ABSTRACT

The portmanteau or clip or lexical compound ‘semio-machi(a)nations’ in the essay’s title, ‘“Semio-machi(a)nations and Translation” India 1500-1900’ signifies both semiotic conflict and semiotic conspiracy between European nations and India as well as between European nations themselves. The compound’s conflict-seme of ‘machy – machia’ is precipitated as in a chemical reaction by the medial epenthesis (an intrusive insertion indeed!) of a ‘in’ ‘machi(a)nations’ The compound’s nation-seme would of course emerge without any epenthetical grapho-phonemic wrenching but by a mere super-scriptally indicated re-enforcement of the primary – stressed penultimate syllable in ‘machi(a)nations’. All the three moves – compounding, epenthesis, and primary stress re-enforcement – purport to enact linguo-stylistically the conflicts and conspiracies, so to speak, or stratagems and strategies of colonials and natives which have under-written four and half centuries of cultural politics since 1500 to Indian Independence in the theoretical practices of independent and translational textualisations of both the parties. The essay studies Indian colonial history prioritising its mode of cultural politics over the other two modes of geo-politics and political economy (all the modes being interrelated and equivalent though substantively discrete), and situating the era’s independent composition and/or translation of secular and/or sacred texts in the larger contexts of the colonial power’s legi-juridical texts like the Indian Penal Code (1862), 3) Census Report (1871), and ‘Regulations’ and ‘Acts’ relating to the control of Press, Post and Telegraphy, and Official Secrets. The study traverses through the successive regimes of the European colonial powers, highlighting 1) their launch and advancement of the print-medium, 2) their competitions and conflicts determined by their nationalist and denominationalist differences, and in turn determining their different agendas of writing (independent or translational) and publication, 3) their ideological engagements thereby with the Brahminical Hindu hegemony and the latter’s high caste rivals’ counter-hegemony, preferring Sangam ethical literature, and Saivite Mystical and Philosophical Poetry and disquisitions to any Vaishnavite texts, 4) The role of Indo-European cross-bred ‘parankis’ and of the dwibhasyagars (among the Brahmins and the highca ste Hindus), and (5) the eventual emergence of the Catholics and the British as the most dominant and longest-lasting players respectively as Church and State.