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Translation implies more than a linguistic act and involves aspects like culture, ideology, power and context. No translation is an honest endeavour; it is rather a political one. This political standpoint of translation has emerged with the postcolonial discourse in translation. Nevertheless, the practice of translation in the pre-colonial era itself demonstrates the fact that translation carries a political purpose. There are numerous examples of translation being used to serve certain ideological agendas. Using a qualitative and comparative investigation, this paper discusses the concept of proto-postcolonial translation in the Neo-Vaishnavite movement of Assam, to establish that the vernacular translation practice during the period foresees postcolonial concerns like power and cultural identity. Further, it discusses that such practice could be read as proto-postcolonial translation prefiguring future theoretical offshoots like vernacular agency, resistance to linguistic domination and the politics of epistemological creation. Finally, the study concludes that the Neo-Vaishnavite translation strategy is quintessentially similar to the postcolonial translation practice in resisting the dominant language.
Dr. Jahnabi Nath. “Proto-postcolonial Translation: Vernacular Resistance in Neo-Vaishnavite Writings of Assam.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 861-881. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.53.
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