Poetics of Counter-Resistance: The Politics of Language and Translation in Miya Poetry

Book: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India by CSMFL Publications

Subhrima Bandyopadhyay1 & Rubai Islam2
1Postgraduate student, Department of Sociology, Presidency University, Kolkata, India; 2Postgraduate student, Department of Sociology, Presidency University, Kolkata, India.

10.46679/9789349926639ch15
This chapter is a part of: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India
ISBN (Ebook):978-93-49926-63-9
ISBN (Hardcover Print):978-93-49926-41-7
ISBN (Softcover Print):978-93-49926-75-2

© CSMFL Publications & its authors.
Published: November 10, 2025

Bandyopadhyay, S. & Islam, R. (2025). Poetics of Counter-Resistance: The Politics of Language and Translation in Miya Poetry. In A. G. Uppal & D. Barot, Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens (pp 115-227). CSMFL Publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.46679/9789349926639ch15

Abstract

This paper examines the complex interplay between language, identity, and translation politics through the lens of Miya poetry from Assam’s Brahmaputra chars. The Miya community, descendants of Bengali Muslim migrants who settled in the riverine sandbars during British colonial rule, occupies a liminal space that challenges conventional categories of belonging and citizenship. Their poetry, written in a hybrid dialect that blends Bengali, Assamese, Urdu, and Arabic elements, serves as both cultural resistance and identity assertion against decades of marginalization and categorization as “foreigners.” Through analysis of original Miya poems and their translations—particularly the Bengali anthology “Traster Shikarbakar”—this study explores how translation practices navigate the political tensions inherent in rendering texts that deliberately transgress linguistic boundaries. The paper argues that the translation of Miya poetry reveals the inadequacy of binary distinctions between “domestic” and “foreign,” “original” and “translated,” demonstrating instead how marginalized communities use linguistic hybridity to claim space within dominant national narratives while simultaneously asserting their distinct cultural identity.

Keywords: Miya Poetry, Translation Politics, Linguistic Hybridity, Identity Formation, Assam Chars, Citizenship Contestation.

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