The Work of Translation and Cultural Diplomacy between Cold War India and the Soviet Union: Reading Madan Lal “Madhu”

Abstract

This paper explores certain notions of state-affiliated travel, cultural work, and translation in the context of the literary exchanges between India and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Indian state in the 1950s and 1960s sent several writers and intellectuals to the Soviet Union as part of its project of cultural diplomacy. This paper specifically reads the memoir of the translator, scholar, and Hindi poet Madan Lal ‘Madhu’, Yādoṃ ke dhuṃdhale ujale cehare (2011-2012) thatreveals the everyday details of cultural diplomatic work as a translator on official duty living in the USSR. I will present how the memoir reveals the tensions inherent in an idea of cultural work that is split between the goal-oriented responsibilities as a representative of the Indian state dealing with the USSR and the more universal ideals of meaning making and exchange as members of an international literary community free from national affiliations through the medium of translation.

To what extent does the nation-state shape the intellectual’s encounter with literary and material alterity in Cold War travel writing? How does Madhu’s intention to directly translate from Russian to Hindi bypassing English add to our understanding of mobility and space during this period? Placing him in a multilingual world of Indian translators and intellectuals in Soviet Russia, I ask if the memoir can give us an account of the emergence of the Cold War-era cultural worker at the behest of the state as a distinct figure.