Category Archives: Indian traditions

How Anthropologists Think: Configurations of the Exotic

  Bruce Kapferer, … being the Huxley Lecture: British Museum, 16 December 2011, subsequently published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 9, 886 ..in 2013 … [with the numerals in the publication date references subject to distortion in this version–distortions that will be corrected eventually]

Anthropology has often been criticized for its exoticism and orientalism. They are the paradoxes of a discipline focused on the comparative study of difference and diversity and are at the centre of the discussion here in the larger context of the importance of anthropology in the humanities and social sciences. The emphasis is on the role of the exotic as vital to anthropology’s study of difference and to its overall coherence and significance for the understanding of humanity as a whole.

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A Riotous Reading of the India-Sri Lanka World Cup Encounter at Eden Gardens in 1996

John De Silva

I am very surprised to hear people talk about the near riot that occurred at the end of the World Cup Semi Final match between India and Sri Lanka, 13 March 1996. Why are people so quick to jump to conclusions? Why are people not more understanding? Here is what ACTUALLY happened.

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Scrutinizing Sri Lanka’s Past in ATITA

A New Investigative Website …. https://atita.org/

 

About Atita: Atita is dedicated to the investigation of historical events in Sri Lanka. Taking its name from the Pali word for “past” (atīta), Atita serves to fill in gaps in English-language literature of Sri Lankan history.

All are welcome to read our work, but those already familiar with Sri Lankan history since 1948 will find it the most enriching. Our primary focus is on events from 1948 to 1972, when Sri Lanka was still called “Ceylon.”

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The Lord of Cricketing Gods in India: MS Dhoni

Karthik Krishnaswamy in The Cricket Monthly, 24 July 2023 , where the title reads “MS Dhoni joined the pantheon of mythical Tamil heroes”

Superstars in Chennai emerge from cinema or politics or both. Then came along a cricketer from Ranchi

Chennai: Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni during the IPL 2023 cricket match between Chennai Super Kings and Lucknow Super Giants, at M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, in Chennai, Monday, April 3, 2023. (PTI Photo/R Senthil Kumar)(PTI04_03_2023_000319B)

It begins when he steps over the boundary. A rasping chant. A name.

Baashha!” A drumroll. “Baashha!” Another drumroll.

There are urgent bars of instrumental orchestration, and as they swell to a crescendo, a voice pierces the air: “Let’s welcome the new batsman, Mahendra Singh… Dhoniiiiiiiiii!”

The timing is just right. The announcer’s voice gives way to the power-packed vocals of SP Balasubrahmanyam.

Hey Baashha paaru Baashha paaru
Pattalathu nadaya paaru
Pagai nadungum padaya paaru
Coatu suitu rendum eduthu
Poattu nadakkum puliya paaru

Behold Baashha
Behold the warrior-like stride
Behold the army that sends
shudders down enemy spines
Behold the tiger in coat and suit

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Caste Discrimination among Indians in USA to be Prohibited

A REUTER’s News Item, 31 August 2023, entitled “California’s anti-caste discrimination bill passes state Assembly”

SB 403, which would make California the first state to ban caste discrimination, has progressed further. California moved closer to becoming the first state to ban caste discrimination after a bill to outlaw the practice passed the California Assembly late on Monday.
U.S. discrimination laws ban ancestry discrimination but do not explicitly ban casteism. California’s legislation targets the caste system in South Asian immigrant communities by adding caste to the list of categories protected under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

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Amitav Ghosh: Straddling the Mediterranean & Indian Worlds

Dr. Shalva Weil, in https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/in-an-ancient-land-trade-and-synagogues-in-south-india/

The Calcutta-born novelist Amitav Ghosh tells the tale, in his novel In an Ancient Land, of a medieval traveler by the name of Abraham Ben Yiju who conducted an import/export business from Cairo through Aden to India. Ben Yiju was a member of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra, or the”Synagogue of the Palestinians”, as it used to be known while it was still standing, in Cairo, at the end of the nineteenth century. It was in that synagogue that congregation members used to accumulate and store their papers and manuscripts. The last In an Ancient Land Revisited Trade and Synagogues in South India document that is known to have been deposited in this Genizah was a get, a divorce settlement, authorized in Bombay (today Mumbai).

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Deciphering Buddhism: The Correct Pathway

Ananda Abeysekara’s Academic Article: “On Rewriting Buddhism: Or, How Not to Write a History,” Religion and Society, vol. 13. 1(2022): 39-80. 

ABSTRACT: Through a detailed reading of a recent study of medieval Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka in conjunction with a number of other works, this article explores the troubling legacy of translating the historical questions of subjectivity into the modern language of ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’, ‘innovation’, and ‘creativity’. This legacy cannot easily be separated from the politics of white privilege in post-colonial studies of Buddhism and South Asian religion. The problem with trying to expose creativity, so pervasive in the studies of South Asian religion, is not merely a matter of anachronistic conceptualization of divergent historical forms of religious practice and subjectivity. It is that the very possibility of translating subjectivity into easily digestible aestheticized modes of being (e.g., creativity) is predicated on an uninterrogated assumption about the self-evidence of such concepts independent of temporal forms of power encountered in forms of life. Continue reading

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Love Across All Language Barriers

An Item from Wikipedia sent by David Sansoni of Sydney

Historia de un Amor” (Spanish for “the story of a love”) is a song about a man’s old love written by Panamanian songwriter Carlos Eleta Almarán. It was written after the death of his brother’s wife. It is also part of the soundtrack of a 1956 Mexican film of the same name starring Libertad Lamarque. The song tells of a man’s suffering after his love has disappeared. It holds the world record as the most popular song to be translated and sung across the world in various languages by various singers from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

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A Konkani Baila that Crosses the Indian Seas

This lively presentation was sent to me as a venture of “Batticaloa Burghers singing in three languages”. But digital commentary indicates that the words are (mostly?) Konkani … and raises questions as to where exactly this lively collective was located when they sang. SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=munAPKRQ0nk So, that means we are definitely in Thuppahi territory! Ole! Ole! Hai Hoyi! ………. Thuppahi. 

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Caste & Politics in the Sri Lankan Tamil World

Robert Siddharthan Perinpanayagam, in Groundviews, 22 August 2011, where the title reads “Caste And Politics” …. An article that drew 19 comments including some responses from “Sid”… reproduced here with highlighting imposed by The Editor in circumstances where my friend “Sid” from Peradeniya  days is no longer around to dispute matters … as he surely would have.

Over the years, the claims of the Tamil people for justice, equalty and dignity have been rejected with a variety of specious arguments. It is not necessary to go into these exercises here again. However, the latest attempt in this direction is to raise the issue of caste in Jaffna society. Former civil servants, who spent three or four years being de facto kings of the North, have sought to comment on this issue in many recent hero-stories that they have published in the newspapers. In these hero-stories they report not only how they defeated one departmental head or another or humiliated a hapless village headman, but how they vanquished the evil designs of the Tamils as well. Indeed everything seems to become grist to the mill of Tamil-bashing. Even a casual remark made in a cricket match is used by a famous historian to claim that the Tamils of Jaffna are cravenly caste-conscious. Off-the-cuff social commentators as well as the tribalist pundits in the newspapers have also got into this act. The implication of these commentaries is that the Sinhalese do not have the problem of castism and only Tamils do. One recent commentator is so ignorant of the political history of the island as to invoke Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s castism! It was indeed the fear of Karava ascendancy by the Goigamas that elevated Ramanathan to high stature by making him the representative of the “Educated Ceylonese” in the Legislative Council.

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