"Whatever may be said, whosoever may say it - to
determine the truth of it, is wisdom" -
Thirukural
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[A well organised, and extensively annotated guide to
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Essential
"It is remarkable how much a thirty-second
pictogram of nationalism can reveal of one’s
understanding. I ask my students to
draw such a pictogram in the beginning of
the discussion (on nationalism). They
invariably draw flags and/or people with
guns. When I ask them for a pictogram of
nationalism at the end of the discussion,
the emblem changes completely: they draw a globe and
little unarmed people, who sometime say things like: "oh, my
identity!" For flags and guns do not even begin to express what is
central and most significant about nationalism..."
Nationalism and the Mind - Liah Greenfeld
quoted in What is
a Nation - Nadesan Satyendra
"I desire that I write for myself alone. It is when
that which is buried in me finds expression in words, that I myself come
to truly know what was buried in me. It may well be that the reason that I
write is because I feel that I may discover more and more and come to know what else may
be inside me. As I continue to write, and as more and more experiences
unfold from within me, and as I become subject to these experiences, it
seems to me that I may, in a way, make it possible for me to know who I
am.
There are those who find that the words that I write to
understand about myself, also help them to understand themselves. They are my
readers. When they hear that the key that I fashioned for my lock, may
also open their locks, they come in search of my house. When they come, it
appears to me that it is entirely appropriate that I should share my
understanding...
So that a writer may protect this nature, this way
of life, I value freedom of expression as the most important
freedom. I cannot say that at the present time I have sufficient courage
or awareness of truth to practice that which I have so easily
described. These are qualities that I will need to develop. I believe that it will
be possible for me to do so..." Sundara Ramasamy (translation by
Nadesan Satyendra from the Tamil
original)
"..Leader presumes follower.
Follower presumes choice... In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led.
Where an organised community will be led is inseparable
from the shared values and beliefs of its members..." -
Dee Hock - The Art of Chaordic
Leadership
Vannakam, Welcome... "...அரிய சாதனைகள் செய்யப்படுவது வலிமையினால் அல்ல
- விடா முயற்சியினால்தான்..."
What is a Nation? "Nations are as much cultural as political forms
and the creation of a unique high
culture of world significance is often central to their legitimation..."
1. "Nation building is rightly, though at times excessively,
associated with political and
social processes. Yet, it is not
confined to national liberation movements, charismatic leaders and liberators,
wars of national independence, and the struggle of national entities to emerge
to independence from a position of relative powerlessness and subservience to a
dominant power. Nations are as much cultural as political forms, and the
creation of a unique high
culture of world significance is often central to their legitimation. True,
the effects of culture are not as clearly quantifiable as those of politics. The
effect of Verdi, for example, on Italian nationalism is hardly as clear cut as that of
Garibaldi.
Wagner's
impact on German nationalism is amorphous alongside the concrete political
achievement of
Bismarck.
William Butler Yeats' influence on Irish nationalism is not as definable as
that of
Michael
Collins or Eamon De Valera. The inspiration of
Chaim Nachman Bialik
on Jewish nationalism is diffuse in comparison with that of
Herzl.
Yet it may be argued justly that artists have equal
if not
greater importance. They above all
express the nation's distinctiveness; their creativity is
part of the momentum to independence; they are themselves
symbols and icons of the nation's unique creative power;
they regenerate
their nation morally and speak for its heart and conscience."
-
John Hutchinson, European Institute, London School of Economics and
David
Aberbach, Department of Jewish Studies,
McGill University, Quebec, Canada in
Nations & Nationalism, Volume 4, 1999
2.
"..மொழியும்,
கலையும்கலாசாரமும் வளம் பெற்று வளர்ச்சியும் உயர்ச்சியும்
அடையும பொழுதே தேசிய இனக் கட்டமைப்பு இறுக்கம் பெறுகின்றது. பலம்
பெறுகின்றது. மனித வாழ்வும் சமூக உறவுகளும் மேன்மை பெறுகின்றது. தேசிய
நாகரிகம் உன்னதம் பெறுகின்றது.."
Velupillai Pirabakaran
tamilnation.org
is concerned to tell a story... It is a story about
a nation without a state - a
trans
state nation of more than 80 million Tamils living today
in many lands and across distant seas...
... But it is not a story simply about the past. It is a story
about the present and of a
trans state nation of
people who are committed to rid themselves of the divisions
amongst
them, be it rooted in race, caste, religion or gender ...
"...There are victims, there are executioners, and
there are bystanders... Unless we wrench free from being what we
like to call ‘objective’, we are closer psychologically, whether we
like to admit it or not, to the
executioner than to
the victim...”
It is a story about the
growing togetherness of a trans state nation of people,
a nation without a state,
in a digital age which has rendered State boundaries
increasingly porous and where deep rooted kinship ties
are finding fresh avenues for expression...
"...when our words begin to coincide with
our deeds, principle emerges with power to influence. We
also begin to learn something about
our own ‘dharma’ or own ‘way of harmony’..."
"What is Truth?
said Pilate confronted with a mighty messenger of the
truth, not jesting surely, not in a spirit of shallow
lightness, but turning away from the Christ with the
impatience of the disillusioned soul for those who still
use high words that have lost their meaning and believe
in great ideals which the test of the event has proved
to be fallacious..."
Mao
Tse-tung quoted by Joachim Israel in the Language of Dialectics
and the Dialectics of Language
- "Without life, there would be no
death; without death there would be no life. Without above,
there would be no below; without below there would be no above.
Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good
fortune, there would be no misfortune. Without facility there
would be no difficulty; without difficulty, there would be no
facility. Without landlords there would be no tenant-peasants;
without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without
the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without
proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie."
It is an evolutionary process
which has resulted in the formation of the seemingly intricate fore brain of
man today and it is this self conscious mind of man which seeks to know,
which seeks to understand. How is this understanding brought about? In what way does an ordinary
mind comprehend?
One says ordinary mind because one can neither reject nor ignore the
experience of those extraordinary beings who have arisen on this earth from
time to time and who appear to have comprehended the total reality and who
were one with it; enlightened beings to whom time and space dissolved in an
eternity which was boundless...
The ordinary mind does not however comprehend the whole. It seems to deal
effectively only with parts of the total reality. It directs its attention
to discrete and separate parts of the whole. In order that it may
understand, the mind separates and conceptualises. It separates that which
is connected and the very process of separation distorts an understanding of
the whole.
The mind thinks in sequence in time. The present is a fleeting moment and
is then gone forever. Thoughts are so much grist to its mill. Words and
concepts are the instruments of its trade. The mind seeks to clarify one
concept by having recourse to another. It defines one word with another.
There is no end to this process nor is there a starting point.
The mind deals in
opposites. There is no idealism without materialism; there are no means
without ends; there is no detachment without attachment; there is no free
will without determinism; there is no good without bad. If everything was
good what would it mean? Presumably, we would stop using the word. The mind
speaks of theses, antithesis and synthesis and describes this as the
dialectical process. And every synthesis is another thesis and gives rise to
another antithesis and yet another synthesis - and the process is endless.
The mind then speaks of dialectical idealism and dialectical materialism.
The need to use opposites is the need of the mind that lives in the
duality of I and not I, and the mind extends this duality, extends these
seeming opposites, to everything that it deals with. And more often than
not,
it does not stop to ask: who am
'I'? Are there two 'I's - the one who asks the question and the other,
about whom the question is asked?
The inquiring and inquisitive mind - the restless mind, the monkey mind
of man - allows one thought to play with another and ends up with what it
then triumphantly describes as a rationalisation. The mind discovers
seemingly broader and broader concepts and seemingly more and more general
laws. But what is the result?
From the vantage point of each new law, the mind then perceives an
increasing area of the unknown and greater and greater areas of the unknown
come within the vision of man. The search for fundamental laws, the search
for fundamental particles, the search for absolute truths, inside the trap
of duality is in the nature of an adventure to possess an ever receding
mirage..." more
rating for
tamilnation.org
[A well organised, and extensively annotated guide to
Tamil-related resources - ed.]
Research usefulness
[essential
- v.useful - useful - interesting - marginal]:
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