Murdahiya

Tulsi Ram

Dr. Tulsi Ram was a scholar who left an indelible mark as a Professor and Head at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies in New Delhi. With a deep passion for the global communist movement and Russian affairs, he mentored over fifty students, guiding their research on regions like Trans-Caucasia and the Baltics. He travelled as a visiting fellow to Moscow and St. Petersburg, penning works like “CIA: American Tool of Political Demolition” and “The History of Communist Movement in Iran”. But his heart also lay in Dalit literature and politics. A proud Ambedkarite and Marxist, he looked up to Marx, Buddha, and Ambedkar, and led the Dalit Writers’ Association, championing liberation through storytelling. He poured his ideals into editing “Ashwaghosha”, a Buddhist journal. Dr. Ram passed away in 2015, leaving behind a rich legacy. His two-part autobiography—”Murdahiya”, tracing his Dalit childhood in Azamgarh, and “Manikarnika”, recounting his academic journey, captures his life with raw honesty and insight, making him a towering figure in Hindi and Dalit literary world.

Chandrika Das

Chandrika Das is a translator and scholar whose work explores the intersections of literature, orality, and performance. Her research examines the intersemiotic translation of Rajasthan’s phad-vachana performances, focusing on how oral narratives transform into visual form through the painted scroll and how performance in turn reanimates image and story. A Fulbright scholar at The University of Texas at Austin (2023–24), she has been an Associate Fellow at the NIDA School of Translation Studies in Italy and has also trained at the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. Her English translation of Omprakash Valmiki’s short story “Sapna” (Dream) was published by the Sahitya Akademi in its journal Indian Literature. She is currently translating Murdahiya by Dr. Tulsi Ram, her first full-length book translation, which engages deeply with caste, memory, and belonging. Chandrika’s work engages with vernacular aesthetics and the ethics of representing oral and performative forms in translation. Drawing on her translations of contemporary Hindi texts, she reflects on how the rhythms, expressions, and material qualities of writing shaped by lived experience can be carried into new linguistic and cultural contexts without losing their immediacy or intimacy.