NATIONS & NATIONALISM
On Tamil Nationalism
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Tamils
- a Trans State Nation - Nadesan Satyendra |
"A trans state nation is a cultural, economic and
political togetherness of a people living in many lands and across distant
seas. It is a togetherness consolidated by struggle and suffering. It is not
an 'idealism' expressed only in word. It is a political togetherness
expressed in tangible deed. It is a togetherness directed to secure
the aspirations of a people for equality and freedom
- finding expression in establishing, nurturing and maintaining governmental
or non governmental networks or institutions necessary for that
purpose."
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Constructing a Nation Online:Tamil Nationalism and the Internet -Shyam Tekwani |
"The role of the Internet in the construction of online national identity is
a growing topic for research. The Internet offers a new context for
negotiations of identity and community. In particular it offers minorities
and diasporic communities a new space for communication and
self-representation, enabling them to challenge physical and cultural
boundaries and restrictions. This paper will look at how the Tamil
separatist movement of Sri Lanka, spearheaded by the violent militancy of
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE),has used the Internet and its
international network of support, including dispersed members of its
militant network and the globally dispersed Tamil Diaspora, to create a
virtual Tamil nation online. The paper will describe in exhaustive detail
the online network of the Tamil Movement, and the virtual nation of Eelam
that expatriate Tamils have constructed. The paper will then examine how the
Tamil militants and their diasporic supporters have used the new media and
communication technologies to build a Tamil nation and a Tamil national
identity on the World Wide Web. In doing so the paper hopes to highlight the
role of New Media Technologies in the negotiation of ethnic and cultural
self-representation and outline new avenues for communication research that
draw on diverse academic spheres from terrorism research and Diaspora
studies to research into issues of nationalism and identity."
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Forging
Nationhood Through Struggle, Suffering and Sacrifice - Sumantra Bose, 1994
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"...What seems to emerge clearly is the fluidity and malleability of
the concept of nationhood. Not only is the sense of belonging to an
essentially common collectivity, called a 'nation', not a 'primordial'
identification, rooted in objective factors, but any such sense of
solidarity has to be carefully and painstakingly nurtured over time, if it
is to form the emotional basis of a mass movement for 'national
liberation'..."
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The Tamil Tigers
: Armed Struggle for Identity - Dagmar Hellmann- Rajanayagam.1994 |
"...LTTE represent a
strand of political will and thinking which is extremely strong and entrenched among the
Tamils... aims of equality and
social justice have been realised best by LTTE who are as mixed by caste and religion as
one could wish. And there lies another source of LTTE's strength: the undoubted
support of the movement depends on the mixture of deep loyalty to the
culture and history of the Tamils and an attempt at social reform... While the other groups claimed support and assistance from the population, LTTE was the
only group that could prove to have grassroots support and influence, a support which
enabled them to achieve military control. This was not solely based on military
superiority, which is, after all, a relative concept, but much more on the ideology of the
survival of the Tamil race,
Tamil
nation, Tamil language,
Tamil
culture and
Tamil homeland... the reason for the success of this particular strand of
ideology...must lie somewhere in
the direction Tamil culture took in the past, which determines the shape of Tamil
nationalism of today. ..."
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Sumathi Ramaswamy in Body Language: The Somatics of Nationalism in Tamil India
- Gender & History,
Volume 10 Issue 1 Page 78 - April
1998 |
" The modern nation resides, literally and
symbolically, in the bodies of its citizenry. These bodies in
turn constitute the national body politic. The female embodiment
of the nation is frequently the ground on which the two bodies
intersect. This essay explores this intersection through the
analytic of the 'somatics of nationalism', with
examples drawn from Tamil-speaking India in this century. Through an analysis of
how images of the shared womb, blood, milk, and tears of the female embodiment
of the nation were circulated by nationalist narratives, the author suggests
that these were somatic building blocks with which the nation and its
constituency were constructed in southern India. In turn, Tamil citizens were
called upon to demonstrate their loyalty by putting their own bodies on line,
shedding their own blood and that of their enemies, for the sake of the embodied
nation. Nations and citizen-patriots may relate to each other politically,
materially and emotionally, but they also do so somatically."
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Reconceptualising State, Nation and Sovereignty - Sumantra
Bose, 1994 |
"The territorial, juridical state is in serious peril. Despite the legalistic
'legitimacy' that such states enjoy, and the formidable coercive resources that they often
have at their disposal, their very existence is facing concerted challenges, the world
over, from those who speak the emotionally charged language of 'national
self-determination.'.."
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Belief,
Ethnicity & Nationalism - David Little, USIP |
"...The specific
role of religion and related cultural factor in the Sri Lankan conflict is
clearly significant. While nationalism is a relatively modern invention in
Sri Lanka, it nevertheless draws on and puts to use traditional religious
warrants. Sinhala Buddhist "revivalists" of the late nineteenth
and twentieth centuries have artfully manipulated ancient legends
concerning Buddha's alleged associations with Sri Lanka, as well as the
patterns of cooperation and mutual support between king and monastery that
are part of the island's history. These appeals have done much to mobilize
support for Sinhala nationalism among the monks and laity, and to provide
the movement with sacred authority... What is most menacing about the type
of religious and ethnic nationalism that has appeared in Sri Lanka is
precisely its more or less systematic incompatibility with the right of
non discrimination. The eminent Sri Lankan historian, K.M. de Silva has
pointed out that the Sinhala Buddhist revivalists had no time for such
norms: "In the Sinhala language, the words for nation, race and
people are practically synonymous, and a
multiethnic or multicommunal
nation or state is incomprehensible to the popular mind. The emphasis on
Sri Lanka as the land of the Sinhala Buddhists carried an emotional
popular appeal, compared with which the concept of a multiethnic polity
was a meaningless abstraction..."
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Narrating Tamil Nationalism: Subjectivities and Issues
- Michael Roberts, 2004 |
Sinhala-ness
& Sinhala Nationalism - Michael Roberts, 1999 |
Jacob Pandian in
Caste, Nationalism, and Ethnicity : an interpretation of Tamil cultural history
and social order |
"...Within the same cultural tradition, a number of
political and religious symbols of greater or lesser importance exist, and some
of these have more continuity and have greater relevance as representing
cultural boundaries. It is not necessary for these symbols to be interrelated as
a systemic whole. It is true that these symbols often fuse each other's meanings
and are transformed to convey a collective or synthetic meaning; but the fusion,
transformation and synthesis occur in their use to conceptualise identity. We
can say that the symbols of cultural boundaries are like books in a library: an
individual may organize his knowledge through a selective reading of books.To the question, "What is your group
identity?" a Tamil may answer by identifying his jati title or jati name,
his language, occupation, religious or political affiliation Depending on the
context and who the questioner is, the answers would vary.
.....language is not the sole emblem of collective identity among
the Tamils. The Tamils are divided into several jati groups, each group having
distinctive ritual status and political power. The emblems which denote or
identify ritual status and political power are jati name and jati title,
respectively...
An individual has a coherent system of self and group identity
but what this system does is to enable the individual to employ and deploy
multiple identities in his lifetime and in different experiential contexts. In
other words, there is no set pattern of identities that remain static. The
individual knows what "appropriate" identity to dramatize, and knows
how to respond to the dramatisation of the "appropriate" identity by
others..."
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