Title: Romance of the Oriental Translator's Office (Bombay):
Description: This book is a piece of history of the Indian subcontinent under British occupation. The East India Company in the beginning of the 19th century appointed an officer to attend to the work of petitions which were submitted in Gujarati, Marathi, Persian, Hindustani and other dialects. Later  a separate Persian Department was set up and attached to the Political Department as Persian was still the court language in India. The officer-in-charge was called Deputy Secretary & Translator, and later the Oriental Translator to Government. // The office was somewhat similar to the present Information Ministry and its Press Information Department. The important functions and the critical role of the Oriental Translator's Office included monitoring of the national newspapers and the speeches of Indian leaders particularly the various movements and struggles for India's freedom from British occupation. It was at this office that the author Ziauddin Ahmad Barni (1890-1969) worked as a translator from 1918 through 1945 under 7 OTs. He retired as a senior translator and migrated to Pakistan in 1948. This book is an account of the OT's Office with author's recollections and bio-sketches of the OTs and senior officers. These included Mahadev Desai who had started here as a junior translator (Gujrati) and later became famous as Mahatma Gandhi's secretary, and also as a great writer & translator.
Places: Bombay, Maharashtra
Time periods: 1800s - 1900s