ABSTRACT
Literature and cinema, as institutionalised sites of memory, are especially relevant in the works of postcolonial creative writers and film-makers since they represent the possibility of creating a counter-narrative/history as an alternative to the hegemonic majoritarian or official discourses. This chapter attempts to build such a narrative with reference to Sadgati, a fifty-minute film adaptation of Munshi Premchand's eponymous Hindi short story that Satyajit Ray made in late 1981 for Indian television. Aligning visual and languages codes in real time on screen, the telefilm Sadgati shows callous exploitation of a low-caste tanner, Dukhi, by the Brahmin priest Ghashiram in a small Indian village. By studying one medium's translation, transmission, transformation and appropriation of the other, chapter not only enhances understanding of both media, but also contributes to studies of comparative poetics and cross-media cultural translation. The discussion functions in all the registers philosophical, linguistic and political in which adaptation/translation as a practice works in India.
