The translation of an imagined community in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura

Abstract

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson describes how sacred script languages (Arabic, Chinese, Latin) were usurped in political primacy by languages based on the spoken vernacular (French, English, German). In this article I examine one instance of these complications through Raja Rao’s classic novel of Indian independence, Kanthapura, a novel written in Indian English that works both with and against Anderson’s concept of nationalism’s linguistic underpinnings. Kanthapura not only proposes a model for Indian English speakers and writers, but performs a rhetorical argument about the necessity for Indian English if India is to cohere as a nation. I argue that the residents of Kanthapura are “translated” into citizens of the nation of India. This movement of translation is echoed by the language of the novel: the largely spoken language of Kannada is translated into the largely written (in India) language of English. English in Kanthapura performs a double function, unifying the nation as a script language while also reflecting the idiosyncrasies of local regional vernaculars. Kanthapura demonstrates that a nativized form of Indian English can serve as an invaluable tool for the development of a national consciousness, and that novels written in Indian English will play a role in determining the shape and identity of the nation.