"Aamir has gone to the village with Raj."
Translation:आमिर राज के साथ गाँव गया है।
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In some places, ने is used to denote the past. Here it is not used. Please explain.
जाना is an intransitive verb and cannot admit direct objects. So, it conjugates with the subject in all tenses and you don't need a ने.
In this sentence, गाँव seems to be an object of जाना but it is actually not. There is an implicit postposition (ghost postposition) between them.
आमिर राज के साथ गाँव (को) गया है।
आना and जाना are special in that this postposition is usually dropped.
As an analogy, you can think of how 'go' and 'come' cannot admit direct objects and require prepositions (You 'go to India' and 'come to America' not 'go India' or 'come America'). However, in phrases such as 'go home', we omit the preposition with the understanding that it is still there.
When you use 'went', you are saying that Raj went to the village at some time in the past. You are not giving any information about where he is now.
When you use 'has gone', you are saying that Raj is still presumably at the village at the present time.
Is this the only difference in meaning between went and has been ? Can we use it as a rule to choose between the two ? And is it a fact that Raj is still in the village or could it be otherwise ?
The difference between the simple past (went/'गया') and the present perfect ('has gone'/ 'गया है') is that the first talks about a one-time completed event in the past whereas the second emphasises its effect on the present. (French would use the passé composé tense for both cases).
Note: In English, the simple past also has other uses
In this sentence, it is strongly implied that Raj is still at the village.
However, that might not always be the case for all uses of the present perfect. For example, in 'Raj has visited the village many times. He knows what the villagers want.' (राज बहुत बार गाँव गया है। उसे पता है कि गाँववालों को क्या चाहिए।), though Raj's visits may be in the past, we are highlighting the consequences of his visits in the present which is why we are using the present perfect tense instead of the past tense.
This explanation of the English is not correct. In English there is no implication that Raj is still in the village, though that may be the case in Hindi.
How do you know to place "राज के साथ" before "गाँव"? Is there a rule that says the object must be closer to the verb or something?
It's not a rule but in formal Hindi, we tend to place the objects as close to the verb as possible.
That said, word order is not as important in colloquial speech. Changed word order there serves to shift emphasis from one part of the sentence to another.
For example, you can say गांँव before राज के साथ when answering the question 'Who has Amir gone to the village with?' in spoken Hindi so as to place emphasis on 'Raj'.
