Many Other Tongues Translating Plurality: Mahasweta Devi Ipsita Chanda When Birsa Munda stopped going to Baijnath Mahajan’s field for betbegar, compulsory bonded labour, the moneylender and landowner mahajan taunted him, “I hear you have become a mahajan among Mundas ?” Baijnath meant mahajan as a compliment … He had forgotten that the Mundas did not understand the mahajani business. Birsa was insulted by this word…” You have abused me.” Baijnath said, “You take mahajan as an abuse?” “Mundas are not mahanjans.” “I abused you?” “Suppose I tell you, you have become a Munda.” “Can there be a bigger abuse than this?” “So what is the Munda? An object of disgust? ( Devi 32-33; translation modified) The strangely aligned title of this paper is an indication of its scope. Though the politics of translating Mahasweta Devi into Indian and non-Indian languages would provide enough material for a monograph at least, those are not the other tongues I want to invoke. Rather, as a translator, I hope to draw attention to the many registers and languages in which Mahasweta Devi writes “Bengali” prose fiction. Hence I have begun with the episode from Chotti Munda and His arrow, where the very value of a word is questioned by a person belonging to one community – whether we agree to call it caste or tribe is immaterial in the present context, for we see here the different significance of the same words for different communities, derived from their lives. The meaning of the word may differ totally from that in the dictionary, but it is true for the Munda, as the opposite is true for the Mahajan. Mahajan may be a term of great pride for the Mahajan, but conversely for the Munda who is oppressed by this seemingly great man, Mahajan is rightly an insult. Baijnath may have been using it sarcastically – he may have been taunting Birsa for acting like a Mahajan when he was still only a Munda – but the author tells us, “Baijnath meant Mahajan as a compliment”. Thus, we see, that the same word is enmeshed in different lives and interpreted differently. I am claiming, through comparison of translation practices of different translators of Mahasweta Devi’s work, that her greatest contribution to Bangla literature is that she could bring it outside the confines she herself recognized , simply by bringing the plural and hierarchical society of ‘India’ into the language