Chennai :
It was while researching the history of the Nataraja temple in Chidambaram that Liesbeth Pankaja Bennink came across Jacob Haafner, a Dutch accountant who lived and worked in India from 1772 to 1786.
Bennink, a historian and Bharatanatyam dancer, found Haafner’s accounts of his travels in India were translated into many languages. She has now finished his biography in English and is looking for a publisher.
Haafner, reveals Bennink, began on a ship trading around the Bay of Bengal, worked as a clerk for a company in Nagapattinam and became an accountant in Madras. During the 1881 madras famine, he was a British prisoner of war, fled to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), lived in Calcutta, and travelled down the coast to today’s Puducherry. Haafner finally left for Amsterdam after the tragic death of his beloved, the dancer Mamia. “After falling on hard times financially , he started writing about his experiences in India to make a living. His work was translated into many European languages, but only one, about his travels in Ceylon, was ever translated into English. He was a much read author in the 19th century .But he was forgotten later,” says Bennink.
What attracted Bennink to Haafner’s works was his deep respect and love for India and its people. “He is a great storyteller, at the same time sharing all kinds of information about the way people live, their festivals, about nature and agriculture, the landscape,” she said.He spoke fluent Tamil and some Hindi and Urdu. “He had enough knowledge of Sanskrit to translate and recount the Mahabharatha and Ramayana into Dutch.”
Haafner, says Bennink, also wrote a lot about Indian dance and dancers. “He inspired many Romantic artists in Europe. For instance the ballet La Bayadere, choreographed in 1877 by Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus, was inspired by Haafner’s writing.”
Haafner’s life was extensively researched by Dutch historian Paul van der Velde who also wrote Haafner’s biography , Wie Onder Palmen Leeft (Those living under palm eft (Those living under palm trees), both in Dutch. “As I feel his work is relevant today I started translating some parts, beginning with his chapter about the Devadasis. In 2015, Velde asked me to translate his biography of Haafner. It was challenging. The difficult part was to translate 18th century Dutch to 21st century English, without losing the intent and emotions of the writer,” says Bennink. ” As a historian his work is invaluable to me. He was a staunch anti-colonialist.It would be great if all his work would become available for English speaking readers. He has so much to tell us about this crucial period of India’s history,” she said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News > City News> Chennai News / M.T. Sajul / TNN / November 11th, 2016