Indian government "retranslates" Iqbal's poety to make it more pro-India

[lakkis25]

Re: Indian government “retranslates” Iqbal’s poety to make it more pro-India

@janab-e-ali

At any given moment, Srinagar is plastered with pro-India propaganda, courtesy of local government and military organizations. One recent billboard has especially been lampooned in the Kashmiri press for the sheer ridiculousness of the “creative” translation of Iqbal’s poetry that it features:

The line of Farsi poetry reads: tanam gilay ze khayabaan-e-jannat-e-kashmir

Which translates to: the clay of my body is from the paths of the paradise of kashmir

Never mind the fact that the government couldn’t even get the diacritical marks right (the *pesh *on the gaaf actually changes the meaning of the word). Rather, it’s the Indian government’s creative new translation that it makes it so entertaining - “Make your own world from the clay of India.”

In a state where virtually every literate person can read Farsi script and see that the term ‘Hindustan’ appears no where in the quote, I really have to question the intelligence of the fools who thought that they could get away with botching the translation like that. Silly Indians.

PS…the “translation” given in the billboard is itself a botched and decontextualized version of an entirely different sher.

uttha na shisha-giraan-e-farang ke ehsaan

sifaal-e-hind se meena o jaam paida kar

don’t be under obligation to foreign glass blowers

fashion your pitchers and glasses from clay of the Subcontinent

there is no sub continent those days, so ur translation is not correct