Tamil Studies Conference

Justice Swaminathan observed:

“To quote (Professor Upendra) Baxi, at the heart of every constitution there pulsates a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the constitutional self and the constitutional others. But there are provisions transcending this distinction, being applicable to “all persons”. Article 21 of the Constitution surely applies to the petitioners also. Failure to respond to the petitioners’ existential horror would amount to judicial abdication. If I come to the conclusion that the petitioners have already suffered enough and that they are being put to “surplus or unnecessary suffering”, I am obliged to intervene.”

Tamil Nadu Has Created a Detention Camp Just to Hold 129 Foreign Tablighi Jamaat Members Families claim they have not spoken to their relatives detained in a detention camp in Tamil Nadu since April 11. Rights advocates say this detention in unconstitutional.

Program for Fall 2019! Please do come--there is lot happening!

Tamil Studies Fall Programs 2019! Please do come--there is a lot happening!

The University of Toronto will be hosting a special edition of the Tamil Studies Conference in the form of a small, free, one-day workshop in memory of Prof. Chelva Kanaganayakam on June 1st.

Deepest Sympathies. Our thoughts are with Writer Lakshmi Holmström's Family, Friends and Colleagues. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/18/lakshmi-holmstrom-obituary?CMP=share_btn_fb

Lakshmi Holmström obituary Writer and translator who focused on Indian, and specifically Tamil, literature and poetry

Engaging Caste in the Diaspora: Roundtable: Anti/Caste in South Asia and the Diasporas
(in collaboration with Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto)
May 13 | 6:30-8:30 pm
Jackman Humanities Institute | University of Toronto, St. George Campus
Speakers: Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Chinnaiah Jangam, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Dharsan Siva and others. http://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/event/engaging-caste-in-the-diaspora/

Engaging Caste in the Diaspora (2016-05-12) Commemorating the 125th birth anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the South Asia Research Group (SARG at York University is hosting a first of its kind oral history project, led by Dalit activists Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Sinthujan Varatharajah, that documents experiences of caste within South Asia

Lecture by Professor Ronit Ricci, Lanka and the Exilic Imagination.
April 6th, 2016

Sad news:
For those of you who worked and attended the first years of the Tamil Studies Conference at University of Toronto, you may remember Professor Bernard Bate, from Yale. We have just heard the sad news that he died suddenly. Peacefully in his sleep but shockingly young and unexpectedly. He was going to start new research work in Sri Lanka this year.
Our thoughts are with his family during this very difficult time. May he rest in peace.

Exciting course at UTSC - Tamil Studies

GASC59H3/ HIS C59 H3
BEING TAMIL: RACE, CULTURE, NATION
WINTER 2016

This class is an introduction to modern Tamil identities with a focus on Tamil speaking populations in Canada, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Its main purpose is to explore in context of multiple Tamil worlds, the transformative effects of colonialism on culture, religion, literary arts and social relations and explore the more recent history of postcolonial nation-states of Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia in this light. No prior background in Tamil language or history is necessary.

QUESTIONS ? EMAIL : [email protected]

Scattered like floating lotus
Defying land and time,
Our wings gained strength.
Your life the essence of kindness
----
We can tread on fire, or
Defy the wind;
We cannot lose our lives

These lines from an elegy I wrote for a close friend of mine who passed away last year were perhaps the last poem Chelva Kanaganayakam translated from Tamil to English. After reading and translating the poem Chelva was so deeply moved and read it out to Thiru, his beloved wife. Then he called me in the middle of the night to share my grief. I was inconsolable. Even though I was somewhat used to the dreaded midnight or early morning phone calls from Sri Lanka over the past several years of war and devastation, I was completely unprepared for the grim email message from Chelva's brother-in-law late last night.

After attending the official function inducting him as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in Québec City on November 22, 2014, Chelva suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away. A great man of kindness, wisdom and intellectual rigor is no more.

Chelva Kanaganyakam, received his bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka and his doctoral degree at the University of British Columbia. After his doctoral studies he joined the University of Toronto's Department of English and became professor of English. He was the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Munk School of Global affairs.

His research and teaching interests were post- colonial studies, as well as diasporic writings and translations. While the geographic" focus of his research revolved around South Asia and South East Asia, Chelva was always attracted to "hybridity and hierarchy of literatures in English and in the vernacular languages of these regions and the diaspora. He would often pose the question whether one should have some grasp of a vernacular language rather than, or in addition to, French, German or Spanish in order to undertake serious research?

"The centrality of the literary text" he would argue, "cannot be erased although the frame could be one that includes but goes beyond a Eurocentric one." In his constant search for alternative ways of configuring the field of postcolonial studies, Chelva was prolific in writing and publishing.

In the study of literary history Chelva was keenly interested in venturing into new methodologies. Another theme that animated his current work is the notion of aesthetics in Tamil writings that emerged as a response and resistance to war, loss, genocide and trauma. Through his translations and accompanying critical reviews, Chleva was grappling with the question of how notions of aesthetics and poetics as articulated by modern writers of resistance in the Tamil context can challenge traditional ideals and formulations of aesthetics.
Chelva was an excellent translator of fiction and poetry from Tamil to English, his translation of Nedunalvaadai - a classical Sangam Tamil epic - is a great work of finesse, beauty and painstaking detail. Indeed, Chelva translated almost all of the great contemporary Tamil writers from Sri Lanka.

Chelva was one of the founding members of the annual Toronto Tamil studies conference at the University of Toronto since 2006. The conference is the largest international Tamil Studies conference in North America.

Some of his other key works include: In our Translated World: Global Tamil Poetry (2013), Nedunalvaadai (in Tamil, 2010), Wilting Laughter: Three Tamil Poets (2009), You Cannot Turn Away (2010),Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction (2002); Ed. 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); Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).

A few months ago Chelva completed compiling, translating and editing a grand volume of Tamil literature since 1948 titled Uprooting the Pumpkin for Oxford University Press. He spent hundreds of sleepless nights working on this volume and it is so painful that he was unable to see the volume in print.

At the time of his death Chelva was working on a massive volume on the history of South Asian literatures in English. It is so unfortunate that this project as well as his other translation projects will not be completed by him.

Chelva's students, friends and colleagues will always remember his warm, welcoming but slightly hidden smile and open heart, the heart that suddenly failed him, and us too.

Cheran
Dr. R. Cheran is a poet and associate professor of Sociology at the University of Windsor.

Visitation and Funeral details for Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam:

1. Visitation
Wednesday, November 26th, 2014 from 6pm-9pm
Location: Turner and Porter Peel Chapel
Address: 2180 Hurontario Street, Mississauga, ON, L5B 1M8
Major Intersection: Hurontario and Queensway
Telephone: 905-279-7663

2. Visitation & Funeral Service
Thursday, November 27th, 2014 from 9am-11:30am
Location: Turner and Porter Peel Chapel
Address: 2180 Hurontario Street, Mississauga, ON, L5B 1M8
Major Intersection: Hurontario and Queensway
Telephone: 905-279-7663

3. Cremation Thursday, November 27th, 2014 at 12:30pm
Location: St. John’s Dixie Crematorium
Address: 737 Dundas St E, Mississauga, ON L4Y 2B5
Major Intersection: Dundas and Cawthra
Telephone: 905-566-9403

Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam, 1952-2014

We are heartbroken by the loss of one of the founders of the University of Toronto Tamil Studies Conference, Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam. A leading light of the Tamil literary world, Chelva passed away suddenly in Montreal from a heart attack. He had just been awarded the highest of academic honours in Canada with a fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada. Chelva was a Professor in the English Department at the University of Toronto. Also one of the founders of the Tamil Literary Garden, he was an outstanding scholar and translator of Tamil literature, and one the few who could negotiate classical Tamil and critical theory with equal ease. Chelva was a generous mentor to many generations of students and colleagues. This is a huge loss for Tamil studies, for postcolonial literary theory, for the global Tamil community, and for those of us in Toronto who worked closely with him and learned from him over the years. His gentle presence and his dreams for the field will always remain with us.