The Global Language

At the 1920 meeting of the newly founded League of Nations in Geneva, India - a member state represented by Maharaja Khengarji - joined China, Persia and eight other countries in urging the League to take Esperanto seriously. Teaching this easy to learn link language to school children might help shape a viable post war world they felt. The League's vice secretary general, Inazo Nitobe, submitted a positive report. In 1921 India, China, Persia, Japan and nine other countries sponsored a favorable resolution. France vetoed it. Setbacks like this veto - or the 1935 defeat of feminist legislation in the US - make the movements stronger and more articulate. When we look at the way Esperanto has been recontextualized over the decades, it turns out that at every stage there were a few Indians making significant individual contributions.

Maharaja Khengarji III Ketch didn't know Esperanto. That he supported it possibly had something to do with Irish Jehangir Sorabji Taraporewala (1884-1957), a highly visible linguist. As a translator of Tagore, Taraporewala was the first Indian to make it into print in Esperanto. There is an unbroken chain of distinguished Indians publishing in Esperanto, from Taraporewala to Ashwini Kumar and Badal Sircar. But the biggest achiever in this domain was Lakshmiswar Sinha (1905-1977) of Santineketan.

In 1928 Tagore sent Sinha off to Sweden to get some training in the handicraft based pedagogic system called ' sloyd'. Sinha proceeded to learn Esperanto from his new friends in Sweden and promptly became a legend. He published half a dozen books, lectured in 10 European countries, made friends everywhere - their children have fond memories of him to this day - and Esperanto and India on each other's map. His is a key name in the story of work for cultural equity across literary regions.

Sinha's translation of short stories by Tagore, published in 1961, was designated by Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) as the first book in its 'Oriento Okcidento' series. Launched in the context of UNECO's global program for educational and cultural transformation, this series is one place where UEA, on of UNESCO's formal partners, promotes the goal of providing everybody with the equitable diet of cross-cultural reading that they are entitled to.

"But people read each other anyway"! You exclaim. "An overwhelming number of books get translated into English; doesn't that count as global dialogue? It does; but I put it to you that ordinary people reading world literature through English do not run into Lord Tadeusz by Mickkkiewicz of Poland, or Seven Brothers by Kivi of Finland or The Tragedy of Man by Madach of Hungary. But adult readers in Esperanto count as illiterate if they are unfamiliar with these major nineteenth century classics, translated by iconic Esperanto authors like Grabowski, Setala and Kalocsay. This is not about a couple of token peaks; UESS's series is just official applause for a fraction of the work routinely done by Esperanto translators. Catalan author Abel Montegut has shown that the Esperanto translation basket is far more equitable in terms of cross regional representation than the baskets in other major translation vehicles.

Recent extensions of the enterprise are based on Esperanto translations of literacy works that have not been rendered into English. A 2007 Euro Indian project had a Croatian children's classic by Ivana Brlic Mazomanie translated into Bangla through an Esperanto translation. Esperanto's transparent word architecture makes these bridge versions hug their originals very closely. New partners form Italy and Slovenia and EU support have made possible a bigger 2008-10 project. - Publishing children's novels from Croatia,, Italy and Slovenia in Bangla and a Bangla children's novel in Slovenian etx. The public likes the books; if they didn't, we would know we weren't addressing a seriously felt need. Sinha, personally a life long anti-elitist, was part of the transition from our reaching for the elite sky in 1920 to our inter local work today.