Dual Loyalty of Resistance Translation: A Study of Palestinian Literature in Malayalam

This paper attempts to analyze translations of Palestinian literature from Arabic into Malayalam under the framework of “Resistance Translation.” Inspired by Resistance Literature, as propounded and theorized by Ghassan Kanafani and Barbara Harlow, I develop this framework to explore the fifty-year-long history of translations of Palestinian literature into Malayalam. This history furthers our understanding of the relationship between political movements and literary translation. Translators and publishers had varying political and ideological affiliations, such as Communist and Islamist, as did the Islamic organizations engaged in producing these literary texts. These shifts across time also show how Resistance Translations, despite their act of bringing a text into a foreign political and cultural context, still function as a catalyst of resistance culture at the target. In other words, the translations here are not only made for the purposes of creating solidarity with Palestine, which, of course, is one of the primary goals, but also as part of the necessary resistance at the target. Translations of Lahn al-Thawra as Viplavagadha (1972), Rijalun fi’l-Shams as Sooryathapathil (2004), and A’aid ila Haifa as Haifayilekk Thirichu Pokunnavar (2024) not only correspond to the post-Naksa period, the Second Intifada and Al-Aqsa Flood but also to the popularity of the Naxalite movement, the end of first complete term of the Hindutva government in India, and the completion of the second consecutive term of their ruling, a turbulent phase in Indian politics with increased anti-Muslim violence. Through an analysis of translations, corresponding political events, and their relation to the agents who produce these translations, this paper illustrates the entangled nature of extra-literary desires as well as dual loyalty in Resistance Translation from the late twentieth century to the present.