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Professor of English, Ashoka University
Co-Director Ashoka Center for Translation, Ashoka University
Ph.D. Gujarat University
Rita Kothari is Professor of English and Co-Director Ashoka Center for Translation, Ashoka University. She earned her M. Phil and her Ph.D. in Literary Studies and Translation from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. She has previously taught at St.Xavier’s College (Ahmedabad), MICA (Ahmedabad) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar.
She is a multilingual scholar and translator whose work spans across different disciplines such as literature, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology and history. Her questions emerge from observations of regions and communities in the western part of the Indian subcontinent—Gujarat, Kutch and Sindh. Her ethnographic research on marginal communities—through religion, caste, occupation, and gender—focuses upon narratives of identity, raising questions of both linguistic and cultural translation.
Professor Kothari has translated extensively from Gujarati and Sindhi into English, and occasionally vice versa. Her translations, as well as her edited volumes, have made significant contributions to the field of language politics and translation.
Her teaching interests include language politics, caste and communalism, Bollywood, Indian literature, Translation Studies, Partition, Border Studies, Gujarat studies, and Sindh studies. Movement across languages, contexts, and cultures form the fulcrum of her interests, making translation the prism through which she sees the Indian context.
Monographs
Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience and Indian Literature ( Bloomsbury Publishing UK and Delhi, 2024
Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch, Gujarat (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2013)
The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat.(New Delhi: Orient Longman. 2007, rvd 2009)
Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English (Manchester: St.Jerome Publishing, 2005. Indian edition, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Edited Books
Multilingual Nation: Translation and Language Dynamics in India (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, In press) Rvd ed. Penguin India, 2025
With Rupert Snell, Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2011)
With Judy Wakabayashi, Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond (Netherlands: John Benjamins Press, 2009)
Guest Editor, The Seminar Magazine, The Untranslated in Translation, February, 2020.
Guest Editor, The Seminar Magazine, Dil Ki Zubaan: A Symposium on Songs and Experience. April, 2021.
Translations (Select)
Kahe Latif, Hindi translation of Shah Jo Risalo, Vani Publications, 2025
Ittehad: A Life Together by Guli Sadarangani, Zubaan Publishers, 2025
Edited and trans. Kothari, Rita Greatest Stories Ever Told. (Aleph Books, 2021).
Kothari, Rita (tr.) Agnipariksha: An Ordeal Remembered, Hamid Kureshi (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2018)
With Abhijit Kothari, The Lord and Master of Gujarat by K.M.Munshi (New Delhi, Penguin Viking, 2018)
With Abhijit Kothari, The King of Kings by K.M.Munshi (New Delhi, Pengin Viking, 2019)
Kothari, Rita (Tr.), “Kaaliyo (Neerav Patel)” [Poetry], in Firstpost, May 2017.
Kothari, Rita (Tr.), “Peter England (Neerav Patel)” [Poetry], in Firstpost, May 2017.
With Abhijit Kothari The Glory of Patan by K.M.Munshi (New Delhi, Penguin Viking, 2017)
Fence transl. from Gujarati Vaad by Ila Arab Mehta. (New Delhi: Zubaan Publishing, 2015)
Unbordered Memories: Partition Stories from Sindh transl. from Sindhi, various authors (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009)
Speech and Silence: Literary journeys by Gujarati Women. transl. from Gujarati, various authors (New Delhi: Zubaan Publishing, 2006).
The stepchild trans. From Gujarati, Angaliyat by Joseph Macwan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003) Rvd ed. Penguin India, 2025
With Ramanathan, S. Coral Island: translation of Niranjan Bhagat’s Poetry. transl from Gujarati, (Gandhinagar, Gujarat Sahitya Academy, 2003).
With Ramanathan, S. Modern Gujarati poetry: a selection. transl. from Gujarati, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1998)
Translation Theory and Multilingual Contexts
Partition Literature
Scripting Caste
Indian Literature in Translation
Indian Civilizations
Samanvaya Vani Distinguished Translator
Rockefeller Foundation Fellow
Fulbright Visiting Professorship
