Translation Gendered, Nation Engendered: H.V.

Savitramma’s
Translations

“Translations and women have historically been the weaker figures in their respective hierarchies
- translations are handmaidens to authors, women inferior to men.” (Sherry Simon, Gender in
Translation, 1996)

Section One : The Context of Production and Reception

How does one write about a woman translator who, by definition, is doubly invisible in her twin
identity as woman and as translator ? How is one to know why she chose the texts she did and the
translation strategies she did, when she has herself not talked about them? In the absence of
explanatory prefaces, paratextual materials or extensive critical studies, how does one
contextualize and locate her work in history? While it has been possible to reconstruct the life and
work of a scholar/translator (he, of course) even when he came a generation earlier - B M
Srikantaiah(1884-1946) (endnote 1)i by referring to his prefaces, speeches and copious critical
articles on his work, how can we image the profile of a (woman), (re) writer who remained ‘half-
hidden from the eye’ like a seven-petalled jasmine beneath the green leaves, except by imagining
her writing self through sources that are not quite conventional ? So let me tell you the story of H
V Savitramma (1913-95), her/history as a writer and translator by taking you through her life and
work.

Savitramma is the author of five short story collections in Kannada – Niraashrite (1949),
Marumaduve (1954), Sarida Beralu ( 1965), Pratheekshe, and Lakshmi ( 1974) ; two novels -
Seethe, Rama, Ravana ( 1980) and Vimukthi (1990 ); a biography of her grandfather H V
Nanjundaiah (1971) and two books for children - Granny’s Stories, I & II, (1971).

Savitramma started and concluded her writing life with translations. She began by translating
Medieval India (1939) - a well-known history text of the time by the British historian, Stanley
Lane-Poole. This was followed by a phase of translating Bengali novels – The Wreck (1954) , The

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Home and the World (1955) ,Gora (1955) and The Golden Boat (1958) written by Tagore, and So
Many Hungers (1961) by Bhabani Bhattacharya. Simultaneously, she also translated a collection
of Anton Chekhov’s stories called Maduvanagitthi, - The Bride (1959) and Ashes of a God (1959)
and A Digit of the Moon, A Draught of the Blue (1962) - two Sanskrit texts rendered into English
by American Indologist F W Bain, while the translation of In the Great God’s Hair, his third text,
followed in 1994. She translated Louis Fischer’s biography of Gandhi - Mahatma Gandhi : His
Life and Message for the World(1954), in the 1970s.Her writing career came to an end when she
completed, just days before she died, Dickens’ not so well-known, voluminous Dombey and Son
(1848), which is as yet in unpublished manuscript form.

While she translated a couple of her own stories including ‘Sarpa Machchara’ into English for
Femina ( dates not available), another story of hers – ‘The Call of the Land’ was picked out for
inclusion in Routes : Representations of the West in South Indian Short Fiction in Translation (
2000) , a book on the representation of the West in South Indian short fiction, for its interesting
construction of an American woman.

Savitramma received the Soviet Land Nehru Award for the translation of Chekhov’s stories, in
1965. She got the Karnataka Sahitya Academy award for her biography of H V Nanjundaiah, in
1975. She won the Anupama award of the Karnataka Women Writers’ Association for her novel
Vimukthi, in 1992, when she was all of 79 years.
When she died on Dec 27, 1995, the local press in Kannada and English gave her what was her
due as a writer and as a translator , in that order. The popular Kannada daily Prajavani (
28.12.1996) said “ Well-known Writer Savitramma Passes Away.”, while the slightly conservative
English newspaper The Hindu, ( 28.12.1995) described her contribution as follows : “ A pioneer
among women writers in Kannada, she was known for her short stories and translations…She
translated the novels of Tagore - Gora and The Wreck into Kannada.” The editorial of Lekhaki,
Journal of The Karnataka Women Writers’ Association, aimed at encouraging and popularizing
women writers whose works were ignored by mainstream literature, recognized her contribution
to Kannada more amply by writing : “ As a novelist, a short story writer and a translator,
Savitramma has rendered invaluable service to Kannada .” Even the obituaries only highlight her
work as a writer, with a tailpiece on her translation work crediting Savitramma with the honour of

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taking Tagore to Kannada households. Even though Savitramma started her career in ‘refractions’
( Lefevere : 2000) from the world of English into Kannada and her ‘original’ writing in the 1930s
, her work did not receive serious critical attention until the 1980s when the Karnataka Women
Writers’ Association dis-covered her potential for feminist politics. A classic introvert,
Savitramma had stayed away from seeking any kind of public attention, content to write out of an
inner compulsion. Typically, her reaction when some of her first stories were published in
magazines like Kathegara or Kathanjali was “I was pleased that my stories were liked by people.”
After all those years of writing in isolation, when she got wider critical attention, she was
overwhelmed. When asked, “ What are your thoughts on style/technique? Have you tried to
experiment with writing?”, she says, “ As I said earlier, I did not do anything consciously. I did
not take the act of writing so seriously…. You people have made a ‘writer’ out of me now. …When
I felt that something I wrote was good, I’d send it for publication. I simply wrote.” The Lekhaki
obituary states: “ It was astonishing just how unconventional Savitramma has been in her outlook.
In being so modern and so aware, her vision went beyond her times and her immediate social
context. Feeling the pulse of women’s psychological conflicts, she could come up with daring
alternatives. Her intellectual maturity was the result of a life well-lived, tempered by longevity
and experience.”

Vijaya Dabbe (1998 : 53), an eminent feminist literary critic in Kannada , sums up Savitramma’s
literary accomplishment as follows : “ Savitramma is a rare (woman) writer in our midst. When
our public life was surrounded by bhajans in praise of Rama, she refashioned the Ramayana text
in her novels Seete,Rama,Ravana (1980) and Vimukthi (1990). When her contemporaries were
busy chasing women into the institution of marriage, she wrote novellas such as Prateekshe, in
which the protagonist chooses a state of unwed motherhood. When dominant ideologies were
engaged in packing middle aged women for vanaprastha - a life of asceticism, she highlighted the
living embers of youthful passion still alive in such women. When her fellow writers were writing
consumable fictions to be serialized in popular magazines or to be made into films, she stuck to
her own serious-minded exploration of women’s issues, shaped by a diligent reading of the English
literary canon. Quietly, like so many quiet things of resounding significance in this world, she
offered to Kannada her wisdom gleaned from her long-term engagement with life and society, in
a simple and easy style, unique to her.”

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As Sumitra Bai, one of the editors of Vimuktheya Haadiyalli ( 1998) - a collection of critical
essays on the life and works of Savitramma , argues “Rather than complaining that all history is
determined by masculine thought , it is more useful if we can understand when does history render
women invisible and when does it render them visible, with a fuller grasp of the nature of this
invisibility.” Justifying the special relevance of Savitramma’s work for such a project in our times,
Sumitra Bai writes, “ Savitramma has given us in her writing a world that resonates with our
experience, our sensibilities and thoughts in an intimate way … Savitramma was not committed
to any social movements or overt ideological school. Hailing from a well-to-do family, she lived
a very conventional life. She had no direct experience of the many problems faced by women of
other castes and classes. She did not even particularly pine for contact with the literary or cultural
world outside. Her writing grew entirely out of her utter introversion; yet her writing features the
complex predicament of characters ranging from different countries, classes and castes.”

Summing up Savitramma’s overall contribution to Kannada literature, Sumitra Bai writes, “The
manner in which Savitramma has responded to partition, the communal carnage, the
disillusionment of a post-colonial nation and how all these larger issues affect the lives of women
is unparalleled in Kannada writing. Her themes are utterly contemporary be it the question of
fidelity in marriage, motherhood, or the search for real love. She has released the woman from the
state of an inert, obedient dasi to a sensitive, aware being through her stories. Her consistent
preoccupation was to liberate man-woman relationship from its traditional bondage to make it a
natural companionship.”

From this brief glimpse of the reception to her work, it is quite clear that Savitramma was
acknowledged, even if only at the fag end of her career, as an important woman writer in whose
work the New Woman was born. However, one wonders if Savitramma would have made the
grade if she were only a translator? Would she have receded into oblivion like her other
contemporary translators such as Ahobala Shankara, R Vyasa Rao, H K Vedavyasacharya or
Gurunatha Joshi, or fellow woman translator S Ambujakshi, who were ‘only translators’-- all of

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whom were also able and prolific Kannada translators of Tagore. But for the intervention of the
Kannada Women Writers’ Association in recognizing the critical edge of Savitramma’s original
writing in Kannada, we could very well have lost her contribution to translation as well. Therefore
it is important that we trace the connections between the parallel activities of writing and rewriting
in Savitramma’s life. Over fifty years of literary mediation, how did her writing and re-writing
practices influence, impact or impede one another will be an important question for this study.

The Family Background

But first, what enabled this ‘sister of Shakespeare’ to write so much and so differently? How did
she manage to find ‘a room of her own’ where she could carry out her labour of love in the thick
of a buzzing joint family? Born on May 2, 1913 to the Telugu-speaking family of Meenakshamma
and H V Rama Rao, Savitramma not only inherited a wealthy home but also an (English)educated
home, with a tradition of serious learning. Her grandfather H V Nanjundaiah was the Vice-
chancellor of Mysore University and one of the founder members of the Kannada Sahitya
Parishath. She went to school in various district towns of Karnataka as her father was in a
transferable job, being a magistrate. Married to her first cousin H V Narayana Rao at 13, she could
still continue with her studies as her husband went abroad for higher studies. She completed
her B A (with History, Economics and English as majors), winning three gold medals and several
prizes, in 1931. Her first book of translation done in 1939, carries her name as “Savitramma, B
A”, from which the degree was dropped in subsequent publications. Perhaps she needed this
authentication initially to claim a place as a translator of an established history text from privileged
English to Kannada. Given the sparse number of educated women at the time, the claim to a
degree must have served as a passport to the world of letters.

Savitramma’s convent education had offered her a sound foundation in English language and
literature. An avid reader of English classics, Savitramma was enthused to take an interest in
Kannada also by T N Srikantaiah, a well-known scholar and critic. She started by writing stories
which were read by yet another important man of letters - D V Gundappa, who offered her useful
feedback. Savitramma has written a superb 80-page biography of her grandfather H V Nanjundaiah

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which, in my view, is crucial to the understanding of the family ambience and the immediate
context that shaped her writing. For instance, one of the quotes she has selected to use in the book
to talk about his concern for women reads thus : “I have many friends. But I have not even as much
as seen the faces of their wives. What does an intelligent woman want for herself? How does she
respond to any situation? Does she sympathise with her husband? That is a world we know nothing
about. This interesting half of the world is a closed book for us.” Savitramma’s writing which
explores these questions in depth can well be read as a response to this felt need of the society of
her times, albeit two generations later. And yet she did not take herself seriously as a writer nor
did her immediate family.

As a full-time housewife and mother of five, Savitramma’s life was no different from most women
of her generation, but for the privileges conferred by her upper caste and class household. This
made a difference to her in two important ways: it afforded her a classy English education and
created opportunities for wide-ranging travel within India and outside –Europe, Singapore and
Malasia. These windows brought the world into her otherwise home-bound life.

Section Two: The Texts

TEXTS OF NON-FICTION : History - Past and Present

The makers and making of history seem to have had a special place in Savitramma’s intellectual
make-up, given that she was herself a serious student of history. Her very first book was an
abridged translation of Medieval India (1939) by colonial historian Stanley Lane-Poole (1854-
1931), known at the time for his ‘dispassionate’ analysis of history. The fact that it was a popular
text-book for undergraduate classes then must have prompted Savitramma to translate the book As

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these texts were largely available only in English, she must have felt moved to make it accessible
to Kannada-knowing students. In her own words, she translated the book “as a token of her service
to Kannada.”. Disarmingly, she also admits that the incentive to publish the book also came from
the prevalent law that one did not need copyright to translate books by western scholars.

However, the book did not find publishers easily. As Jyotsna Kamat (1998: 96) points out, the
translation ,printing and publishing was all done in the family – a fact that is indicative of the
general lack of demand for such books, but more importantly, her father’s love for learning and
the support he offered to a budding writer like her. The translator’s name in the book is printed as
“Savitramma, B A”, these educational qualifications being necessary for a woman of her times
to establish her credibility as qualified to undertake the translation of this colonial master’s
narrative. The language used in the text is very much a variety that is reflective of the times;
naturally, it would appear archaic to present-day readers. Commenting on the book, Jyotsna Kamat
, herself a scholar of Karnataka history, commends Savitramma “for being so successful in
gleaning the significant historical moments from the original text. Despite the use of an older
variety of Kannada, the book reads fluently.”

The second non-fictional text she translated was Louis Fischer’s world-renowned book on Gandhi
- Mahatma Gandhi : His Life and Message for the World (1954). As the blurb of the 1954 edition
of the original book claims, it is “an absorbing biography of this great Indian leader who embraced
poverty, but whose teachings have enriched the lives of millions.” The Kannada version does not
use the metaphor of economics; instead, it highlights the political struggle that Gandhi was
engaged in, hinting at the real purpose of the translation. Kamat offers a very balanced critique of
the translation when she says, “Despite the stylistic infelicity of addressing Gandhi frequently -
now in the singular, now in the honorific plural in the same page, despite the occasional complexity
and lack of clarity, the translation is fine.” Speculating on why a translator who could render
Tagore with such facility and natural grace should have a problem with this text, Kamat wonders
if it is the result of excessive caution in maintaining the original meaning without any distortion.
However, we must acknowledge that this remains the one of the few texts on the subject which
represent an American perspective. That the text has a special relevance for our times of growing
communal conflict and gender violence bears repetition here.

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TEXTS OF FICTION

The Russian Connection : Chekhov’s Stories

In 1959, Savitramma translated ‘the short story writer’s short story writer’ Anton Chekhov’s
(1860-1904) 13 stories and three novellas into Kannada, using The Bride as the title story of the
collection. It is curious that she should have translated the same story which had already been
translated by the well-known writer Niranjana in 1957 and published by People’s Book House,
Mysore. As in most bhasha literary contexts, Kannada also has a tradition of translating Russian
works. (endnotes 2)

While the major and more prolific translations of Russian masters were motivated by an
ideological alliance with the erstwhile Soviet Union which also funded some of these publications,
Savitramma’s translation of Chekhov does not seem to partake of this ideological intent. She
seems to be more in sympathy with the liberal humanist in Chekhov whose characters are drawn
with compassion and humour in a clear, simple style noted for their realistic detail. Chekhov’s
stories are not plot-driven, but they originate from the private, internal lives of his characters –
which must have resonated with her own style of writing stories, which are marked by a certain
quality of interiority. The language of translation in these stories is entirely modern, spoken
Kannada as opposed to the slightly weighty, Sanskritic Kannada she uses in translating works from
Bengali or Sanskrit. In her attempt at rendering the Russian text familiar, she often domesticates
the text. In dialogues, “Sir” becomes ‘ayya’ or ‘swami’, ‘madam’ becomes amma; many words of
Christian faith are rendered in a Hindu idiom – god becomes ‘bhagavantha’ rather than the more
neutral ‘devaru’. The protagonist Nadia’s grand mother in the title story( The Bride, p.96) even
wears a grand silk sari ! So cute! Yet through it all, Chekhov comes through as the humane, non-
judgemental, sensitive artist that he is. Srinivasa V Sutrave, himself a translator of Russian fiction

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(Selected Russian Stories,1995), is particularly appreciative of Savitramma’s labour of love in
translating these stories with such diligence and care. Sutrave singles out the translation of three
stories in particular as very good translations. One of them is the famous The Lady with the Dog,
the tale of an adulterous love affair, featuring a cynical seducer protagonist who finds a kind of
redemption through falling in love, and The Grasshopper, another story on the same theme.
Commenting on the title story, Sutrave says this must have been a particular favourite of the
translator, for she has used it to name the collection. It deals with the choices made by an unusual
woman of rare sensitivity who gives up a life of marital bliss and domestic comfort for a life of
freedom and education. Comparing an excerpt from the English ‘original’ from which Savitramma
translated, he notes how effective the translation has been in capturing the poetic quality of the
piece.

The Sanskrit Connection : Three Oriental Fantasies

Savitramma has translated to Kannada three texts from Indian mythology by F W Bain (1863-
1940), an American Indologist who translated from Sanskrit to English. The texts are Ashes of a
God (1910), Metheun & Co Ltd, London as Smarabhasma ( 1959); A Digit of the Moon ( 1898) &
A Draught of the Blue (1905), James Parker & Co, London as Shashilekha, Neelinetre (1962), and
In the Great God’s Hair as Mahadevana Jataajutadalli (1994). (endnote 3) As an Indologist from
America singing the praise of Sanskrit, Bain positions himself strategically apart from the
Anglicists of the time -- British administrators like J S Mill and T B Macaulay, whose views on
India are dismissed by Bain when he describes them as ‘two blind men discussing colours’.
Equally, he maintained a safe distance from the materialist British missionaries, since he thought
that their conversion mission was doomed to failure. He writes, “The missionaries can inspire trust
in Christianity among Indians only if they give up their wealth and settle down in India voluntarily
as ascetics.” Being a benign Orientalist, he writes, “ As most people think, India is not a bed of
immorality. Only the arrogance of the ignorant could lead to such a wrong perception. … It is not
possible to separate religion from literature in India. Hence, if you want to know India, there is no
way but to learn Sanskrit.”

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This spirited defence of Indian religion, culture and literature – India as the Exotic Other which
held sway over the dominant strand of Nationalism-- must have appealed to the nationalist in
Savitramma enough to choose three of his texts for translation. Her translation of these books reads
naturally in Kannada, given the affinities between Sanskrit and Kannada in terms of a shared
lexicon and narrative style. However, it is strange that Savitramma who had already written so
sensitively about women’s issues in her own stories as well as her translations of Tagore and
Chekhov, should have selected these texts which are marked by virulent anti-woman sentiments.
A Digit of the Moon, described as an ‘Oriental Fantasy’ about feminine nature, love and life, is
full of descriptions of women’s voluptuous bodies and wily minds all of which sound quaint and
curious !

The Bengali Connection : Ravindranath Tagore & Bhabani Bhattacharya

In all, Savitramma has translated five Bengali texts – three novels and a short story collection by
Tagore - The Wreck (1954), The Home and the World (1955) ,Gora (1955) and The Golden Boat
(1958); another novel So Many Hungers, by Bhabani Bhattacharya (1961). In this initiative, she
was very much part of a larger tradition of Tagore translations into other Indian languages.
(endnote 4 ) Tagore arrived on the Kannada scene through various linguistic routes – Bengali,
Hindi and English. After the first spate of Bengali novels by B Venkatacharya,( known as ‘the
father of the Kannada novel’) and others at the turn of the century, a spurt in the translation of
Bengali texts including Bankimchandra, Sharatchandra and Tagore can be seen only in the decades
immediately after independence. While Bankim and Sharatchandra in the earlier phase came to
Kannada mainly through the original Bengali or Hindi, and even Marathi (endnote 5) but rarely
through English. But the post-colonial nation paradoxically begins to deploy English even for
intra-national literary exchanges. Of course, the earlier streams also continued side by side.
(endnote 6)

However, it is interesting that a Kannada translation of The Wreck by S Ambujakshi had just been
published in 1949 by N S Vasan & Co, Bangalore. Savitramma , who does not usually write
prefaces for her books, in keeping with the translation publishing practices of the times , has written
one for this book. She expresses her gratitude to the publisher for undertaking the publishing of

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the text, even when another version done by a ‘sister’ (fellow woman translator)was available.
With typical modesty, she writes, “If the readers feel that my translation is able to bear the weight
of the Great Poet Tagore and the weight of Shivaram Karantha who has written the foreword to
the book, I consider my effort worthwhile.” That masters like Karantha and Masthi wrote about
her Tagore translations is some proof of a positive reception given to her work. Added to it, the
fact that Kavyalaya published her translations ensured that her translations were widely circulated.
But Tagore’s shadow is powerful enough to altogether eclipse his translators. Therefore they were
read as Tagore novels which had magically materialized in Kannada, rendering the translators
entirely invisible .

In his foreword to the book, Shivaram Karantha writes “Do I need to introduce Tagore, the great
poet, to any reader born in India? “, thus affirming the status of Tagore as a national icon. He
moves on to say that if he has still written the piece, it is to introduce Savitramma who has
translated the novel. He commends her for undertaking the translation despite being a writer herself
and for not treating it as a lowly activity. Karantha’s assessment of the translation is that
Savitramma has presented the Tagore text without bombast in a simple and clear Kannada.
Invoking translations to do their bit for the nation, he writes, “ It’s not enough to say all of India
speaks in one tongue. We need to demonstrate that unity and live according to that light.” In praise
of Savitramma’s translation, he says, “ It’s not easy to translate from one language into another,
for, each language has its unique spirit and native idiom. How many people can grasp this beauty
and express it in their own language? Savitramma has accomplished this arduous task.”

Section Three : Women, Translation, Culture, History

A study of Savitramma’s writing brings to light several continuities and discontinuities between
her ‘creative’ writing and her translated writing. It also throws up a range of issues which points
to the organic relationship shared between texts, and their cultural and historical context. I wish to
demonstrate the axiom that translations, even as they shape the receiving culture, are themselves
shaped by it, by focusing on the particular transmutations that happened in the context of
Savitramma’s writing.

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Women and Writing : The Choice of Genre

Savitramma chose to translate only fiction and non-fiction, entirely eschewing poetry. Even the
occasional song or a few lines of poetry in the Tagore texts are done by K Narasimha Shastri or
by the publishers themselves. Despite the acknowledged poetic quality of her prose, she herself
never chose the poetic mode, which seems to point to the strong streak of the rational, analytical,
intellectual side of her self. In addition, the fact that she chose to translate (edit, abridge and
translate) Lane-Poole’s textbook of history and Gandhi’s biography, and write a biography herself
– all these reveal her unusually sharp intellectual abilities, something rare to come by in most
women writers of her time. Her keen understanding and analysis of the social and ideological
situation is very evident in her own literary production as well. Thus her work in translation and
her own writing seem to have reinforced one another, complementing and enhancing the critical
edge of her writing.

Invoking Woolf again, one can clearly see how the larger socio-political factors, especially, access
to education could make for a significant change in the material conditions in which women were
writing. Talking about women and fiction-writing, Woolf says, “Fiction was, as fiction still is, the
easiest thing for a woman to write….A novel can be taken up or put down more easily than a play
or a poem….And living as she did in the common sitting-room, surrounded by people, a woman
was trained to use her mind in observation and upon the analysis of character. She was trained to
be a novelist and not to be a poet.” (1979:46). The life of an upper-caste/class, home-bound, wife
and mother in a joint family would allow Savitramma only that kind of space to write fiction, and
short fiction at that or translate others’ texts. It was only in her later years, when she was 67, that
she could write her first novel. Her translation and her early writing share a symbiotic relationship
in this respect.

The Changing Language of Savitramma’s Translations

The long span over which her translation work is spread out also reflects the changing language of
translation prevalent in these decades in Kannada. For instance, the word parivarthisu (to
transform) which Savitramma uses to refer to her translation of the history text is not much in use

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now to refer to ‘translation’. It is possible to see the changes taking place in modern Kannada
prose in the mirror of her translations. The archaic Kannada of the Lane-Poole text of 1939 had
surely given way to the contemporary Kannada of her later translations.

It is amazing to see the repertoire of writing styles that Savitramma has at her command. She is
quite a ventriloquist who can convincingly fake different voices - the voice of the child takes over
in her Granny’s stories; the history professor speaketh in Medieval India; the benign Indologist
waxes eloquent in the highly Sanskritized Kannada she uses in the Bain texts; the ‘dispassionate’
biographer barely able to contain his adulation for his subject Gandhi in the Louis Fischer
biography comes through with a matching adoration in Kannada ; Chekhov’s sparseness and
simplicity is captured through the use of words of pure Kannada origin; the nicely distanced tone
of a biographer in recounting the life of her own grandfather is unmistakable in her biography.
Savitramma would have passed Anthony Pym’s (1992) test of translation competence in flying
colours, in terms of the competent use of multiple styles and registers to suit the intent of the text
and the needs of the readership. And yet, Savitramma seems to be most at home when she is
translating Tagore wherein she uses the short sentence, the dialogue mode and emotive/lyrical
language which abound in her own writing as well. The perfect fit between her own upper-
caste/class background, and the impact of English education, and the bhadralok ethos represented
by the Tagore texts make for a great degree of inwardness and depth in the Kannada translation.
Little wonder then that critics have assessed Savitramma’s Tagore translations as the best among
her translatory efforts.

The Choice of Texts

Once when she was asked, “Being a creative writer yourself, why do you translate?”, Savitramma
replied, “However great one might be, there are people greater than us. My aim is to introduce
them to my readers.” But this does not say much about her choice of texts. The question is why
did she translate those specific texts. Given that she was a student of Literature (those days
‘Literature’ with a capital ‘L’ automatically referred only to canonical Eng.Litt.!), given her
exposure to and capabilities in English and her own passion for writing, she could have chosen

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any of the world classics. It is significant that, with the exception of Chekhov and Dickens,
Savitramma chose to translate only texts on India/Indians or texts by Indians.

Discussing the nature and role of translations in the first phase of colonial transactions between
Kannada and English from about 1880 to1930, Padikkal (2001:158) argues that translations largely
served three kinds of functions: a) Sanskrit texts were translated to redefine Indian tradition to seek
out a value system that would help us face the challenges thrown up by colonization. b) Western
texts and the work of missionaries were translated to transform an entire culture to fit into notions
of colonial modernity. c) Indian language texts were translated to put into place the idea of the
nation irrespective of whether they were reformist or revivalist in their thrust. In doing this, the
first phase of translation activity brought Kannada readers to the center stage of modernity,
establishing the ideal Indian self, even as it constituted a powerful counter discourse to colonial
hegemony. What emerges in the process is the ‘imagined community’ called India, which is
dominated by the voice of the upper caste, middle class, English-educated elite. Savitramma’s
family history has already shown us that her grandfather and father were very much a part of this
small band of upper caste elite who benefited a great deal by English education.

Savitramma’s translations throw light on the changed preferences and priorities of the translation
scene in Kannada in the immediate years before and after Independence. Her choice of texts is
directed by the notion of translation as a cohesive, unifying force in the context of nation-building.
Whether it is the golden past of India that is recovered through an Orientalist like F W Bain or the
immediately preceding construction of cultural nationalism advocated by Tagore or the more
politically-charged model of Gandhi, her translations clearly and consistently manifest the
dominant strand of mainstream nationalist ideology. Tharu and Lalita ( 1993:54) who describe the
1940s and 50s as crucible years in the making of the nation, characterize them as a phase in which
a profound re-articulation of our political and imaginative life took place. They argue that cultural
texts of various kinds played a major role in giving authority to the new, essentially upper caste,
middle class, and male point of view of the nation-state. Translations into Kannada, especially of
texts on/of India – the kind that exclusively constituted Savitramma’s ouevre as a translator -
played a crucial role in this endorsement of the new Centre. The affinities with and the affiliations
to mainstream nationalist thought are unmistakable. The kind of patrons or patronage she received

14
for her translations is also significant. Writers of the eminence of Karantha and Masti had written
about her work. Kavyalaya with its wide network for distribution and dissemination of Indian
nationalist texts among the Kannada readership were the publishers of her translations. There was
a ready market, effective networking and adequate support for the production of such texts at
that time.

Savitramma was herself a ‘practising nationalist’. Ms Kusuma Narasimhan, her daughter, recounts
that Savitramma insisted on the children wearing only khadi when they were in school. There is
another interesting episode that Savitramma herself narrates in an interview (1998 :25) : When
Indian freedom was declared on August 15, 1947, Savitramma was living in Bhadravathi, a small
industrial town in Shimoga district, Karnataka. In celebration, when the local Ladies’ Club wanted
to hoist the national flag, the ‘ladies’ were ordered to hoist the flag of Mysore. In contravention of
this order, she went ahead with her plans and incurred the wrath of the people in power who
transferred her husband to Kolar! This allegiance to a pan-Indian nationalism might also be one of
the reasons that made her stay away from active participation in public life, which was increasingly
tending towards a sub-national Kannada nationalism. While she was a part of the Kannada literary
scene in that she wrote and translated into Kannada , she was not of it . She stayed clear of the
virulent Kannada nationalist sentiments in her attitude to English, for instance. On two different
occasions, Savitramma had refused to toe the line of Kannada nationalists in her rare public
appearances. As a first-generation literate woman who had enjoyed so many privileges due to her
English education which provided a language of access to other utopias, she would have no doubt
supported the ‘English for Social Justice’ group in the raging controversy in Karnataka regarding
when the study of English should begin in primary education.(end note 7)

Savitramma also inaugurates the paradoxical practice of using English as the intermediary
language for translation between Indian languages. The trend, until then, was to translate directly
from the original language – Bengali, Marathi or any other as exemplified in the work of B
Venkatacharya or Galaganatha. This trend of using English to negotiate other Indian languages
points to the dominance of the English-knowing classes in nationalist politics.

The Model of Translation

15
Kannada literature has been a dynamic site of cultural contact over centuries, translating works
from various languages including Sanskrit, Persian, other Indian languages, and English, along
with all the other languages which have gained entry through English. As argued by scholars such
as K V Narayana (1999) and O L Nagabhushanaswamy(1999), trans-creation as opposed to trans-
lation (mere linguistic transfer), ‘refraction’ as opposed to ‘reflection’, ‘roopa-anthar’ ( changing
the shape) as opposed to ‘anuvad’ ( literally speaking, following after) has been the chosen or
preferred mode of translation in Kannada tradition even in the face of a more dominant language
like Sanskrit or English. Quoting the examples of Ancient and Medieval Kannada poets,
Nagabhushanaswamy points out how these poets set aside all notion of fidelity to the ‘original’
text and adapt the text with complete freedom to suit the needs of the Kannada culture of their
time. Dubbing fidelity to the original text as a western import, influenced by the practices of Bible
translation, he argues for the more liberatory ‘transcreation’ model. Addressing the issue from a
different angle, Narayana observes that, when faced with a hegemonic power, the colonised culture
has to assert its identity and the strategy of domestication which appropriates the hegemonic
original text serves this purpose. The transcreation model had not only served Kannada in earlier
times, it influenced the process of mediation when faced with English in the 19th and early 20th
centuries as well.

Discussing the Kannada translations between 1880-1930, Padikkal observes that these translations
which reflected the predicament of the new, educated classes had to necessarily follow the model
of free translation or re-writing without any concern for fidelity to the original; thus re-creation,
rather than word-to-word translation was the dominant mode at this time. In the context of
Shakespeare translations into Kannada, Ramachandra Deva (1993:2) has also demonstrated how
re-creation was a means of protecting Kannada identity as well as a way of defending our national
culture. Re-creation, seen as an appropriation of western sources for the service of local politics,
was such a dominant mode that there were no literalist translations of Shakespeare until D V
Gundappa, Savitramma’s mentor, translated Macbeth in 1936. As a result, the entire production
and reception of translations in the Kannada context, even when the same conditions for
domestication do not prevail, have been governed by the model of recreation/domestication almost
to the exclusion of all other modes.

16
To this day, the transcreation model is the dominant model governing all notions of ‘good
translation’ in the Kannada context, putting in place a new word ‘kannadisu’ ( literally, it means
‘to make something into Kannada)as an equivalent word for ‘translate’. This hoary and
respectable history of translation as re-writing puts the translator on par with the ‘creative’ writer.
It valorises translation as a masculine act of asserting Kannada identity, giving the translator a
pride of place and his/her cultural project of mediation tremendous legitimacy.

When we read Savitramma’s translations, we find that she has adhered to the original text very
closely, observing every rule of literal translation. The literalist mode of following after the text -
literally what the term ‘anu-vada’ means –hides the agency of the translator , foregrounding the
author as the creator of the re-written text also. As opposed to this, the re-creation mode projects
the aspect of mediation involved in any kind of translation, focusing on the active presence of the
translator. What had lead to this shift in the style of translation? Why didn’t Savitramma continue
with this tradition? Why did she opt for a more literalist technique which owes allegiance to the
‘original’ and assumes a secondary position, leaving the translator less visible, rendering the robust
enterprise of translation into a ‘feminine’ and powerless activity?

We can understand the power of cultural politics better if we can compare Savitramma’s work
with that of B M Srikantaiah. We find Srikantaiah using the strategy of re-writing to telling effect
when he translated English lyric poetry into Kannada as English Geethagalu, in 1926.
Srikantaiah’s singular focus was to forge a modern Kannada identity which could then bring
together the different fragments of the Kannada region into one strong, linguistic state. Therefore,
he could adapt English poems to suit the temperament of Kannada, even as he was transforming
the Kannada literary space and its inhabitants into his notion of the modern. Hence the
polyphonous title of his text. However, Savitramma was part of a different cultural politics from
Srikantaiah’s project of Kannada Nationalism, which had a more prominent presence in the
erstwhile Mysore Region. Discussing the translation activity between/among Indian languages at
the time, V.B.Tharakeshwar (2006:72) points to the way in which these translations undermined
the construction of a ‘imagined Kannada community’ even as they worked actively towards
promoting the imagined community called the Indian Nation. Most of the texts Savitramma

17
translated were iconic texts of Indian nationalism like Tagore’s novels and Gandhi’s biography.
It was alright to domesticate texts from the western culture which came to us through the English
language. But texts of the Indian Nation, albeit the fact that they came through the medium of
English, commanded a superior position. These translations were active agents in establishing
India as one nation which spoke in different languages. Mother India occupied the pride of place
and her younger sisters/daughters came later. Hence there was no question of changing the iconic
texts to suit a more local need. Nation took precedence over the Region.

With Independence, power had changed hands from the English masters to the emergent makers
of India such as Tagore and Gandhi. Therefore it was sacrosanct that translations maintained their
fidelity to the original. Falling in line with this unspoken dictat that a translator had to echo/mimic
His/Her Master’s Voice , Savitramma followed to the letter the regime of word-to-word
translation. Might this explain the curious infelicity of using the singular, third person pronoun
‘avanu’ in Kannada for the honorific use of ‘he’ in English, to refer to Gandhi, when the writing
convention of Kannada would demand the word ‘avaru’? Or is it simply the patterned error in the
linguistic performance of a second language user, given that Telugu was her mother’s tongue? It
is only when translating a non-Indian text like Chekhov’s that Savitramma takes a few small
liberties. Considering the iconic stature of the text/subjects she was translating, Savitramma could
not have deployed the re-writing mode; there was no choice but to submit herself to the larger
nationalistic design that translators were expected to carry through. Thus conformity to the
nationalist agenda of bolstering a new center of power as well as to established notions of
womanhood marks the texture of her translations and her life as upper caste housewife and mother.

It has been suggested by various scholars even outside the Kannada context such as Sujit
Mukherjee and G N Devy that translation became a slavish copy of the sacrosanct original text
due to western practices of translation , especially in the context of Bible translation. But I wish to
argue that the feminization of translation is more closely tied up with the immediate historical and
cultural urgencies of the time. Tharakeshwar (2006:113) concludes his book on “Colonialsm and
Translation : Episodes - Mysore and Kannada” with a justifiable plea to go beyond the binaries of
Tradition vs Modernity, East vs West, English vs Kannada to include caste and gender as
categories of analysis in problematizing a complex cultural exchange such as translation. A close

18
look at Savitramma’s translated works shows that it is in the context of translating nationalist
discourse from one Indian language (English, being an Indian language too) to another that the
original claimed precedence over the translation, the ‘male’ writer over the ‘female’ translator
thereby gendering translation as an invisible, secondary, derivative, activity.

The Translator Matters

Despite translating so many texts of so many kinds, Savitramma’s translations have really not
received much discussion in the Kannada scene. Vimuktheya Haadiyalli ( 1998), which appeared
decades after she published her important translations, is a sole exception; for one does find many
articles on her translations. But even here, one does not find an extensive discussion of the purpose
or choice of the translations.

Speculating on the reception of translations in Kannada, one wonders if the success of a translation,
success in terms of receiving serious critical discussion, dissemination and eventual canonization,
depends as much on who has translated the text as which text is translated or how it is translated.
Admittedly, re-creation has been the privileged mode of translation; but did everyone have access
to this privilege? There seems to be a hierarchy among translators. First come the “ (male)Creative
Writers” . When a writer of the stature of Kuvempu re-creates Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin
as Kindari Jogi ( 1928) or Shakespeare’s Hamlet as Rakthakshi (1932), the translation becomes
nearly canonical, gets discussed and disseminated as a text-book. Or when the Gifted Poet Bendre
re-creates Kalidasa’s Megha Sandesha as Meghadootha(1943), the translation is welcomed with
open arms as our own Kannada Meghadootha. Next in the hierarchy of privilege are the
essayists/scholars/university teachers /administrators with considerable institutional power. B M
Srikantaiah’s translation of an anthology of Romantic and Victorian poems , English Geethagalu
(1926) has achieved the status of a classic and A N Murthy Rao’s translation of Moliere’s play
Tartuffe as Ashadhabhuti (1931) has seen numerous stage performances and is even filmed. Since
women were neither Writers like Kuvempu or Bendre, nor did they hold positions of power, their
work as translators has remained relatively invisible. Then there is the third rung - the ‘translator
only’ or ‘mere translator’ category, who are not part of this charmed circle of re-creators, but mere
copiers with no will of their own. While the men in this category are occasionally remembered,

19
the women are really unsung. If we consider the work of Savitramma’s contemporary translators,
this point becomes clear. Men translators such as Ahobala Shankara, R Vyasa Rao, Gurunatha
Joshi and H K Vedavyasacharya prolifically translated Tagore and other Bengali writers. Though
they are not particularly celebrated, there is at least some recognition given to their work.(footnote
For example, see the well-researched article on B.Venkatachar by S.Jayasrinivasa Rao,2007) But
women translators have been reduced to further invisibility. We can look at some of the women
who were translating in Savitramma’s time. Translators like T Sunandamma who translated Oscar
Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1972), and H S Parvathi, who translated Bankim’s
Durgeshanandini (1964) made the grade because they took to writing later. A translator like C N
Mangala,who translated Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Huliya Benneridaga (1960)made a name not so
much as a translator but more because of her institutional power and her good work in setting up
Shashwati, the Cenre for Women Studies in Bangalore. Their translations were noticed in the
afterglow of their other work. In contrast, S Ambujakshi who translated four of Tagore’s texts -
Mulugida Doni (1949), Rajarshi (1951), Vibha (1956) and Pushpodyana (1962) , who belonged
to the ‘translator only’ category and so neither wrote nor occupied any position of power, has
remained strictly within the pages of translation surveys, her work erased out of public memory.
So if Savitramma’s translations have had an ‘afterlife’, it is only after she established herself as a
writer, in retrospect.

A Conforming Translator , A Resisting (Re)Writer

However, rumblings of discontent with the male-dominated center can be heard in Savitramma’s
‘creative writing’ right from the very first collection of stories. In order to construct this argument,
I would like to use the trope of Pitty, a character Savitramma has created in Granny’s Stories. This
is the story of Pitty: .

“Pitty was a naughty girl. One day, she was sitting on top of a tree nibbling its raw/green fruit.
Just then, the king of the land was passing through, mounted on a horse. Pitty shot the raw fruit,
aiming it at his head. When it hit him, she clapped her hands in delight. The King was in great
pain. He was furious. He sent his soldiers to capture the culprit. Now Pitty stood before him,
unafraid. His anger rising, the King ordered, “ Have her trampled under the feet of the Royal

20
Elephant.” The soldiers tied her up in ropes and threw her in front of the elephant. The elephant
walked all over her. When it got exhausted, the soldiers dragged Pitty back to the King. Looking
at the smiling Pitty , the King asked : “ Pitty, Pitty, are you dead?” Pitty retorted, “Why would
Pitty die? Why would lightning strike? My limbs were aching after climbing the tree. The
elephant’s massage was soothing.” Grinding his teeth in rage, the King ordered, “Push her down
the mountain…”

……(Finally) Not believing his own eyes, the King asked, “Pitty,Pitty, are you dead NOW ?” Pitty
replied, “Why would Pitty die? Why would lightning strike? Pitty who climbed the tree, Pitty who
hit the King, Pitty who was trampled by the elephant, Pitty who came down the mountain, Pitty
who was dipped in lime scurry …. I washed myself in the sea and climbed out of it holding on to
the rain drops.” An exasperated King ordered, “ This nuisance will not die. Just let her go.”

The word pitta refers to a sparrow in Telugu from which Savitramma has evidently translated this
story. The sparrow features in many other versions of this folk tale in place of the girl. But with
one significant change - pitta, the sparrow becomes Pitty, the girl.; both of them sharing the quality
of being weak and vulnerable, yet imbued with an indomitable and irrepressible spirit.

One can see Pitty alive all through in Savitramma, the Writer. As a girl, Savitramma did many
things rather unconventional for her times. She learnt to cycle, rode her brother’s motorcycle – and
not knowing how to stop it, she had everyone’s lives in their mouth. She learnt to drive a car; she
would tuck up her sari and try to learn swimming in a river; she fell off a guava tree when she was
pregnant. What would this naughty girl, Pitty the Pert, look like when she grew up? Her pranks
and mischief would surely have given way to a mind that thinks, questions and challenges daringly
and freely, refusing to conform. And this is just what you find right from the outset in
Savitramma’s stories and novels wherein she created the space to be her questioning self.
Savitramma’s daughter records another telling detail about Saviramma. “Not being a believer in
rituals, not being particularly interested in cooking, perhaps my mother did not make an ideal
daughter-in-law in those days !” This also partly explains how she came to write the way she did.
Starting from her very first stories such as Nirashrite and Damayanthi in which the two happily
married housewives Tulasi and Damayanti do not go back to their husbands after their life gets

21
disrupted due to the violence of Partition. Tulasi insists on going back to the marriage with the
child born out of the assault on her and finds that her husband is reluctant. In the case of
Damayanthi, her husband is shocked to find his wife recovered from the trauma and resuming a
normal life. When he is still deciding whether to get back together with her, she resolves to marry
Doctor Mohammed who respects and loves her for her many admirable qualities.(end notes 8)

We can see a similar attempt at articulating her discontent with the male-dominated Centre in her
other stories as well. Savitramma was different from her contemporaries in that even when she is,
like them, exploring values in the context of the family, still succeeds in portraying women who
cannot take the humiliation and indignity in marriage and in voicing their intense desire to be
treated with respect and love. Rather than confronting the conflict directly in its familiar setting of
one’s own secure home and hearth, Savitramma uses the ploy of distance and defamiliarization to
stage her protest. She uses alien histories such as Partition, alien characters as in the case of Grace
(An Incident) and Laila (Call of the Land) who are western women, or alien land ( Seethe in
Pratheekshe has a child out of wedlock when she is in the US) to articulate explosive themes too
close for comfort. In this, Savitramma anticipated the work of the next generation of women
writers in Kannada . The exploration of conflict in marriage which began in these early stories are
an introduction to what was to come, viz, the two novels which depict the marriage of Rama and
Seeta, the ideal Indian couple, breaking down irreconcilably. The culmination of her rebellion
finds its most intense and direct expression in the re-visioning of the foundational Indian text
Ramayana in the two novels she wrote in 1980 and 1990. And she could give her dissent a fuller
voice only after the Women’s Movement of the 70s and the Protest Movement in Kannada again
of the 70s which challenged the power of the Centre from the margins. This resistance could not
find expression in her translations because of the kind of texts she was translating, the role given
to translations in the nationalist history of her times and the self-effacing strategy of translation
which masked the fact of her cultural mediation. The power of re-writing denied to her as a
translator could be retrieved only in the context of her own writing where she could appropriate
the agency of a writer in an act of radical mediation to re-write that ultimate text of Hindu
Patriarchy, the Ramayana as a feminist narrative, in which one can see Pitty the Pert at her
resisting, retorting best!

22
Which is why The Karnataka Women Writers’ Association found her writing so irresistible. Which
is when her talent as a Woman Writer came to the fore. Which is how her work as a Translator
also received the attention it deserved. Thus Savitramma the Writer and Translator finally arrived
!

End Notes

1.B M Srikantaiah (1884-1946), a Professor of Kannada and English in Mysore University, is

recognized as one of the pioneers of the Kannada Nationalist Movement. Along with many others,
his work as a translator and teacher, his concern for the growth and development of Kannada in a
political situation where Karnataka had been broken up into several units governed by different
agencies, leading to a sense of total disempowerment paved the way for the formation of the
Karnataka State in 1956.

2. While Tolstoy had begun to be translated in the 1930s and Dostoevsky was a post-1970
phenomenon, Gorki, Gogol, Turgeneve, Pushkin and Chekhov were translated in these middle
decades which account for nearly one-third ( 36 out of about 100 titles) of the translated works
from Russian. These works were being translated by eminent writers such as A N Krishna Rao,
Niranjana ( both writers with their Marxist slant were part of the Progressive movement in
Kannada literature), K V Subbanna and Parvathavani. At least 14 works of Chekhov have been
translated into Kannada between 1943 to 1981, of which The Cherry Orchard (two translations –
one by Ramanand Padukone in 1971 and the other by Srinivasa Sutrave in 1981), Uncle Vanya
and The Bear figure prominently while the rest of them were his short stories.

3. Francis William Bain , an American author, publisher and Sanskrit scholar, was also working
as Principal, Deccan College, Pune. As a long-time resident of India, he drew heavily on Hindu
mythology , from which he translated at least eight books, out of which the three books that
Savitramma has translated have received widespread attention. Bain’s books, which are listed in
the ‘rare books’ and ‘sacred books’ category, are listed as translations from Sanskrit and are
considered to be beautiful translations.

23
4. Even at a conservative estimate Kannada, which has translated the maximum number of Bengali
texts, has more than 300 Bengali titles up to the 1980s, out of which Tagore’s works constitute
one-fourth the number. Starting from 1910, Kannada culture has regularly translated Tagore;
predictably, the maximum number of Tagore texts came to Kannada between 1940 and 1960, with
15 texts in the 40s, 23 in the 50s and 25 in the 60s
.
5.Galaganatha translated Bankim’s two novels including Mrinalini (1911) from its Marathi
translation.

6. Ahobala Shankara, another Tagore translator, translated Binodini (1955), Yogayoga (1959) and
the entire oeuvre of Tagore’s short fiction directly from Bengali, while H S Parvathi and
Vedavyasa, translated Bengali texts through Hindi. Savitramma was one of a small band of Tagore
translators who translated from English , which includes C N Mangala ( Huliya Benneridaga,
Bhavani Bhattacharya, 1960) and Vasanthibai Padukone ( Tagore’s Charu Chandra
Chakravarthy, 1968). Significantly, well-known publishing houses such as Sahitya Mandira,
Kavyalaya and Geeta Book House had made a project of Tagore translations. By the time
Savitramma published her first Tagore translation in 1954, there were already 4 novels, 4
collections of short fiction, Tagore’s autobiography My Childhood, 5 plays and Sahitya, a
collection of literary critical articles by Tagore – all published by a single publisher - Kavyalaya
in Mysore , who were also the sole publishers of all of Savitramma’s translations as well as
original works. Among the Tagore novels that Savitramma translated, Gora has since seen a
second version by Ganesh Sharma in 1976.

7. In his weekly column in the popular monthly, Taranga ( 11.2.96, p. 35), H M Nayak, Kannada
Professor, eminent scholar and Kannada activist, devotes two pages for Savitramma. He recounts
an incident in which Kamala Das was being given te Tirumalamba award. Savitramma chose to
read her speech written in English, as she thought most people in the audience would not be able
to follow otherwise. She explained as much to Nayak who evidently thought that she should have
spoken in Kannada . Kamala Das who was listening , also felt that Savitramma could have spoken
in K. At that point, Nayak reports with relish that ‘Savitramma’s face fell, her disappointment
evident on her face.” Nayak writes, “Whatever be her personal view on the matter, Kamala Das

24
had conducted herself that day as a malayali lady!”.This clearly implies that Savitramma had not
conducted herself as a Kannada lady should have. Savitramma narrates yet another interesting
situation. A few representatives of the local Bengali Association wanted to felicitate her when
they learnt that she had translated Tagore. However, when they heard from her that she had
translated Tagore from the English, they upped and left. And Savitramma comments, “Should we
call it love of their language?”

8.Analysing Savitramma’s Partition stories, Nikhila Haritsa demonstrates that upper caste women
are represented in these narratives as more secular, humane and sympathetic, especially in contrast
to the narrow-minded and cowardly men of the same caste. She takes the argument further: ”In
fact, in these narratives, the Hindu man is the Other of the Hindu woman, while she identifies
herself with the Muslim”. In her reading of these stories, Haritsa shows how the woman in
Savitramma’s narratives does not seem to be so much in complicity as much as in competition
with the man in the sphere of nationalist politics. By raising the question “ Can we read these
narratives then as pointers towards Savitramma’s own politics – that of the upper class woman
trying to beat the upper class man at his own game in the arena of “Indian” nationalist politics, by
showing herself as more ‘secular’, hence more ’nationalist’ than her male counterpart?” Haritsa
concludes her argument by saying that Partition seemed to provide the context for rehearsing the
rivalry between the upper class/caste woman and man in the sphere of nationalist politics and that
this is Savitramma’s way of appropriating the hegemonic nationalist discourse by seeking an ally
in the Muslim, the hated Other of the Hindu, upper caste man.

*** *** ***

PRIMARY SOURCES

Short Story Collections

Niraashrite, Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1949
Marumaduve , Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1954
Sarida Beralu, Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1965
Pratheekshe ,Kavyalaya, Mysore,( not available)

25
Lakshmi, Kavyalaya, Mysore,1974

Novels
Seethe, Rama, Ravana, Kavyalaya, Mysore 1980.
Vimukthi, Kavyalaya, Mysore1990

Biography
H V Nanjundaiah : His Life &Work, Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Bangalore,1971.

Children’s Book
Granny’s Stories, I & II, Kavyalaya, Mysore,1971.

TRANSLATIONS

Non-fiction
Madhyakalada India, (Medieval India, by Stanley Lane-Poole),Sri Panchacharya Mudranalaya,
Mysore,1939.

Mahatma Gandhi:Jagaththige Avara Sandesha ( Mahatma Gandhi : His life and message for
the World by Louis Fischer), Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1954.

Fiction
Naukaghatha, (The Wreck by Rabindranath Tagore) Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1954.

Mane-Jagaththu(The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore) , Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1955.

Gora, ( Gora by Rabindranath Tagore), Kavyalaya, Mysore,1955.

Chinnada Doni (The Golden Boat by Rabindranath Tagore) Kavyalaya, Mysore,1958.

.

26
Maduvanagitthi ( The Bride by Anton Chekhov), Kavyalaya, Mysore,1959.

Smarabhasma, ( Ashes of a God by F W Bain ), Kavyalaya, Mysore,1959.

Hasivo Hasivu, ( So Many Hungers by Bhabani Bhattacharya ),Kavyalaya, Mysore, 1961.

Shashilekha, Neelanetre, (A Digit of the Moon, A Draught of the Blue by F W Bain), Kavyalaya,
Mysore, 1962.

Mahadevana Jatajutadalli, ( In the Great God’s Hair by F W Bain ), Kavyalaya, Mysore,1994.

Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens (Unpublished manuscript, 1995)

SECONDARY SOURCES

Dabbe,Vijaya.1998.‘Vimukthige sanda ‘Nirashrithe’ : Kathe-vyathe” in Vimuktheya Hadiyalli.

(eds) B N Sumitra Bai & N Gayatri,Jagrithi Mahila Prakashana, Bangalore.28-53.

Haritsa, Nikhila, 2002. “ ‘Communalism’ and ‘Women’s writing’ in Independent India”,

unpublished doctoral thesis, Bangalore University, Bangalore, 50-60

Jayasrinivasa Rao. S, “B Venkatacharya’s Novels in the Kannada Literary Polysystem and the
Founding of the Novel in Kannada”, in Translation Today, (eds) Udaya Narayana Singh & P P
Giridhar, Vol 4, No 1 & 2, 2007, 1-26.

Kamat, Jyotsna. 1998. “Charitre, Samshodhanegala Olavu”. Vimuktheya Hadiyalli. (eds) B N

Sumitra Bai & N Gayatri.Jagrithi Mahila Prakashana, Bangalore, 95-102.

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Lefevere, Andre. 2000. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers : Text, System and Refraction in a Theory
of Literature”, in The Translation Studies Reader, (ed) Lawrence Venuti, Routledge, London &
New York. 233-249.

Mukherjee,Sujit, 1981,Translation as Discovery and Other Essays, Allied Publishers, New Delhi.

Nagabhushanaswamy.O.L. 1999, “Translation and Ancient and Medieval Kannada Literature”, in

Bhashantarada Samskrtika Nelegalu, (ed) Karigowda Beechanahalli, Kannada University, Hampi,
30-38.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Smt Kusuma Narasimhan and Smt.Indira Raman, daughters of Savitramma, who
generously threw open their precious collection of Savitamma’s books, which is otherwise hard to
find.

I would like to acknowledge the care and time Prof Rajeshwari Sundararajan gave me in revising
this essay.

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