The Strangeness of Tamil Nadu

The Strangeness of Tamil Nadu PDF Author: M. S. S. Pandian
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788178245492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
M.S.S. Pandian (1958 2014) was an eminent historian of South Indian politics, caste, culture, and cinema. His writings offer distinctively Tamil insights on these areas. In this book his chief focus is Tamil political culture for roughly thirty years since 1985. His success lies in bringing a historical understanding to bear on what he called the strangeness of Tamil Nadu . A key figure in Pandian s thinking was E.V. Ramasamy Periyar . Pandian argues that Periyar s ideals and strategies long remained popular among Tamil progressives, but that their survival became difficult because of radical changes in pan-Indian political culture. To show these changes, this book is organised chronologically as well as along thematic sections that reflect the themes of Periyar s Dravidian ideology: linguistic identity, state politics, religion, and caste. Periyar s ideas, Pandian argues, can still provide productive standards for critical analysis of politics in India. But because they are not widely known or appreciated outside Tamil Nadu, they represent the strangeness of Tamil politics instead of being adapted as progressive in the country as a whole.

Rule of the Commoner

Rule of the Commoner PDF Author: Rajan Kurai Krishnan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009276700
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has been singular in heralding and establishing a firm regional polity among the Indian states after the Indian Union was inaugurated as a republic. Academic scholarship has often treated the DMK as a Tamil nationalist or ethno-nationalist formation without conceptual clarity or critical insight. Rule of the Commoner demonstrates with persuasive evidence that the DMK appealed to a federalist and not nationalist imagination. The DMK's combining of the non-Brahmin Dravidian identity and allegiance to Tamil language led to a counter hegemonic formation of the plebes and left populism. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau, the book argues that the DMK achieved the construction of a people as Dravidian-Tamil, with Tamil being the empty signifier of the social whole, Brahmin vs. non-Brahmin divide functioning as the internal frontier leading to the formations of the political. It elaborates the conceptual scheme under the three rubrics of Ideation, Imagination and Mobilization.

Crooked Stalks

Crooked Stalks PDF Author: Anand Pandian
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822391015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
How do people come to live as they ought to live? Crooked Stalks seeks an answer to this enduring question in diverse practices of cultivation: in the moral horizons of development intervention, in the forms of virtue through which people may work upon their own desires, deeds, and habits, and in the material labors that turn inhabited worlds into environments for both moral and natural growth. Focusing on the colonial subjection and contemporary condition of the Piramalai Kallar caste—classified, condemned, and policed for decades as a “criminal tribe”—Anand Pandian argues that the work of cultivation in all of these senses has been essential to the pursuit of modernity in south India. Colonial engagements with the Kallars in the early twentieth century relied heavily upon agrarian strategies of moral reform, an approach that echoed longstanding imaginations of the rural cultivator as a morally cultivated being in Tamil literary, moral, and religious tradition. These intertwined histories profoundly shape how people of the community struggle with themselves as ethical subjects today. In vivid, inventive, and engaging prose, Pandian weaves together ethnographic encounters, archival investigations, and elements drawn from Tamil poetry, prose, and popular cinema. Tacking deftly between ploughed soils and plundered orchards, schoolroom lessons and stationhouse registers, household hearths and riverine dams, he reveals moral life in the postcolonial present as a palimpsest of traces inherited from multiple pasts. Pursuing these legacies through the fragmentary play of desire, dream, slander, and counsel, Pandian calls attention not only to the moral potential of ordinary existence, but also to the inescapable force of accident, chance, and failure in the making of ethical lives. Rarely are the moral coordinates of modern power sketched with such intimacy and delicacy.

Cut-outs, Caste and Cines Stars

Cut-outs, Caste and Cines Stars PDF Author: Vaasanthi
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780143063124
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
'A Must For [Anyone] Who Wants To Understand Tamil Nadu Politics' New Indian Express Tamil Nadu Is A State Very Different From The Rest Of India, Both Culturally And Historically. It Has Retained A Fundamentally Separate Identity For Itself In Language And Caste Structure, And This Is Most Evident In Its Politics. Cut-Outs, Caste And Cine Stars: The Word Of Tamil Politics Tells A Political Story That Has All The Elements Of A Blockbuster Film, Where Ironies And Larger-Than-Life Characters Abound: Periyar, A Kannada-Speaker, Who Introduced The Notions Of Tamil Self-Respect And Regional Pride, Yet Dismissed Tamil As 'A Barbaric Language'; The Matinee Idol Mgr, A Malayalee Born In Sri Lanka, Who Became Tamil Nadu'S Most Popular Mass Leader; The Dravidian Movement Which, By Its Own Ideology, Should Have Helped The Dalits But Has Instead Supported Only The Upwardly Mobile Middle Groups; And Parties That Rose To Power By Propagating Anti-Hindi And Anti-Brahmin Sentiments But Have Now Allied Themselves With The Bjp. It Is Fitting That This Reel-Like Scenario Is Presently Dominated By The Electoral Politics Of Karunanidhi And Jayalalithaa, One A Scriptwriter And The Other A Former Actress. Well-Known Writer And Journalist Vaasanthi Has Observed The Dramatis Personae In This Epic Drama At Close Quarters For A Decade. Now Updated With An Additional Chapter On The War Of Succession Cut-Outs, Caste And Cine Stars Offers An Objective And Insightful View Of A Political World That Is Both Fascinating And Perplexing.

Migration, Workers, and Fundamental Freedoms

Migration, Workers, and Fundamental Freedoms PDF Author: Asha Hans
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000389146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a mass exodus of India’s migrant workers from the cities back to the villages. This book explores the social conditions and concerns around health, labour, migration, and gender that were thrown up as a result of this forced migration. The book examines the failings of the public health systems and the state response to address the humanitarian crisis which unfolded in the middle of the pandemic. It highlights how the pandemic-lockdown disproportionately affected marginalised social groups – Dalits and the Adivasi communities, women and Muslim workers. The book reflects on the socio-economic vulnerabilities of migrant workers, their rights to dignity, questions around citizenship, and the need for robust systems of democratic and constitutional accountability. The chapters also critically look at the gendered vulnerabilities of women and non-cis persons in both public and private spaces, the exacerbation of social stratification and prejudices, incidents of intimidation by the administration and the police forces, and proposed labour reforms which might create greater insecurities for migrant workers. This important and timely book will be of great interest to researchers and students of sociology, public policy, development studies, gender studies, labour and economics, and law.

Brahmin and Non-Brahmin

Brahmin and Non-Brahmin PDF Author: M. S. S. Pandian
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788178241623
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


History of Medical and Spiritual Sciences of Siddhas of Tamil Nadu

History of Medical and Spiritual Sciences of Siddhas of Tamil Nadu PDF Author: P Karthigayan
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 9352065522
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 682

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Book Description
Siddhas were mystics of ancient India. They believed that human race was created to excel in knowledge and help human societies form an advanced civilization on the Earth. They knew that they needed to live longer and even become immortals to achieve this goal. In Indian context Siddhas were considered as doctors but in Western context, such people were called Philosophers. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of Siddhas' poetic scripts reveals their different faces such as scientific thinkers, social reformers, priest kings, pioneers of advanced cultures, etc. Siddhas speak about spirit, soul and body in their scripts. They also compare cosmos, nature and earth in their science. The unique attainment of Siddhas could be their mastery over physical and cosmic sciences. Siddhas believed that physical science is comparable with cosmic science. Thus, through their physical and cosmic observations, they succeeded in inventing ambrosia of Gods and many became Gods themselves.

Patriarchy

Patriarchy PDF Author: Va Kītā
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Deals with the nature, origin and sociology of patriarchy. Reviewing the sources available, it discusses the historical contexts which have nurtured patriarchal societies. Finally it applies these ideas to Indian history and sociology and examines how caste has interacted synergistically with patriarchy in India. A useful text for students as well as for the general reader.

The Image Trap

The Image Trap PDF Author: M. S. S. Pandian
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9789351500667
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Image Trap analyses the phenomenon of M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), the legendary film star-cum-politician of Tamil Nadu, as a modern-day political myth. This book offers fascinating details about the extent to which MGR was successful in creating a stereotypical cinematic persona, and what repercussions it had on Tamil Nadu. Delineating the cultural elements that were meticulously mobilised to constitute MGR’s on-screen image, it analyses the popularity he enjoyed among the poor whose interests he constantly violated. This is done by means of what Pandian termed as constructed biographies which are popular narratives that ingeniously present the cinematic as real. It brings out the interface and interplay between the media and political processes. A blend of essay writing, political rhetoric and scholarship, the book features the complete filmography of MGR and is a must for understanding the contemporary politics of the state.

The Stranger

The Stranger PDF Author: Sarah Singleton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857070746
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Charlotte is heading to a tiger sanctuary to do some voluntary work as part of her travels. But a fellow traveller working at the sanctuary starts to make her feel uncomfortable and she decides to ask Otto to visit her, pretending to be her boyfriend. When things start going wrong at the sanctuary, Charlotte fears a vendetta against her could be to blame. As tigers come under attack from poachers, the local authorities threaten to replace the sanctuary's management. Mark the journalist reappears, ostensibly covering the poaching crisis, but also delving into the background of the traveller who is making Charlotte's life a misery. But by now Otto and Charlotte's 'fake' relationship seems to be developing into something a little more serious… and how will Mark, and Otto's ex, Jen, feel about that?