Violence in Indian Plays in English Translation: A Cross-Cultural Literary Inquiry

Indian drama is mainly written and rooted in various regional languages of India. It presents us with diversified socio-cultural aspects of Indian society. Additionally, Indian drama often revolves around the theme of violence. It examines the prevalence of violence in Indian society from various perspectives and angles. As most of these plays have been translated into the English language, they have transcended the cultural and linguistic borders. They are now available for the international scrutiny of violence rooted in Indian socio-political, cultural, historical, structural, and domestic contexts. This paper aims to shed light on the portrayal of violence—political, physical, domestic, and psychological—in selected Indian plays translated into English. These plays were initially written in regional languages, which include Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, and Hindi. This paper emphasises that, in the translation process, linguistic meaning is transferred. However, along with the meaning, it also reshapes and rewrites the semiotics of the violence depicted in the original plays. Keywords: Indian drama; violence; translation; regional literature; theatrical discourse