Postcolonial Poetry, Anglophone Translation: Sites of Resilience in Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s Luna

Abstract

This paper examines the political and cultural positioning of Punjabi poetry within the postcolonial state, engaging with Fredric Jameson's theories of "third-world literature" and Aijaz Ahmad's critiques of national allegory. Focusing on the marginalization of Punjabi within Pakistan's language politics where Urdu has historically been privileged through colonial and postcolonial state policies the study explores how vernacular traditions serve as sites of resilience and anti-colonial resistance. At the center of this inquiry is Shiv Kumar Batalvi's classic Punjabi verse-play Luna, which reimagines the ancient legend of Pooran and Luna. Through a critical comparative analysis of Batalvi's original text and its English translation by B. M. Bhalla, this paper evaluates the ideological stakes of foreignizing versus domesticating translation practices. By subverting patriarchal tropes and aligning the tragedy of Luna with the suppression of the marginalized mother tongue, Batalvi's work transforms myth into a vessel for pre-colonial and anti-colonial resistance. Ultimately, the study demonstrates how sensitive Anglophone translations can rescue "doubly shadowed" regional literatures from obscurity and integrate them into the landscape of world literature without erasing their distinct cultural matrices.

Keywords: Shiv Kumar Batalvi; Luna; Postcolonial; Translation Studies; Punjabi identity.