Indira Bai : The Triumph of Truth and Virtue

Published in 1899, Gulvadi Venkata Rao's Indira Bai is a text of social history that documents the wide-ranging transformation that took place in the ineluctable encounter between the Kannada social world and colonial modernity. Indira Bai, acknowledged as the first, independent, social novel in Kannada, chronicles the changes that rocked the Saraswat brahman community in the erstwhile South Canara region of Karnataka, at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Indira Bai reflects the pan-Indian churning provoked by the social reform movement which had focused on the women's question in a major way. This narrative of the nation tells you the moving tale of Indira, a child widow who stands up to a corrupt religious orthodoxy and remarries an upright, educated man. It actively participates, as do many other first novels in Indian languages such as Indulekha, in the fashioning of a new, secular self in an emerging modern, national culture. Reading this text in a new translation has a renewed significance now when local cultures of India have had to recast their identities again in the face of a globalizing world.

Gulvadi Venkata Rao, -, -,Vanamala Viswanatha, Former Professor, English Studies, Azim Premji University,Shivarama Padikkal, Professor in Translation Studies, University of Hyderabad

GULVADI VENKATA RAO (1844-1913) is acknowldeged as the first Kannada novelist who wrote on social issues. While he also authored four other novels including 'Bhagirathi' and 'Ladupriyacharya', it was 'Indira Bai' that brought him into the limelight. Born in Kundapura, South Canara, he was educated in Mangalore and Madras, and he later served as an officer in the Police Department. The author hailed from the progressive Saraswat community which provided the immediate context for social critique in his novels.

VANAMALA VISWANATHA has taught English language and literature over the past four decades at several premiere institutions in Bengaluru. Viswanatha has also worked as Honorary Director, Centre for Translation, Sahitya Akademi, Bengaluru and as a member of the Advisory Committee, National Translation Mission. She has translated and introduced Sara Aboobacker's Kannada novel ('Breaking Ties', Macmillan India,2001) and an anthology of Lankesh's short stories('When Stone Melts', 2004, Sahitya

Akademi), and co-edited 'Routes : Representations of the West in Short Fiction from South India' (Macmillan India,2000); and translated J Krishnamurti's writing into Kannada. She has co-translated Ananthmurthy's Samskara into Swedish ('Samskara - rit for en dod man', Ordfront Forlag, 2001) and Torgny Lindgren's Swedish novel into Kannada ('Havina Donku',2002). Her translation of 'The Life of Harishchandra' ( Harvard University Press, 2017), the first ever translation of a medieval Kannada classic, in the Murty Classical Library of India Series, is considered a landmark publication.

SHIVARAMA PADIKKAL teaches at the Centre for Applied Linguistic and Translation Studies (CALTS), University of Hyderabad. His research interests include Modern Kannada Literature, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. His book on nation, modernity and the rise of the Kannada novel, 'Naadu-Nudiya Roopaka' is much acclaimed.