Ep. 100: Bringing Indian Classics to us all with Harvard University Press's Editorial Director Sharmila Sen

“There's nothing dead about the Indian classics. It's not a revival of anything. It's not a museum piece. I think our classical tradition is alive through the stories our parents and grandparents told us…[and through popular culture]…..but with few exceptions, we don't know about the classics from our neighboring state, right? I always hope that the girl in Chandigarh can read a Mangal Kavya from Bengal, a boy in Patna can read a Telugu classic. Someone sitting in your old hometown, Pune can read Bulleh Shah.”

🎙️ In this episode (100!) of The Indian Edit, join me with writer, scholar, and Editorial Director of Harvard University Press, Sharmila Sen. We explore Sharmila’s personal journey from growing up in Bengal to immigrating to the United States as a child, her reflections on race, belonging, and visibility, and her work stewarding the linguistically ambitious literary project: The Murty Classical Library of India.

🧭 Shownotes for Episide 100:

• Growing Up Between Worlds

  • Sharmila’s childhood in Calcutta (Kolkata) and her move to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982

  • Assimilation, accent, and the desire to “disappear” as a young immigrant

  • Learning Americanness through television, language, and cultural mimicry

• Race, Privilege, and Visibility

  • Coming to understand race in the U.S. as an immigrant from India

  • The contrast between being part of a dominant group in India and a racial minority in America

  • The persistent “foreignness” assigned to Asian Americans

  • Passing, names, and the refusal to erase one’s identity

• Language as Identity

  • Bengali as a lived, literary, and emotional language

  • Experiences living and working in Pakistan and Bangladesh

  • Learning Urdu (including Nastaliq script) and Punjabi

  • The cultural and political significance of language in South Asia

• The Murty Classical Library of India

  • Founded in 2010 with support from Rohan Murty

  • Inspired by Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library (Greek & Latin classics)

  • Publishes bilingual editions (original text + English translation)

  • Covers 2,500 years of writing across 19 South Asian languages

  • Aims to make Indian classics accessible to scholars, general readers, and future generations

• Ten Indian Classics (10th Anniversary Anthology)

  • Curated selections from the Murty Classical Library

  • Spans 2,500 years and 9 languages

  • Includes:

    • Poems of the early Buddhist nuns (Therīgāthā)

    • Tulsidas’s Ramayana

    • Sufi poetry by Bulleh Shah

    • Guru Nanak’s hymns

    • Persian chronicles of Emperor Akbar

    • Urdu, Tamil, Sanskrit, Punjabi, and more

  • Explores the idea of classics as living traditions, not museum artifacts

• Why Indian Classics Still Matter

  • Classics as “background noise” that continues to shape culture

  • Stories and verses that live on through oral tradition, popular culture, and daily life

  • Reading across regions and languages as an act of cultural connection and nation-building

📚 Books & Resources Mentioned

• Not Quite Not White – Sharmila Sen (memoir)

• The Murty Classical Library of India (Harvard University Press)

• Ten Indian Classics – Edited by Sharmila Sen

• Amar Chitra Katha

• The Ramayana and Mahabharata (regional retellings)

🔗 Find all books and resources at theindianedit.com

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