Hindi Shakespeare in Colonial India: Harishchandra's 'Merchant of Venice'

CCLPS Early Career Researchers Seminar Series

Location: room C325 (SOAS College Building) or Teams.

Speaker: Dr Anandi Rao

Abstract

This presentation is based on the first chapter/section of Anandi Rao's mini-book manuscript, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press in their series Elements in Shakespeare and Text. 

This chapter will look at Bharatendu Harishchandra’s 1878 translation of The Merchant of Venice, titled Durlabh Bandhu.

Harishchandra is a famous Hindi playwright, and one who is considered one of the “founding fathers” of modern Hindi drama. The most striking part of this translation is that the fraught relationship between Christianity and Judaism in Merchant of Venice, and the way in which Shylock is constructed as an outsider, is translated and Indianized such that that it is now a relationship between Hinduism and Jainism.

About the speaker

Anandi Rao is Lecturer in South Asian Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. 

Her work lies at the intersection of Shakespeare studies, translation studies, postcolonial studies and gender and sexuality studies and has been published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Studies in South Asian Film and Media and South Asian Review as well as in an edited volume on Romeo and Juliet published by Arden Bloomsbury. Future work is forthcoming in a collection entitled Translating Shakespeare: Access and Mediation (Palgrave 2024) and Shakespeare International Yearbook.

Image: Binto Bali