“Oxford University Press was established in India more than 100 years ago. In this long span of its existence it has disseminated knowledge resources in only one language, which is English. The world from then to now has changed rapidly, so have its inhabitants. We find more and more people aspiring to resources in Indian languages as they lead the cultural, socio-political, and economic growth engines of our country. To bridge this gap between the local and the global and to fulfil our mission of providing excellent scholarship, research tools, and education to as many people as possible, we embarked on this initiative of publishing quality books, both new non-fiction and translations in Hindi and Bengali in the first year (2018) to be followed by more languages in the coming years,” Ghosh told Gupta.

Accordingly, in 2018, OUP plans to do mostly translations of its backlist titles, as it gears up to publish new authors for the coming years.

“We have decided on this shortlist depending upon the socio-economic and cultural aspects of both the languages. Our Hindi titles are mostly education oriented and we hope these will assist readers in their careers and in advanced studies. We also hope that these books will find wide readership outside of academia, since these are titles that many readers aspire to reading in Indian languages, but hardly have access to. These are books by authors such as RS Sharma, Veena Das, Irfan Habib, and Romila Thapar, to name a few,” Ghosh said, adding, “The Bengali readership is a little different from the Hindi readership, mostly in terms of the choice of titles. The Bengali market is attuned towards books on history, political science, etc. which are not specific to reference purposes. For these readers, we have focussed on a collection of our widely acclaimed titles, including those of Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Romila Thapar, Mushirul Hasan, and André Béteille.”

On the reason for choosing Hindi and Bengali, Ghosh said these languages have wide-ranging readers, writers, and speakers, both in terms of number and variety. “Also, given the resources at our disposal, these two languages were the most accessible to begin with. We have not decided on a definite number yet. We plan to first and foremost establish the two lists we have begun with. We will then think of expanding to other languages once we are a bit settled with these two languages ––in terms of new acquisitions, editorial inputs, distribution, readership,” he said.

Read the full interview at Scroll.in (https://scroll.in/article/851655/why-is-oxford-university-press-entering-indian-language-publishing-after-over-100-years-in-india)