Translating the sacred: Colonial constructions and postcolonial perspectives

This article demonstrates the centrality of sacred translations for both colonial and postcolonial discourses, using as an example translations of the Bhagavadgita in the construction of ‘Hinduism’ as a religion from the Indian colonial context. Discursive constructions and representations of religions through translations are some of the earliest examples of cultural inscriptions offered by Europeans of their colonised ‘Others’. Scriptures, ‘holy’ texts, sermons, and other devotional literature were translated either to convert the colonised or for the colonisers to ‘understand’ their colonised better. The article however draws attention to the many ways in which the colonised have been active agents in variously appropriating or resisting this shared archive of colonial discourse on the sacred for their own purposes well before the period of conscious ‘post-coloniality.’