Challenge of Spoken Language to the Creative Writers in Modern Tamil

Challenge of Spoken Language to the Creative Writers in Modern Tamil
E. Annamalai, Yale University

If literature is an expression of experience and perception of life in an elegant and imaginative language, the problem of language in literature could be narrated from diffrent perspectives. One is the adequacy of language to express experience and perception as they are. This is a philosophical question. The experiential dimension of this question is the individual author’s struggle to get the right expression. C. Mani (1996) captures this struggle thus in his poem iTaiyiiTu ‘Interruption’

Everything I want to say
Does not shape into words.
So much
deviation;
So much
disappointment

of missing targets.
When you draw up a horse
You may not get a
horse;
What comes up might be an ass;
Or it could be a hybrid of
both.
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This paper is not about this struggle in the creative process of converting an abstraction into concrete. The second perspective of the problem is about making the ordinary language into an elegant one, making the ephemera, common place language into a memorable and unique one. Debates about style belong here, but they are not the subject of this paper either. The third perspective of the problem of language discussed in the paper is one of authenticity of language.
Tamil fiction begins to show signs of a language of its own from Pudumaippittan (1906-1948) distinguishing it from the language of story telling in public discourses (kataakalaTceepam), whose features can be seen in many of the early novels in Tamil and from the language of story telling to children by endearing adult, who consider themselves to have responsibility for the children’s moral development (paaTTi katai), whose features can be seen even in some contemporary short stories. That it is not a small matter that Tamil fiction has come to have a language of its own will become clear when it is realized that science writing in Tamil has not developed its own language. The reasons are cultural-political, not linguistic.

When the Tamil language entered the public sphere of the modern period (in the sense of Habermas as defined by other scholars (Crosslay, Nick and Roberts, John M (eds.) 2004) peopled by new consumers of language in the 19th century, it faced the need for a language suitable for that sphere, be it public speech or public literature. The public intellectuals of the Tamil community chose, for reasons of history and cultural politics, to use a language that is prose in its texture and poetry in its language. This led to diglossia whereby differences in the nature of language were not tied to genres such as poetry versus newspapers, but to communicative situations such as one to many versus one to one. Poetry, fiction, platform speech, newspapers and such others, which have the communicative situation of distance between the producer of the language and its receiver and of being unidirectional, chose a variety of Tamil that was closer to earlier poetic compositions rather than to contemporary speech. The language of speech remained in the private sphere. This diglossia was perpetuated by schooling through the control of schools by those public intellectuals, who were a privy to the formal variety of Tamil used to write poetry and to the political and cultural reward this language through education offered in the pre-modern Tamil nation.

The language of fiction began to change towards the language of the private sphere with the help of the new public media like popular magazines, which had relatively more open access to the producers of language. The use of dialects, as in the classical Sanskrit dramatic tradition of using linguistic make-ups, like the dress and other make-ups, to indicate the low social standing of characters, could be found in the first novels themselves (Meenakshisundran 1972, Sethu Pillai 1976). They mark the upward mobility of characters from low social status and from illiteracy by their switching to the formal language (Muttiah 1980). The change to the use of spoken Tamil by the protagonists themselves in fiction was a later development. It was a concession given to the language of the private sphere to be used in the conversational part of the story, where the characters move the story, while keeping the formal variety of Tamil, which is written, to the narrative part of the fiction, where the author moves the story. Diglossia of the language was carried to make diglossic fiction. The space for the language of the private sphere in fiction slowly expands into special types of fiction like stream of consciousness novels and autobiographical novels, where the narration becomes reflexive conversation and the separation between them becomes porous (Shanmugam Pillai 1978, 1981, Shenbagam 1971). Finally, the language of the private sphere becomes the language of the narrative of the author who is not a character of the fiction. The functional differentiation between narration, the site of author’s voice and conversation, the site of characters’ voice is not, however, obliterated. Syntactic devices, common in a formal language, such as complex strings of subordinate clauses, less deletions to have meanings less context dependent etc are used in the language of narration written with the spelling of the language of speech (Annamalai 2004). This ultimate expansion of the domains of use of the language of private sphere in fiction is also triggered by the ideological shift in literature from author-centric fiction to character-centric fiction by the notion of withdrawal of the author from the story. A parallel to this shift in Tamil drama and movies is the co-occurring shift of the formal variety of Tamil to the informal with the change in choreography from addressing the audience to speaking with co-acting characters. The complex details of the story of shifting language in Tamil fiction deserve a separate treatment.

With the idea of the centrality of characters in fiction comes the idea of authenticity of the language they speak, that is, the language the author uses in the speech of the characters. The spoken language is the center piece of this authenticity. Linguistic authenticity has two sides: formal and cognitive. On the formal side is the use of words in phonological shape and morphological structure and of sentences combining words, as in speech. Most writers of fiction now use Tamil as it is spoken in informal situations when the characters converse with each other. The spoken language has contours reflecting the space, regional or social, the characters occupy in life. These contours at phonological, morphological, lexical levels in large measure and in syntactic and semantic levels in a small measure, which linguists call dialects, are used in fiction to identify characters, as a means of their characterization, with particular social groups (caste and class, but not gender) and / or particular geographical areas. The fictional works are labeled by these contours displayed with names like konku novel, dalit novel etc. They make isomorphic the life experience they describe and the language they use to describe it. It is rare to find now a fictional work that is embedded in a region or a social group or groups to use in conversation spoken forms that are unmarked for these variables and could be called standard spoken forms. This is natural, and so will be high in authenticity, because it is the language variety of a region or a social group that expresses its life experience pristinely. As an observer of the ecology of language Muhlhausler (1995) claims that ‘’life in a particular human environment is dependent on people’s ability to talk about it’’ (p.155) and that the living environment is registered in the language people speak as cultural ‘’memory’’ (p.156). The spatial and social environment is registered in the dialects.

The standard spoken forms in conversation are reserved for characters in situations that transcend specific regions and social groups, not to primary characters from any region or social group, as done in the earlier works. Though it is logically and linguistically possible to have exchanges between characters of a particular region and social group in standard spoken language, it is probably taken by writers to be less authentic, which probably accounts for its rarity in recent works. This has led to a situation in Tamil that using the spoken language in fiction means using the dialects (which includes the variety the urban educated class, which mixes Tamil speech with English words and phrases).

The effect that the writers intend to create by the use of dialects is a ‘feel’ about the ethos of their characters. A good ‘feel’ increases the authenticity of the fiction. To create such a feel or flavour, it is not necessary to be faithful to the speech of the characters in real life to the last detail, nor is it necessary to be consistent throughout. It is not possible to be totally faithful to speech because the Tamil alphabet is inadequate to code speech as it is, even if a writer wants to do it, and writing speech in Tamil script has not received cultural acceptance to produce a normative spelling for speech. Linguists take issue with inconsistency in the representation of speech in fiction (Deivasundaram 1981) and condemn the representation as unauthentic. This linguistic criticism stems from an erroneous assumption that creative writers, like linguists, transcribe speech. Writing speech in fiction is not transcribing speech. Its authenticity comes from the feeling it evokes, not the accuracy it adheres to. Writing speech in Tamil fiction abounds in instances like the same word being written differently (either different spellings of a spoken word or spelling it either as spoken or as written conventionally) in the same sentence or in different sentences in the speech of the same character. Failure to be consistent is not a failure to meet the challenge of the spoken language as long as the reader gets the feel of a speaking performance with all its associated flavours.

The other side of linguistic authenticity is cognitive. It is about the style or the manner of thinking. The question is if a specific style of thinking is reflected in the language used by the writer. The style of thinking, i.e. the manner of packaging thoughts, in writing (or in giving a formal speech) is different from speaking in a conversation. Writing allows deliberation of language while speaking is marked by its spontaneity in delivering the language. Writing is acquired through schooling, which nurtures a style of language with a different logic than in the style of speaking. For example, in the written language, explanation of connection between things may be through argumentation, and in the spoken language, it may through metaphors and proverbs. The written language is more impersonal and distant than the spoken; it may be more explicit than implicit. And so on (Annamalai 1991) Illich goes beyond grammatical, lexical and text-structural differences between the spoken and the written language to claim that the written language is divorced from the context of lived experience and it affects our perception of ourselves and the world. Further, the written or the standardized language disempowers dialects (or vernaculars as Illich calls them in the context of pre-colonial Europe) through the process of creating nation-states. (Illich and Sanders 1988, Web). All this means that the written language differs from the spoken language communicatively, cognitively and politically.

It follows that writing speech in its true idiom is not conversion of it into a written language with a new spelling.

Packaging the thought of the characters in their spoken mode of Tamil is a challenge to creative writers whose thinking style has been reshaped by their acculturation to the literate world. This problem is accentuated for the fiction writers in Tamil, which being diglossic, has lexical and grammatical differences also in the way the language is written and spoken. Let me illustrate this problem with some examples. The meaning ‘he does not want to marry his uncle’s daughter’ can be coded in writing style as avan tan maamaa peNNaik kayaaNam ceytukoLLa viumpavillai or avanukkut tan maamaa peNNaik kalyaaNam ceytukoLLap piTikkavillai / iSTam illai. Within this style, there would be differences when tirumaNam is chosen in place of kalyaaNam, paNNi or kaTTi is chosen in place of ceytu indicating a scale of variation from being elevated to colloquial. This variation in style reflects a language ideology, not thinking style or information packaging. The paired sentences with the nominative and dative subjects, on the other hand, differ in the pragmatics of encoding meaning: there is dilution of agency with the dative subject, which foregrounds the mental disposition of the speaker rather than his action. This sentence is common, and natural, in speech. When some one writes the sentence with the nominative subject as avan maamaa poNNe kalyaaNam cenjikkiDa virumbale using spoken spelling, the writer ignores the cognitive style preferred in speech. Take another pair of sentences. avan tan maamaa peNNaik kalyaaNam ceytukoLLa maRukkiRaan and avan tan maamaa makaLaik kalyaaNam ceytu koLLa maaTTeen enkiRaan, both of which mean ‘he refuses to marry his uncle’s daughter’. The first sentence of this pair, which uses the performative verb maRu ‘deny’ (in Austin’s (2005) sense), is not used in the spoken language. The speech codes this meaning as a communicative act of the speaker, as if quoting his mental disposition, as in the second sentence. If one writes the first sentence, as if it is spoken, as avan maamaa poNNe kalayaaNam cenjikkiDa marukkiraan, it is a hybrid non-existent in writing because of its spelling and non-existent in speaking because of its packaging. This hybrid sentence does not instantiate a thinking style transfer from writing to speaking, but it illustrates merely a sound transfer. This is not authentic spoken language. Another example is with passive syntax, which is not part of the grammar of the spoken language, but writers give it spoken spelling as in the second sentence below rather than the third sentence, which is natural in speech. Suppression of agency of action is different in the thinking styles of writing and speaking. avan kalyaaNam uuril ellooraalum peecappaTTatu (in written spelling), avan kalyaaNam uurle ellaaraalum peesappaTTuccu (in spoken spelling) ‘his marriage was talked about by every one in the town’. Its correlate without passive form of the verb is: avan kalyaaNatte patti uurule ellaarum peesunaanga / uuree peesuccu uurle oree peeccu ‘every one in the town / the whole town talked about his marriage / His marriage was the talk of the town’

Let me illustrate this phenomenon of linguistic hybridity with one example from actual writing. The protagonist of Bhooma’s Karukku (1992 ) thinks aloud her hope and anxiety thus: oDikkappaTTa ceRagugaL tirumbavum vaLandu valuppettu, naanum naalu peerappoola ennaikkup paRakka aarambippeenoo teriyale. The phonology of this sentence is spoken, but the style of thinking exhibited in word (e.g., ceRagu, valuppeRu), syntactic phrases (e.g. the passive oDikkappaTTa) and the metaphor (oDikkappaTTa ceRagugaL for ‘personal freedom’ is alien to the style of thinking in speech. This illustrates the writer’s literate style of thinking being transplanted into protagonist’s speech (thinking aloud, to be exact), as if it is her style of thinking in speech. In this autobiographical novel, the author is the protagonist younger in age and so the problem of hybridity and of author’s voice supplanting linguistically the character’s voice is especially poignant.

The above illustrative examples show a mismatch between packaging of thought in speaking by the characters and codifying that thought in the language employed by the writer. The result is hybridity in language and its writer. This hybridity is different from the hybridity Mani speaks about above, which is about inadequate or imprecise expression for an experience. This hybridity is about drawing from two sources that results in a unique entity non-encountered in ordinary language. Hybridity is an aspect of post-modern existence arising from living across borders- between nations by the diaspora, between rural and urban divide by the schooled, between languages by bilinguals. Homi Bhabha (1994: p.4) refers by cultural hybridity the “passage between fixed identifications … that entertains differences without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.” Linguistic hybridity is a passage between fixed identifications of language, but the linguistic difference in a particular expression, while is not felt hierarchical by the writer, is not felt to be authentic to either of the identifications by the reader. The linguistic hybridity illustrated here is different from code-alternation (mixing of and switching between codes) by balanced bilinguals , which are motivated by the communicative obligations of inclusion and exclusion of interlocutors and avoidance of taboo, social goals of shifting identity of self or concealing it, and the linguistic needs of filling lexical gaps.

Writing about real experience of the world in a learnt language (or taught tongue as Illich (1981, Web) contrasts it with mother tongue) is the source of the linguistic hybridity illustrated above. The writers of modern Tamil fiction live in two worlds linguistically. Most of them have lived through the language of their characters and acquired that language as part of their growing up in the world they fictionalize. They also have been schooled and have learnt the language of literate way of thinking and expressing. This learnt language of the school, which is reinforced by the urban life style many of them live in, is super-imposed on their acquired language of a life different from their current one. It traverses into the language representing the characters from this different life, which the writers try capture in their speech. This transvestism between thinking and speaking appears unnatural to the reader. The above kind of linguistic hybridity in the fiction of the post-modern times is not natural because the author and the character are two entities not to cross their borders in the world of literature. In fact, the author must be absent, but the hybrid language betrays his presence.

It is not that the learnt language is of no use in fiction. It is used in the narrative part of the fiction, as mentioned earlier. Writers use it creatively in the conversational part also for some literary purpose. This use is similar to code-alternation. This traversing between codes in similar to Homi Bhabha’s hybrid cultural behaviour exhibiting difference with no hierarchy.

The failure on the part of modern writers to linguistically match the organization of the thought of their characters with the expressive language of speaking has significance beyond literature. Modern Tamil, not in the trivial chronological sense of being spoken at the present time but in the sociological sense of representing the modern life, is shaped by various historical and ideological forces (Annamalai 2000). One such historical and ideological force is broadening of the social base of writers and readers and the increasing acceptance of dispersal of the control of language of the public sphere to those coming from the margins of the society. The impact of this force on Tamil is that it adds virility and versatility to the language of cultural, i.e fictional, production. The modernizing change in language cannot be unauthentic linguistically. The challenge of language to creative writers in modern Tamil is to make this Tamil authentic to the life of the marginal majority, who have come to contribute to the defining of modernity of the Tamil language. If their way of speaking is a part of modern Tamil in terms its rhythm, tone, diction, discourse structure and thinking style, it would be a challenge unmet by the creative writers to contribute to the shaping of modern Tamil, when their coding of these features is unauthentic.

References
Annamalai, E. 1991. On the dichotomy of spoken and written language. In Commemoaration
Volume to Professor R.N. Srivastava. New Delhi
Annamalai, E. 2000. Lectures on modern Tamil. Coimbatore: Bharathiyar University (Linguistics Department)
Annamalai, E. 2004. Post-Modern trends in Tamil. In Chevillard, Jean-Luc and Wilden, Eva (eds.) South-Indian Horizons: Felicitation volume for Francois Gros on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Ponidcherry: Institut Francais de Pondichery
Austin, J.L. 2005. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
(Second Edition: William James Lectures edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa)
Bhabha, Homi. 2004. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge)
Crosslay, Nick and Roberts, John M (eds.). 2004. After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Oxford:Blackwell
Deivasundaram, N. 1981. Tamil Diglossia. Tirunelveli: Nainar Patippakam
Illich, Ivan. 1981. Introduction in D.P. Pattanayak. Multilingualism and mother-tongue education. Delhi: Oxford University Press
Illich, Ivan. Web. Taught mother tongue and nation state. Talk available at http://sunstie.queensu.ca/memorypalace/parlour/Illich02
Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. 1988. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. London: Mariam Boyars
Mani, C 1996. Ithuvarai. CreA:Chennai (Originally published in 1962 in Ezhuthu)
Meenakshisundran, T.P. 1972. Dialects in Kamalambal Carittiram. In Proceedings of the Second All India Conference of Dravidian Linguistics, Tirupati. Thiruvantapuram: Dravidian Linguistics Association. pp. 165-167
Muhlhasuler, Peter. 1995. The interdependence of linguistic and biological diversity. In Myers, David (ed.) The Politics of Multiculturalism in the Asia/Pacific. Darwin: Northern Territory University Press
Muttiah, E. 1980. tamiz naavalkalkaLil mozip payanpaaTu (Language use in Tamil novels). Madurai: Vayal (author publication of his Ph.D. thesis)
Sethu Pillai, S.P. 1976. tamiz naavalkaLil peeccumozi vazakku: VaTuvuuraarin cotanai muyaRci (Use of spoken language in Tamil novels: An experiment by Vaduvur). In ParalkaL 2. Madurai: Muttu Patippakam. pp. 25-36
Shanmugam Pillai, M. 1978, 1981. Collected papers. Madurai, Muttu Pathippagam [2v.]
Shenbagam, M. 1971. ilakkiyattil peeccumozi (The spoken language in literature). In Aayvuk koovai 3 (Proceedings of the Conference of University Tamil Teachers’ Association, Annamalainagar). pp. 209-214.

* Preliminary version. Not for distribution or citation.

P. Ragupathy on Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice

Listen to P. Ragupathy's talk at the Sunday, May 14th session: Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice.

Click here to listen: http://mathy.kandasamy.net/musings/2006/05/22/396

V. Geetha on Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice

Listen to V. Geetha's talk at the Sunday, May 14th session: Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice.

Click here to listen: http://mathy.kandasamy.net/musings/2006/05/24/398

M. Kannan on Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice

Listen to M. Kannan's talk at the Sunday, May 14th session: Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature: Poetics, Publishing, and Critical Practice.

Click here to listen:
http://mathy.kandasamy.net/musings/page/2/

ஈழத்து இலக்கியம்: படைப்பின் கவித்துவம், திறனாய்வின் நெறிமுறைகள், வெளியீட்டின் தொழில்நுட்பம்

Culture, Cultivation, and Civility in the Tamil Country

Culture, Cultivation, and Civility in the Tamil Country
Anand Pandian
University of British Columbia

In 1923, Maraimalai Adigal, founder of the Tamil Purist Movement in south India, published a text entitled Vellalar Nakarikam or “Vellalar Civilization,” concerning the history, customs and admirable qualities of the caste into which he was born. Maraimalai described the virtues of the Vellalas—their refinement of feeling, their generous giving, their sympathy for the suffering of all living creatures—as the fruit of their agrarian labor. Vellalas have of course long been identified as the paradigmatic caste of settled cultivators in the Tamil country of south India. In their struggle to till the land, Maraimalai had argued here, they had also succeeded in cultivating within themselves an exemplary heart.

Maraimalai Adigal and other elite Vellala scholars of the early 20th century have been rightly criticized for identifying Tamil cultural heritage with the imagined nature of a single dominant community (Pandian, Chalapathy, others).1 But these writers have nonetheless exercised a powerful influence on Tamil cultural nationalism in the twentieth century. Moreover, texts such as this one shed light on a unique feature of this political discourse—its representation of the agrarian environment as an essential site of cultural identity and national virtue. In this paper, I consider the genealogy of this nationalist geography. How did culture in the Tamil country of southern India come to be identified with the virtues and practices of its agrarian citizenry?

* * * * *

Consider the seventh chapter of a 10th grade Tamil language textbook issued by the Government of Tamil Nadu in the year 2000.2 The chapter, entitled “Anna, the Peak of Culture,” is an homage to C.N. Annadurai—playwright, poet, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and leading figure in the development of a Dravidian politics in the state. The pages laud his virtuous deeds as illustrations of the ethics of selfhood extolled in early Tamil texts such as the Tirukkural and Purananuru. The chapter presents a single likeness in order to explicate the excellence of this way of life—

We say “cultivation” [panpaduththal] for a maturation effected in the same way that land is ploughed, leveled, watered and sown. If the heart-that-is-lan [manamaakiya nilam] of the people is cultivated, “culture” [panpaadu] grows. In English, ultivation was first, culture came after. As the impurities in the hearts of people vanish and as rarer qualities accumulate, in the cultivated state in which people live as people, “quality” [panpu] shines its light; culture takes shape.

If the culture of a nation can be found in the qualities of its people, author Mu. Pi. Balasubramanian argued, these qualities may be identified by a reformed or corrected state of heart, speech and deed. Here were the tracks of a movement between West and East, one which traced a course of improvement—the people as its subject, cultivation as its means, culture as its telos or endpoint, and tillage as its pedagogic sign.

Panpaadu is a neologism, coined by Tamil literary critic T. K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliar in the mid-twentieth century as a calque on the English “culture” (Barney). 3 Combining two terms—panpu as “quality” or “good quality” and paadu as a “condition” brought into being—the modern noun may be taken as a state of refinement, the achievement of a “condition of good quality.”4 It represents culture, in other words, as a state of being cultivated, or cultivatedness. The Tirukkural had identified panpu with virtues such as kindness, courtesy, and equanimity. In its contemporary usage, panpaadu is widely used to name the distinctive values and customs of various social groups, especially the Tamils, on behalf of whose collective merit it was first proposed.

On face, this coinage of a term such as panpaadu might appear to represent a clear debt to Anglo-German “culture” or Kultur. Even in English, Balasubramanian himself had argued, “cultivation” preceded “culture.” Both culture and cultivation, we may recall, stem from the Latin cultus, the past participial form of colere—to till, tend, care for.5 In the West, the work of cultivation has long held an important place in discourses and practices of moral pedagogy. The Roman orator Cicero famously described philosophy itself as the agrarian “culture” or cultivation of the soul.6 Christian theologians for centuries urged the heirs of Adam to restore a fallen world to perfection through the gardening of its soils. And by the late nineteenth century, European powers throughout the globe regularly sought to moralize the human beings they ruled by making rural environments into vehicles of pedagogy: be they agricultural colonies for urban paupers in France, nursery school gardens for young children in Germany, or plantations for the subjects of British colonialism in India.7 [my work on these legacies]

But is the transposition of this Western legacy solely what is at stake in the Tamil sense of panpaadu? Let us return to the Tamil terms at work in this south Indian schoolbook text. Panpaduththal—the verbal form used by Mu. Pi. Balasubramanian—is defined by the Tamil Lexicon as a transitive verb with the following meanings: 1. to refine, temper, or season, and 2. to prepare or make suitable for tillage, as land. What should we make of its striking resemblance to the English “cultivation”—its ability to sustain both social and agrarian senses? Have persons, soils and things alike always been subject to techniques of panpaduththal? When and how did refinement emerge as a possibility for individuals, collectives and the landscapes they inhabited in southern India? If there are other histories at stake in terms such as these, through what forces, vectors or relationships do they come into the present?

With some of these questions in mind, I sought out Dr. Balasubramaniam last summer at his small apartment in the neighborhood of Anna Nagar in the Tamil capital city of Chennai. A writer closely identified with Dravidian politics and especially the DMK, he for one argued that the Tamil term for culture was in no sense derivative of its English analogue. “It came first in Tamil only, and then afterward in English,” he insisted, making a familiar claim for the antiquity of the civilization on whose behalf he had spent most of his adult life writing. But when I probed into the precise means by which these legacies came to work in the present, his answers grew more interesting. The retired professor told me that he had come from an agricultural family himself, and had stood and watched while his father’s lands were being ploughed as a child. It was these experiences that suddenly became consequential in the midst of his training as a professor of Tamil literature. And most importantly, the means by which these experiences became consequential was through an accidental flash of memory. He told me the following:

When I was studying for my M.A., what we call Panpaadu or “Culture” was a subject. Our professor would give explanations, would he not? When he was explaining, as he was describing panpaadu as a cultivation of the heart, just like that, one day, in a flow, what he said was this—“It’s that only, if we cultivate the land we call it panpaduththal, just like that cultivating the heart is panpaadu.” When he said that, a flash came to me. He said it by chance. But when I was an M.A. student, when he linked these two together and spoke, I felt as though there was a relationship between that agriculture and our cultivation of our hearts. The reason for the flash was the class itself.

The English word or image to which Balasubramanian turned at several points as he spoke, and the one that I would like to consider more closely now, is that of the flash. Walter Benjamin offers the following suggestive account: “The perception of similarity is in every case bound to an instantaneous flash,” he has written.8 In his musings on what he describes as “The Mimetic Faculty,” Benjamin describes language as an archive of such similarities or correspondences between things. I quote: “the nexus of meaning of words or sentences is the bearer through which, like a flash, similarity appears. For its production by man—like its perception by him—is in many cases, and particularly the most important, tied to its flashing up. It flits past.”

As always, Benjamin’s own language here is dense and demands an unpacking. Relations of similarity flash up in language, the literary critic had argued. If language is the bearer of similarity, then similarity therefore needs language in order to flash up in the present. If the flash is to be taken as that which “flits past,” then it may be understood as making a sudden or instantaneous relationship between the past and the present, between what is and what has been, between what is and what will have been. As Benjamin insists, the “time-moment” here is critical. Similarities archived in language therefore provide a supple and unpredictable means by which pasts come to matter in the present. Language works as a structure of both remembrance and resemblance.

Let us note that there is a haziness or indeterminacy to the object that Balasubramanian had named his “flash” of memory: was he referring to the sudden occurrence of a good comparison between culture and agriculture to his M.A. professor, the sudden recurrence of a childhood memory of watching ploughed fields to M.A. student Balasubramanian as he listened to this professor lecture, the sudden recurrence of this memory of a classroom experience to writer Balasubramanian as he composed his tract on the peak of culture, or the recollection of these Tamil meanings of cultivatedness in a contemporary pedagogic environment marked by the preeminence of English? If we accept that the present may be grasped as a structure of flashing resemblances, then each and all of these relations may be recognized as simultaneously at stake.

As anthropologists, we are accustomed to interpreting the invocations of “culture” multiplying worldwide as symptoms of a globalizing anthropological imagination, one infecting greater numbers of foreign places with the tainted legacies of Western cultural nationalism if not imperialism. What I seek to do in the remainder of this talk, however, is to excavate a different terrain of culture or cultivatedness in south India, one indebted to a different set of histories. In characterizing Tamil culture as a state of cultivatedness, texts such as that of M.P. Balasubramanian echo a longstanding elaboration of the agrarian environment as a place of virtue in Tamil cultural and literary production. Flashing into the present along with colonial and other modern histories, this structure of cascading resemblances makes possible an imagination of the cultivated landscape as an essential space of collective belonging in the Tamil country.

* * * * *

In order to propose his model of a cultivated culture in the schoolbook chapter, Balasubramanian relied largely on textual fragments drawn from Tamil moral and didactic works on the subject of aram or virtue. It is indeed the case that texts such as the sixth-century Tirukkural explicitly praised cultivators at times as a class of essentially good people. “Only those who live by eating what they plough do live—all others follow behind begging to eat,” one famous couplet proclaims. More often, however, agrarian practice appears in this literature as an allegory of virtuous conduct, and the cultivated landscape as an emblem of moral order. Agrarian idioms for virtue have circulated since early medieval times in the Tamil country as idioms of popular practice, moral pedagogy, and religious and philosophical discourse. Such discourses present the interior nature of the self as a landscape to be sown with the virtues of a settled life.

Take, for example, the Nalatiyar, one of the most prominent of the early medieval canon of Tamil works concerning virtue, and attributed by legend to the Jain monks of seventh-century Madurai. Among its four hundred verses are ones suggesting that the virtuous retain their character even in bad company, like the sweetness of a plaintain fruit ripening under bitter neem leaves; that those who live on nothing more than handouts will perish, like paddy watered by a meager irrigation tank; that the small win protection through their friendship with the great, like the grass that rings a tree trunk beyond the reach of a ploughblade; that the words of a poor man go unheeded, like a plough scratching the surface of dry soil; that the disposition of a son will follow that of his father, like the shoot of good paddy yielding the same grain with which it was planted.9 Claims such as these—clothed in the language of metaphor, metonym, simile, and allegory—present virtue in the form of an ecology, employing the agrarian environment as a didactic instrument of moral pedagogy.

Early Tamil works on virtue used such language in order to draw distinctions between higher and lower forms of personal conduct and social life—between the great and the small, the noble and ignoble, the learned and unlearned, and indeed, the civilized and savage.10 However, they did not identify incivility, vulgarity or baseness with rusticity itself, as with the distinction between graamya and naagarika in Sanskrit, for example (Daud). Rather, the crucial distinction at work here was one that opposed naatu to kaatu—the life of the settled lowland agrarian country counterpoised to the life of the forests, thickets, and other untilled tracts on its periphery, tended and inhabited by hunters, grazers and marginal cultivators who were assimilated only with great difficulty into the orbit of the lowland social and political order.11

The antagonism between naatu and kaatu presents a south Indian variation on the broader theme of country against city—a distinction pointing here toward an agrarian civilization with its own norms and forms of civility.12 This was a cultural formation that slowly consolidated in the Tamil country over the course of many centuries, beginning in the latter part of the first millennium C.E. Dominant peasant lineages of Vellalas and other communities directed the settlement, development and tillage of new lands on the periphery of cultivated tracts. They wielded authority over these regions by affiliating themselves to kings and chieftains. They sought legitimacy for such authority by patronizing religious mendicants, scholars, and temples. Agrarian idioms of moral development in texts such as the Nalatiyar gesture toward these historical processes, and point toward ways in which dominant cultivators—and the agrarian activity with which they were identified—attained a certain form of cultural hegemony in south India. Religious sects in early medieval India depended as much on the patronage and support of peasant cultivators as they did on kings, warriors and merchants. A language of agrarian virtue would have provided one powerful means of winning the allegiance of these cultivators, translating moral sentiment into the terms of daily life.

Nalatiyar was described by English missionary G.U. Pope at the close of the nineteenth century as the Vellalar Veedam—“The Bible of the Cultivators of the soil.”13 Agrarian similes for virtue appear in Tamil cultural tradition as nodes of intersection between literary form, pedagogic purpose and popular knowledge. They circulate in contemporary moral discourse as proverbs and maxims, “old sayings” and folk verities, stripped of their historical referents and carrying with them nothing more than the concrete scenes of agrarian livelihood they invoke. This reverberating archive of language, image, and experience betrays the traces of what I would describe as an agrarian civility: a way of imagining the refinement of self and conduct in relation to the historical experience and exemplary status of the cultivating citizenry. These idioms of moral development convey a sense that there is something intrinsically virtuous about the practice of agriculture, the tools by means of which it is exercised, and the people who wield these tools. They suggest that the space of the cultivated landscape be taken as an essential setting for the “civilizing process” in south India, to be credited with the same importance that Norbert Elias had lent the courts, towns, and monasteries of Europe.

What I propose under the rubric of agrarian civility is not an argument for Tamil “culture” in the conventional sense of a stable and coherent symbolic order. I gesture instead toward a language of power, an authoritative and persuasive means of representing civilization itself in agricultural terms, one that casts the refinement of conduct as an organic process aided by spade, plough, and sickle. At work here is an imagination of improvement arrayed along a developmental trajectory, reaching from the most savage inhabitant of savage tracts toward the civil cultivator of the most civilized terrain. Modern nationalist texts such as the one I have discussed deliberately recuperate these legacies in the service of cultural pedagogy. But images and idioms such as these also flash up unknowingly in the everyday moral discourse and ethical projects of contemporary Tamil people. I conclude this talk with the briefest of ethnographic vignettes in order to allude to the efficacy of such recollection.

* * * * *

One evening in the midst of my fieldwork in the Cumbum Valley in late 2000, I was assailed by a drunk young man who insisted on grabbing both my hands and making me slap him on the cheeks for some unknown indiscretion. My cultivator friend Virumandi Thevar looked on with a bemused smile, and later advised me with an analogy to speak only with those who spoke well: nalla nalla nilam paarthu naamum vithaikkanum. “Searching out the best of land, we too must sow some seeds.” He had drawn this line from a popular song in the 1967 Tamil hit film Vivasayi or “The Farmer.” The film starred beloved Tamil cinematic icon and future Chief Minister MG Ramachandran as a heroic and progressive young farmer. It was advertised from the outset as a didactic enterprise in the tradition of Tamil moral literature. “Only if the farmer stands straight will the nation stand straight,” its promotional chapbook proclaimed, citing the authority of the Tirukkural, Auvaiyar, and other Tamil texts.

Songs such as nalla nalla nilam echoed every now and then from the heart of the Kullappa Gounden Patti bazaar where Virumandi and I had had this exchange that night, blaring from the loudspeakers mounted to the thatched roof of a tea stall. With every broadcast, the song projected an agrarian subject of national virtue. “Searching out the best of land, we too must sow some seeds. In the hearts of the people of the nation, it is honesty that we must grow.” To imagine oneself as belonging to this imaginary “we,” as Virumandi did that evening, one had to identify both with these virtues and the rural environment to which they belonged. Moral traditions rely on the lessons of the past in order to critically engage with the demands of the present. Moralized landscapes such as these form compelling terrain for the cultivation of identity, civility, and even culture.

1. As M.S.S. Pandian notes, much historical scholarship on the Dravidian movement traces its genesis to this educated elite, neglecting the role that heterodox thinkers such as E.V. Ramaswamy played in garnering the movement a mass base in the 1920s and 1930s. See also A. R. Venkatachalapathy, “Dravidian Movement and Saivites: 1927-1944.”
2. M. P. Balasubramanian—a litterateur closely identified with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party and the head of the collective responsible for this texbook—contributed the chapter, which was originally published in the DMK magazine Murasoli on 16 September 1996. My thanks to the grandson of Muthu Karuppa Thevar in Madurai for drawing this lesson—which he had read in school—to my attention.
3. I am grateful to V. Arasu, A. R. Venkatachalapathy and Barney Bate for elucidating both the history and the usage of the term.
4. I draw these definitions from the Tamil Lexicon, which, as late as the printing of its fourth volume in 1931, did not include the word panpaadu among its entries.
5. These are the meanings atttributed by the Oxford English Dictionary; Raymond Williams, Keywords, writes that it meant additionally to inhabit, protect and honor with worship.
6. Gyorgy Markus, “Culture,” p7. See also Raymond Williams, “Culture,” who notes that both culture and cultivation stem from the Latin cultus, the past participial form of colere: to till, tend, care for.
7. Ceri Crossley, “Using and Transforming the French Countryside” and Susan Harrington, “The Garden in Frobel’s Kindergarten.”
8. “Doctrine of the Similar”.
9. Nos. 244; 191; 178; 115; and 367.
10. See Raj Gowthaman, Aram Atikaaram.
11. David Ludden, “Archaic Formations of Agricultural Knowledge in South India,” pp60-1.
12. I borrow the language of norm and form from Paul Rabinow, French Modern.
13. Translation of Nalatiyar.

Tamil Studies: What and Why by E. Annamalai

Tamil Studies: What and Why

Tamil Studies, sometimes called Tamilology with a narrower meaning, is a not a discipline with its own theory and methodology. It is a collective field of study with Tamil as the focus and the pivot, where disciplines from Anthropology to Zoolatry may converge. This convergence is possible because Tamil is taken in its holistic sense to include Tamil language, literature, culture, society, arts and others. A recent addition to the others is Tamil diaspora. Tamil Studies is open ended.

Tamil studies is by definition multi-disciplinary. Researchers from many disciplines take Tamil in one or more of its aspects mentioned above to be their subject matter. It is also commonly inter-disciplinary, as an integrated approach from more than one discipline enriches the understanding of the Tamil question. Tamil Studies is not autonomous in the sense that it is located in time and space, and, more importantly, it is often in relation to other languages, literatures, cultures, societies, arts etc in which Tamil is enmeshed. Study of Tamil in India in the context of other Indian languages, in Sri Lanka in relation to Sinhalese, in Canada in comparison with other minorities etc are some examples of such an approach, which will throw a better light to the understanding of Tamil.. Tamil Studies is often historical because of the simple fact that the history of Tamil runs over two millennia.

In the recent past, the traditional departments of Tamil language and literature in India and Sri Lanka have expanded their scope beyond the study of grammatical and literary texts to include studies of media, gender, caste etc relating them to Tamil. Nevertheless, this is inadequate methodologically and theoretically and in expertise to represent the full expanse of Tamil Studies, which has to come from different disciplines. To promote Tamil Studies so conceived, it is essential, in order to promote interaction between researchers from different disciplines and cross-fertilize the soil of Tamil with different disciplines, it is essential to have periodical conferences. To have a journal, printed or web based, devoted to Tamil Studies will be an additional source of nourishment. There are, of course, conferences and journals devoted to particular disciplines, in which the research on Tamil is discussed. But to have a conference (and a journal) on Tamil Studies itself would be indicative of its maturity and of a critical mass of researchers working on it.

It is in this context the international conference of Tamil Studies held at the University of Toronto, Canada from May 12- 14, 2006 assumes significance. It is not that it is the first conference of this kind, as there were International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies of the International Association for Tamil Studies and others (and there were / are journals devoted specifically to Tamil Studies or having sections to Tamil Studies in the broader studies of South Asia or Asia). The significance of the Toronto conference lies in the fact that it has come at a time when Tamil Studies has been becoming less attractive to the students of the younger generation and when Tamil, as mentioned above, has come to expand its meaning to include a new kind of diasporic Tamil in all its aspects, which is different from its diasporic meaning of colonial times in dealing with Tamil and Tamils in Indian Ocean and Caribbean islands.

The disciplinary breadth and historical depth of Tamil Studies was visible in the Toronto conference. A thread running through the papers can be said to be continuity and change –adaptations of Tamil to new situations with its agility. The papers dealt with such adaptability and agility of Tamil exemplified by the changing functions and status of paRai and its players, women of veeLam in inscriptions and of low castes in contemporary literature, transformation of temple-located catir of a low caste into sabha- located naaTTiyam of upper castes, akam themes echoing in polyphonic kuRavanci, extension of the maTal of akam to bhakti, accommodating aRRuppaTai into Saivite canon, adopting a folk epic to the new medium of animation, emergence of new literary productions like public oration and dalit literature, changing language of modern fiction; they also dealt with the new aspect of diaspora with regard to its theoretical and experiential issues.

The ‘why’ of Tamil Studies is explained by the following. First, it helps Tamil speakers understand their heritage and the challenges facing them in the present including the disuse of their very language. Second, being one of the old civilizations still living, the heights Tamil reached and its survival traits in changing circumstances will help to understand other civilizations and their fortunes. Third, the study of its contemporary political, social and cultural conflicts will throw light on such conflicts all over the world in these post-modern times.

Why should the students of the current generation be interested in Tamil Studies at a personal level. It is not necessary for them to choose Tamil Studies as their career path. Whatever be the discipline they choose to be their career path, choosing Tamil as the focus of specialization within that discipline will put them a unique position. Even in fields of career not directly connected with Tamil Studies like medicine, business management, journalism, community service etc, exposure to Tamil Studies, especially learning the Tamil language, will given them an advantage making them special.

E. Annamalai
Yale University
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~tamils/programme/eannamalai.html

Thank you for attending!

The conference organizers would like to thank all those of you who attended "Tropes,
Territories and Competing Realities," the first annual Tamil Studies conference at the University of Toronto. We wish to thank the scholars who presented their work at the conference. They eagerly welcomed the idea of a conference in Toronto when it was first broached to them and we are delighted that they were able to come and present their work ranging from medieval era Tamil literature and history to the challenges of contemporary diaspora communities. We also wish to thank all those who participated throughout the three days of the conference. In particular, we were delighted to see other scholars and graduate students, members of the Tamil community, and young students engaging in the debates and questions over the three days.

We owe a special thank you to all our sponsors whose generosity made the conference possible. It is the support of academic institutions and community members that make such conferences possible and we are grateful for their commitment to bringing Tamil Studies scholars to Toronto. Lastly, we are deeply indebted to the numerous volunteers who gave freely of their time and energy to make this possible. They worked so that others could showcase their work and their good humour, high spirits and drive made this conference not only possible but a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Thank you all very much and we look forward to seeing you in Toronto next year.

Sincerely,

Chelva Kanaganayakam
R. Cheran
Darshan Ambalavanar

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We invite attendees to share with us their experiences at the conference. Kindly email your comments to tamils@chass.utoronto.ca or post them in this thread. The organizing committee reserves the right to edit your comments and/or reject them at its discretion. Comments will be published on this blog as we receive them.

Conference Chairs

Darshan Ambalavanar
Mr. Ambalavanar is a doctoral candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University. His dissertation is on Arumuga Navalar and the formation of the public sphere.
Session: Panel Session / Saturday, May 13th / 11:30 - 13:00 EST

E. Balasundaram
Dr. Balasundaram was Head of the Department of Tamil at the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Between 1969-1994, he taught at the University of Peradeniya, University of Colombo, University of Kelaniya, and the University of Jaffna. He is the currently the President of the Swami Vipulanada Art Society - Canada. His publications include Naattar Ilakkiya Ayvum Mathippedum Mattakkalappu Mavattam (2005); Mattakalappu Mavatta Thirumana Marapukal (2003); Eelathu Idap Peyar Aayvu (2002); Oppanaik Kali (1990); Ilakkiyathil Maruthuvam (1989); Kaathavarayan Naadakam (1986).
Session: Historical Literature / Friday, May 12th / 9:00 - 11:00 EST

R. Cheran
Dr. Cheran's research and teaching interests include transnationalism, forced migration and diasporic identities as well as Tamil Studies. Prior to his current position, Dr. Cheran was a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow associated with York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies and continues to serve as a faculty associate of the Centre and has been guest faculty in the Centre’s Summer Course on Refugee Issues for the past seven years. From 1984 to 1992, Dr. Cheran was a working journalist in Sri Lanka where he was the editor and regular columnist for a biweekly newspaper that focused on human rights reporting in the context of Sri Lanka’s civil war. Since 1990, Dr. Cheran has been a senior research consultant with the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Colombo. Cheran has published seven anthologies of poetry in Tamil. His poems have been translated into English, German, Sinhala, Kannada and Malayalam. He is the co-editor of Thamil ini (Kalachuvadu: 2000), selected papers from the international Tamil studies and Tamil literary conference held in Chennai, India in 2000.
Session: Visual Arts and Media / Friday, May 12th / 17:00 - 18:20 EST

Chelva Kanaganayakam
Dr. Kanaganayakam's research interests are in Southeast Asian literature, contemporary Indian and Sri Lankan writing, literature of exile and postcolonial theory. His major publications include Moveable Margins: The Shifting Spaces of Canadian Literature (2005); Counterrealism and Ingo Anglian Fiction (2002); Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka (2001); Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997); Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995), and Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).
Session: Tamil Studies - Standards, Methodologies, and Research Practices / Sunday, May 14th / 10:00 - 12:00 EST

Kalanithy Kulamohan
Mrs. Kulamohan studied Tamil and Tamil Studies at the University of Jaffna. She has been teaching Tamil and Tamil studies at the Tamil Academy of Culture and Technology since 1996. She is a well known Tamil poet.
Session: Contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil Literature - Poetics, Publishing and Critical Practice / Sunday, May 14th / 13:00 - 15:00 EST

Bhavani Raman
Ms. Raman is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation is entitled, " Document Raj: Scribes, writing and colonial transformation in early nineteenth century South India."
Session: Colonial and Postcolonial History / Saturday, May 13th / 14:00 - 16:00 EST

Raman Seylon
Dr. Seylon read towards his MA and Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and presently teaches World history, Indian history, and African History at Bridgewater State College.
Session: Anthropology / Saturday, May 13th / 16:30 - 18:30 EST

Maithili Thayanithy
Ms. Thayanithy is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is on asceticism in the Mahabharata.
Session: Precolonial History / Saturday, May 13th / 9:00 - 11:00 EST

Vappu Tyyskä
Dr. Tyyskä's present research deals with intergenerational and gender relations among immigrant and minority groups. In the last five years, she has conducted research projects on youth-parent relations in the Iranian and Sri Lankan Tamil communities in Toronto. Additionally, she participated in two large team research projects, on the needs of newcomer immigrant children. She is currently starting a research project on family violence in selected immigrant communities. Her most recent publications include “Teen Perspectives on Family Relations in the Toronto Tamil Community” in CERIS Working Paper Series No. 45 (2006); Action and Analysis: Readings in Sociology of Gender (2006); “Immigrant Adjustment and Parenting of Teens: A Study of Newcomer Groups in Toronto, Canada”, in Jatta Herranen, Vesa Puuronen, and Jarna Soilevuo-Grønnerød, eds. Youth - Similarities, Differences, Inequalities. Proceedings of the 4th International Youth Conference (2005); and “Conceptualizing and Theorizing Youth: Global Perspectives”, in Helena Helve and Gunilla Holm, eds. Contemporary Youth Research: Local Expressions and Global Connections (2005).
Session: Diaspora Studies / Friday, May 12th / 14:30 - 16:30 EST

Parthiban Vadivelu
Mr. Vadivelu read English at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka and obtained his MA from Carleton University, Canada. He has been teaching English and Translation Studies at the Tamil Academy of Culture and Technology since 2000. He is a critic and translator. His interests include postcolonial literature, literary and cultural theory, and Tamil Studies. His chief specialty is modern diasporas.
Session: Contemporary Literature / Friday, May 12th / 11:20 - 13:20 EST

Featured Presenter: Karuna (Eugene Vincent)

Karuna (Eugene Vincent)
E/ digimedia@bellnet.ca

Karuna is a student of the legendary Jaffna painter A. Mark. Karuna is widely regarded as a pioneer in Tamil digital art in Toronto. He has designed over 500 book covers and contributed illustrations to more than a dozen Tamil literary magazines in Canada, Sri Lanka, Paris, and India. Karuna's paintings and digital art have been exhibited in Jaffna, Colombo and Toronto. He is also an accomplished photographer and light and stage designer for theatre. His studio, Digi Media Creations, is located in Toronto where he works as full time graphic designer.

• Visual Arts and Media: Territory, Identity and Liminality in Contemporary Painting
  சமகால ஓவியங்களில் நிலப்பரப்பும் அடையாளமும் அந்தரநிலையும்
  Friday, May 12, 2006 / 17:00 - 18:20 EST
  
  ஓவியர்களின் ஓவியங்கள் கண்காட்சிக்கு வைக்கப்படுவதுடன் ஓவியங்கள் பற்றிக் கருத்துரைகளும் வழங்கப்படும்.

Featured Presenter: Stanley J. Tambiah | Dept. of Anthropology | Harvard University

Stanley J. Tambiah
Professor Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
Harvard University
E/ tambiah@wjh.harvard.edu
W/ http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/social_pages_tambiah.html

Although Dr. Tambiah retired from active teaching in 2001, he continues his research and writing on monastic complexes and temples in Bangkok; political violence in South Asia, especially the Bombay riots of 1991-92; and transnational movements of people and diaspora communities in an age of “globalization." He also continues with his comparative study of the charisma of saints and the cults of relics, amulets and tomb shrines in some Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi Islamic traditions. Since 2002, he has begun a field study of Sri Lankan immigrants in Toronto, Canada. His major publications include Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life (2002); Transnational Movements, Diaspora, and Multiple Modernities (2000); Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (1997); Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka (1992); Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (1992); Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality (1990); Culture, Thought and Social Action (1985); The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (1985); World Conqueror and World Renouncer (1977); Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in Northeast Thailand (1975), and Bridewealth and Dowry (1974).

• Negotiating Cultures: Tamil Youth in Toronto
  Friday, May 12, 2006 / 14:30 - 16:30 EST
  
  டொராண்டோ தமிழ் இளையர்களும் பண்பாட்டுப் பரிமாற்றங்களும்
  டொராண்டோவின் இலங்கைத் தமிழ் இளையர்கள் பற்றிய மூன்று ஆண்டுகால கள ஆய்வின் முடிவுகள் இக்கட்டுரையில் உள்ளன.

Featured Presenter: Joseph Chandrakanthan | Centre for the Study of Religion | University of Toronto

Joseph Chandrakanthan
Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
Clinical Ethicist, Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto
E/ joseph.chandrakanthan@utoronto.ca

Dr. Chandrakanthan has held major academic appointments including, Head of the Department of Christian and Islamic Civilizations, University of Jaffna (1980 -1986); Professor of Biblical Studies and Ethics, Concordia University (1996-1999). He has presented papers at a number of national and international conferences and published ten books and over 50 articles in issues related Christian Theology, Ethics, Human Rights and inter-religious spirituality.

• When Two Cultures Collide at Bed-Side: Religio-cultural Perspectives on Tamil Ethic of Care
  Friday, May 12, 2006 / 14:30 - 16:30 EST
  
  As a country of immigrants, Canada and more specifically the city of Toronto has one of the world’s largest ethnic and culturally diverse populations. State repressions, drought, famine, and crippling forms of economic deprivations coupled with war and violence have forced large numbers of people as immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers to many western and North American capitals to look for safety, security, and economic prosperity.
  
  The principles and norms applied in clinical ethics consultations in North America are largely drawn from the Judeo-Christian and western ethical practices and religious values. From a juridical perspective these are centered on the exercise of autonomy of the patient as an individual whose rights and duties are also guaranteed by the State. While the universalism enshrined in these principles are of global ethical importance, in their application and illustration they manifest a particular western worldview of socio-political evolution.
  
  Based on case examples this presentation will analyze the challenges of cross-cultural trans-cultural and meta-cultural care particularly in relation to the process of decision-making in designing care plans especially in the context of terminal illnesses, palliative sedation and withdrawing and withholding of treatment and other complex-care decisions that impinge on one’s religious, ethical and cultural predicaments. The importance of integrating pluri-religious ethical insights in the larger context of care and of incorporating the cultural modes of care in the delivery of care will be explored against the backdrop of the dilemmas and issues faced by they many religious and cultural groups. The meaning and significance of illness as a corporate or familial experience and the process of ailing and especially of dying as a social ritual will be further elucidated to deepen the importance of understanding the ethical implications of cure and care in a multi-cultural, pluri-religious milieu. The limitations implied in the process of interpretation/ explanation in the context of Doctor-patient relationship will also be explored.
  
  A serious and particularly terminal illness is also an emotionally charged context for the patient as well as for the members of the family and friends of the one who is facing the end of his/her life. Interpersonal bonds their depth and degree, the suddenness of the illness, the age of the patient, the intensity of relationships with their cultural ramifications should therefore be approached with deep sensitivity and compassion from, the part of the care-giver. This presentation will emphasize these issues of care.