POPULAR LITERATURE, TRANSLATION AND INTERROGATING POST-COLONIAL INDIA

This work is a perspectival analysis of translated popular literature in post-colonial India. Popular literature serves useful functions in that it seeks to fulfill an intellectual and cultural vacuum in the minds of a vast mass of our populace who seem to have barely benefited by the educational structure existing in the country. However, the past fifty years reveals unmistakable signs of a sense of inertia and casualness afflicting such author’s choice of works and the manner of presentation to the reading public. The object of this paper is to bring into analytical focus, the role, expanse and prospects of local Kannada writers like Bhairappa, Girish Karnad, etc. vis a vis the innumerable anonymous authors whose works infiltrate the streets. The authors discuss the poetic and politics of popular literature and the type of readership that patronizes it. The middle ground between these two categories of writers is occupied by the ‘elite’ literature of the Shobha De type, whose works have been canonized and yet which seems merely opportunistic.