Kolkata: Two Bengal academics, Sipra Mukherjee and Mrinmoy Pramanick, won the A K Ramanujan Prize for translating the works of Dalit woman poet Kalyani Thakur Charal into English. They also became the first Bengalis to win the honour awarded by the Association for Asian Studies for the translated volume ‘I Belong to Nowhere’. While Mukherjee is a professor of English at West Bengal State University, Pramanick is an associate professor of comparative literature, who recently joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) from Calcutta University.
The book is an anthology of 30 poems, curated from five of Kalyani’s anthologies penned over decades. Charal calls herself a humanist. “The book highlights a South Asian woman’s voice that is found in Bengali language,” Pramanick said. “We are among only a few Indians to win this award,” said Pramanick. “Until now, those who received the award mainly got it for translating either classical texts or famous texts from one language to another. Ours is neither a classical text nor a famous one,” he added. “I am delighted and grateful that Kalyani trusted us,” said Mukherjee.
