Rediscovering colonial-era Bihar through a delightful translation of a 100-year-old novel

In tracing the literary journey of a language, some landmarks stand out for what they mean for the language’s possibilities. Others are notable for how they mirror the time and space in which they are rooted.

Jayanath Pati’s Fool Bahadur is one such work. Besides being the first surviving novel in Magahi language, it also leaves satirical notes on the social register of the colonial state personnel, especially the lower strata of state bureaucracy and judiciary in small-town India. 

Almost a century after the book was first published in 1928, poet-diplomat Abhay K has translated the work into English. It’s in line with his efforts to rediscover Magahi on the literary canvas of modern India, which is why this novel is aptly placed as part of publisher Penguin’s series of modern classics. 

That also explains why the translator’s note is as significant as the text of the novel. Abhay’s 43-page foreword reminds readers of the literary traditions and legacy of Magahi, a language that descended partly from Sanskrit and more significantly from Magadhi Prakrit, a language used by the Buddha for his sermons and the official language of Emperor Ashoka’s court. Abhay locates Magahi as part of the eastern group on the map of Indo-European languages, noting that it’s still spoken widely in the Magadh region, once home to one of the most powerful state systems in the ancient world. 

It’s worth noting that two years ago, Abhay’s edited anthology A Book of Bihari Literature (HarperCollins, 2022) attempted to showcase specimens of writing that, over past millennia, emerged from Bihar in languages like Sanskrit, Magahi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Hindi and even English. It was a work that could have been extended to representative writings in two other languages rooted in Bihar – Bajjika and Angika. Now, with Fool Bahadur, he attempts to revisit the distinct literary tradition of storytelling in Magahi, showing why it shouldn’t be subsumed by the general rubric of Hindi literature and the heft of gentrified, official Hindi. 

In some ways, such an aim isn’t very different from what Jayanath Pati had in mind. In his foreword to the first edition of Fool Bahadur, Pati had laid out a plan of literary action to ensure that “Hindi (or mixed Hindustani) shouldn’t gobble up Magahi”. This plan included his wish to “enrich his mother tongue” by publishing a large corpus of original and translated writings in the language. 

For the record, Pati’s first published novel in Magahi was Sunita, which was also reviewed in the prestigious journal Modern Review. But the fact that no copies of Sunita can be found now in any form validates Fool Bahadur’s historical claim as the first novel in Magahi. 

In the book, Pati seems to have drawn on his observant gaze as a mukhtar, a lawyer recognised for his grasp over British laws in colonial India, in weaving the fictional world of an ambitious mukhtar named Samlal. He lays bare the moral turpitude that marked the conduct of state officials working in the hinterland town of Biharsharif, now the headquarters of Nalanda district. 

The plot is replete with talk of venal motives of magistrates and the lecherous advances of officials with executive and magisterial powers, like sub-divisional officer Maulvi Mojjafer Nawab and circle officer Haldhar Singh. With Samlal, they form the three key characters around which the plot of petty intrigue in small-town officialdom revolves. This unfolds through slices of depravity and the fleeting subtext of exploitative claims on courtesans like Naseeban and Sarbatiya. 

All this forms the backdrop to Samlal’s ambition of being recognised by the British government in the form of the title Rai Bahadur – and what he’s ready to do for it. His cynical view of the way to get the title is centred around sycophancy and doing all kinds of shady favours for the SDO. This builds up as a comical denouement – a practical joke is played at Samlal’s expense, making him believing a hoax letter conferring the coveted title on him.

In some ways, Pati uses the climatic prank as a literary device. The social milieu of the conspiring bureaucracy lends itself to the unfolding of the little ploy. 

The novel deploys lean prose, steering clear of the clutter of verbosity. It also avoids overpopulating the plot and doesn’t stray from the key frame of the narrative. In the process, it offers only a few social notes on the identities of the key characters. The SDO, for example, identifies himself as a nawab and even a descendent of Wajad Ali Shah, while there are fleeting references to Samlal being a Kayastha and Haldhar Singh being a Babhan (another name for the Bhumihar caste group in Bihar). 

The translation is mostly careful to stick close to the original text except at a few places. For instance, one rather odd slip-up was a footnote incorrectly explaining the common slang word “sala” but these are just minor quibbles about what is otherwise a neat work of translation.

The understated satire of the novel, however, ensures that even the dramatic moments aren’t confined to lampooning intent, and the social parody isn’t lost to mere caricatures. In some ways, the official precincts of the Bihar Sharif town is a character on its own, mirroring a colonial-era site of power play and patronage. In turning its gaze back at a work of the early twentieth century phase of Magahi literature, the translation gives more accessibility to the regional register of literary notes on the colonial officialdom. That sense of particularity seen in this work and, by extension, in its translation, is an important reminder of the literary repository of the region. 

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