sagar recognizes the fluidity of the boundaries of space and language that defines the contour of South Asia. The submissions in this issue address a variety of genres of oral and written texts in South Asian languages. Sandya Hewamanne translates a Sinhalese short story, and Laura Brueck translates Dalit prose and poetry, which they creatively use to explore regional experiences of a global economy, and subalternity. Michelle J. Sorenson, Christi A. Merrill, and Zjaleh Hajibashi specifically explore the politics of translation. Ed Yazijian, Sudipto Chatterjee, Martha A. Selby, Alladi Uma and M. Sridar, and Krishna B. Vaid translate short story, songs, and poetry, some of which had previously appeared in various regional contexts. We hope that the present volume will encourage its readers to ponder the multiple directions in which translation occurs, and the new public spaces that texts in regional languages come to occupy through translation. With this issue, the present collective concludes its editorial association with Sagar. It has been our pleasure to work together on volumes 7 and 8. We extend our thanks to all contributors along with the members of the Editorial Advisory Board. Kathryn G. Hansen, Syed Akbar Hyder, Sankaran Radhakrishnan, Purnima Bose, Gail Minault and Barbara Harlow were generous with their guidance. Detailed comments and words of appreciation from Gail Minault and Barbara Harlow encouraged us. Anne Alexander, and Sandra Paschall helped sort out the logistics of the journal. Randy Brown of Atex Printing was patient and cooperative with our experiments with the stylistics of the journal. Thank you all! Nusrat Chowdhury Ritu Khanduri Shubhra Sharma Eduardo Contreras (Online Editor) Sagar A South Asia Graduate Research Journal Sponsored by The Center for Asian Studies Kathryn G. Hansen, Director The University of Texas at Austin Volume 8 • 2002 Sagar is published annually in the fall of each year. The editors are responsible for the final selection of the content of the journal and reserve the right to reject any material deemed inappropriate for publication. Articles presented in the journal do not represent the views of either the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin or the Sagar editors. Responsibility for the opinions expressed and the accuracy of the facts published in articles and reviews rests solely with the individual authors. Requests for the permission to reprint articles should be directed to the individual authors. All correspondence regarding subscriptions, advertising, or business should be addressed to: Sagar Editorial Collective The University of Texas at Austin Center for Asian Studies, (Campus Mail G9300) WCH 4.134, Austin, TX 78712-1194 USA Sagar is not printed with state funds Sagar does not discriminate on any basis prohibited by applicable law including but not limited to, caste, creed, disability, ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion or sexual orientation. Volume 8 • 2002 Uneasy Alliances: Sri Lankan Factory Workers’ Writings on Political Change Sandya Hewamanne 1-7 hg Eight Poems from Ai ku un u Translated by Martha Ann Selby 8-11 hg February 1969 By Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir Translated by Ed Yazijian 12-20 hg Translation and Vestige Michelle Janet Sorenson 21-42 hg Jagadamba Junction By Gorusu Jagadeeshwara Reddy Translated by Uma Alladi and M. Sridhar 43-59 hg Songs of Suman Chatterjee Sudipto Chatterjee 60-73 hg Dalit Writing: The Works of Kusum Meghval Laura Brueck 74-99 hg “The Lover” & “My Mother’s Sermon” Champa Vaid Translated by Krishna Baldev Vaid 100-104 hg Are We the “Folk” in this Lok?: Usefulness of the Plural in Translating a Lok-Katha Christi Ann Merrill 105-119 hg Cut Flowers: A Comparative Look at Colonial and Contemporary Translation Anthologies of Persian Literature Zjaleh Hajibashi 120-140 hg Book Reviews Imaginary Maps: Three Stories by Mahasweta Devi. Mahasweta Devi. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Trans. Miriam Murtuza 141-147 Translating Partition. Ravikant and Tarun K. Saint, Eds. Karline McLain 147-151 The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science Secrecy and the Postcolonial State. Itty Abraham. Himanee Gupta 151-153 Uneasy Alliances: Sri Lankan Factory Workers’ Writings on Political Change Sandya Hewamanne The University of Texas at Austin Sri Lanka set up its first Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Katunayake (near the capital city, Colombo) in 1978 as a part of the structural adjustment policies adopted in 1977. Establishing FTZs in Katunayake, and later in Biyagama and Koggala, fulfilled a campaign promise by the United National Party (UNP), which attained power in 1977 by pledging to initiate free market and open economic policies. In its attempt to attract foreign investment, Sri Lanka has offered numerous incentives, such as duty free imports of machinery and raw materials, duty free exports, preferential tax policies, double taxation relief, unrestricted repatriation of dividends, and up to 100 percent foreign ownership. One major attraction cited by the Board of Investment (BOI) in its advertising pamphlets is the “availability of a low cost, easily trainable work force.” The notion that Sri Lanka has a “well disciplined and obedient women workers who can produce more in a short time” was also used as a bait to attract investors to the Sri Lankan FTZs.1 FTZs contain branches of multi-national industries that practice a distinctively late capitalist form of gendered working relations. Garment factories, which comprise the majority of these industries, recruit large numbers of young rural women from economically and socially marginalized groups to work as machine operators. The majority of these women are unmarried, 1 Dabindu 1997, 17. 2 Sagar young, and well-educated.2 There are very few facilities to house the women who flock to the FTZ each year, and people living in the area have rented hastily-built rows of rooms to them. Poor living conditions, coupled with physically and mentally arduous working conditions, make life difficult in the FTZ.3 When Sri Lankan rural women started migrating to urban areas to work in transnational factories intense anxieties were aroused about female morality and cultural authenticity. A prevalent Sinhala Buddhist image of the ideal woman, one that constructs women as passive and subordinate beings who should be protected within the confines of their homes, has stigmatized women living away from their families. The subjectivities of young, rural women who migrated for FTZ employment has been significantly shaped by such discourses on the ideal Sinhala Buddhist woman and, as in many other FTZs the world over, women were recruited to Sri Lankan FTZs in the belief that they were “docile” and “nimble fingered.”4 However, the FTZ was a transformative space where cultural forms met and people negotiated new subjectivities. At the urban FTZs women came into contact with global capitalist patterns of production and consumption as well as global discourses on labor and human 2 Rosa, Kumudhini. 1990. “Women Workers’ Strategies of Organizing and Resistance in the Sri Lankan Free Trade Zone (FTZ).” In South Asia Bulletin, 10 (1): 33-43 and Fine, Janice with Matthew Howard. 1995. “Women in the Free Trade Zones of Sri Lanka.” In Dollars and Sense, November/December, 26-27& 39-40. 3 Voice of Women. 1982. “Women in Free Trade Zone.” In Voice of Women, 4(July):5-7; Dabindu Collective. 1989. Prathiba. Boralesgamuwa: CRC Press; and Hewamanne, Sandya and James Brow. 1999. “”If They Allow Us We Will Fight”: Strains of Consciousness among Women Workers in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone.” In Anthropology of Work Review xix (3):8-13. 4 Nash, June and Maria Fernandez-Kelly, (eds). 1983. Women, Men and the International Division of Labor (Albany: SUNY Press). Ong, Aihwa. 1991. “The Gender and Labor Politics of Postmodernity,” In Annual Review of Anthropology, 20:279-309. South Asia Graduate Research Journal 3 rights, Marxism and feminism, all of which facilitated changes in their cognitive, social, emotional and moral dispositions. It was on the factory floor, through assembly line work, that young migrant women encountered capitalist production relations and developed a work identity and rudimentary forms of proletariat consciousness. But this new understanding as industrial workers existed together with conventional perceptions such as age, class, caste and other Sinhala Buddhist sensibilities. It is through an intense socialization process that new workers learnt to become garment factory workers and configured their work identities within power-laden discourses. They created, learned and differently participated in a shop floor culture characterized by resistance to supervisors. They also participated in shop floor activities that contributed towards building solidarity and alliances around specific situations or sequences of events. Globalization encouraged Sri Lankan women’s migration from patriarchal villages and enabled their gradual transformation into dissenting, politically conscious workers. Most shop-floor activities were characterized by an awareness of class identity and opposition to others with different interests. As many studies on working class politics have shown, class-consciousness is always ambivalent and exists together with several other contradictory loyalties .5 Sri Lankan factory workers’ class consciousness also exists in conjunction with other interests and was produced and constructed as a result of specific economic, political as well as cultural practices. 5 Blackburn, Robin, and Michael Mann. 1975. “Ideology in the Non-Skilled Working Class.” In Working Class Images of Society, ed. M.Blumer (London: Routledge.1983). Marshall, Gordon . “Some Remarks on the Study of Working Class Consciousness.” In Politics and Society, 12 (3):263-301. Fantasia, Rick. 1988. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action and Contemperory American Workers (1988. Berkley: University of California Press).