Chinese literature in India

       In looking at 'Contemporary Chinese fiction through an Indian lens' in Chinese Whispers in the new issue of The Caravan Anjum Hasan asks a very, very good question:

Most Chinese literature available to us, I discovered in the coming months as I looked for more to read from that country, travels here through Western channels -- either reprints of Western editions or these editions themselves, priced for Indian markets. [...] This traffic is so old and so commonplace it doesn't surprise us. Yet it's worth wondering why two countries that share such a long border and seemingly many a cultural trait, not to speak of being gripped today by similar economic and social upheavals, can only access each other's novels based on the tastes, fashions and economics of Western publishing.

       (Unfortunately, he doesn't really look into availability in other Indian languages, most notably Hindi -- beyond the observation:

Outside English, readers in some Indian languages, such as Malayalam and Bengali, have shown a consistent interest in reading world literature in translation. The modern European masters were translated into Malayalam from the 1920s onwards and the Latin Americans in more recent decades. In Bengali, alongside translations from European languages, Japanese literature, following Rabindranath Tagore's interest in that country, has long been available in translation.

       No word, however, regarding Chinese translated into in these (or other Indian) languages.)
       Worldwide, English tends to be the language of transmission (with some notable but limited exceptions, as, for example, French and German still play significant niche roles) and this is all the more apparent/dominant in India, where there is a large English-speaking readership. As the piece suggests, it's clearly a less-than-ideal situation -- and bizarre for two huge neighboring nations such as India and China.