Long Before Europe Moved Abroad to Explore and Conquer, Both
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
TAMIL AND TAMIL AKAM AT THE CROSSROADS International Conference with UC Davis Dec 17 - 18, 2010 Venue: Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry ‐ 605 001. Keynote & Abstracts Key Note "Scientific Dialogues in Nineteenth-Century Tanjore: King Serfoji II’s Initiatives in Enlightenment and Indic Knowledge Systems" Speaker: Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Mount Holyoke College December 17, 2010 4:30 - 6:00PM The scientific career of Serfoji II, the Maratha ruler of Tanjore (r. 1798-1832), strikingly illuminates the dynamic participation of South Indian individuals and sites in the global and circulatory histories of the production of knowledge. A European-educated polymath and ruler of a small kingdom under British colonial supervision, Serfoji achieved an early and remarkable synthesis of European Enlightenment and Indian knowledge systems and cultural practices, becoming a pioneer in Indian modernity. Examining Serfoji’s initiatives in three areas of enquiry –- botany, natural history, and medicine -- I highlight the dialogic yet autonomous nature of Serfoji’s engagement with the practice of science in the nineteenth century. The king initiated projects for the multi-lateral exchange and dissemination of knowledge in a number of scientific fields, employing diverse agents, and targeting audiences ranging from local vaidya physicians and European naturalists to the pupils in the schools that he established. Examples include a project for the multilingual translation of medical texts in diverse Indic traditions, an institution he founded for Euro-Indian medical practice, and the wide range of scientific texts he commissioned: a modern geography as a Marathi poem, vividly illustrated Sanskrit and Marathi Gajasastra (Science of Elephants) manuscripts, housed in the great Sarasvati Mahal Library, but also a Natural History album in European watercolors, presented to a British Resident. While Serfoji interacted closely with the colonial state and with German missionaries and other scientific practitioners in India and Europe, his vision of science was distinguished above all by a positive valuation of indigenous knowledge systems and of indigenous views on the relationship between theory and practice. Indira Viswanathan Peterson Indira Viswanathan Peterson is David B. Truman Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at the Five College Consortium of Western Massachusetts. A Tamil speaker by heritage, Indira Peterson grew up in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, learning and focusing on the study of several Indian and foreign languages, including Sanskrit, Marathi, German and Russian. Peterson has a B.A. (honours) in English Literature from Bombay University (1971), and A.M. (1974) and Ph.D. (1976) degrees in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University. She specializes in Indian literature in Sanskrit and Tamil, Hinduism, South Indian cultural history (classical, medieval, colonial and modern) and Indian classical music. She is also a practitioner of South Indian music (vocal). Peterson has held a number of research fellowships, including fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The American Institute for Indian Studies, The Social Science Research Council, the German Government’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio residency). Indira Peterson’s publications include: Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton, 1989) and Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic: The Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi (Albany, 2003). She is editor of Indian literature (500 B.C. to the present) in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (Expanded 6th Edition, 1995), and the Norton Anthology of World Literature (2001). Her most recent publications are: George Michell and Indira Peterson, The Great Temple at Thanjavur: A Thousand Years. 1010 – 2010 (Mumbai: Marg, 2010); Performing Pasts: Reinventing the Arts in modern South India, co-edited with Davesh Soneji (Delhi: Oxford University Peterson, 2008), and Tamil Geographies: Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India, co edited with Martha Selby (Albany, 2007). Peterson’s Scholar-king of Tanjore: Serfoji II and the Shaping of Indian Modernity, the first biography of an important nineteenth-century intellectual, is under consideration for publication in 2011. In progress are two monographs: Imagining the World in Eighteenth-century India: The kuravanci fortune- teller dramas of Tamilnadu, and Theater, The Court, and the Public: The Dramas of Maratha Thanjavur; and two translations: The Hunter and the Hero: Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniya, from the Sanskrit, and The Fortune-teller drama of Kutralam (Kurralalakuravanci), from the Tamil. Indira Peterson is on the editorial board for the revision of Sources of Indian Tradition, Volume I, Columbia University Press, and has co-contributed a new chapter, on literature, art and aesthetics, to this volume. Abstracts "Pedagogy at Crossroads: Bama 'Speaks Differently'" Susaimanickam Armstrong University of Madras Testimonies serve as a site of knowledge for enhancing multiplicity of human experiences. In the words of Aurora Levins-Morales, testimonios are a new type of "genealogy of empowerment," which show how everyday living experiences become the basis for theorizing, constructing and evolving a new genre of literature and culture. In this process, testimonios reveal and record a complexity of multiple identities with inspirational and theoretical perspective. This new form of writing has been critical in movements for liberation in Latin America by giving new voices and documenting silenced histories. These witness-narratives created a space for feminist-consciousness-raising in Paolo Freirean terms. In the same vein, this form of new writing will surely develop a self-reflexive research method by combining and capturing the social practices, the nuances of oral histories and feminist ethnographies in India too. With this background, the paper proposes to cite textual examples from the works of Bama Faustina and explore them from the perspective of Chelva Sandoval (Methodology of the Oppressed. Minnesota Press, 2000), Linda Tuhiwai (Decolonizing Methodologies. Zed Books, 1995) and Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 2000). The paper at the end proposes a new critical pedagogy (merging genres, Performativities, teaching Testimonios, and so on) for understanding Bama. "Translation, Conversion and the 'Ambidextrous Subject:' A. Madhaviah’s Clarinda as a Social Reform Novel" Kristen Bergman University of California, Davis Although A. Madhaviah’s English novel Clarinda ostensibly fictionalizes the story of an eighteenth-century Brahmin woman who converts to Christianity, the debates among characters regarding the education and treatment of child-brides and widows speaks to an early twentieth-century South Asian context where reform movements revolving around the “woman question” were on the rise. Depictions of female education constitute pivotal moments in Clarinda’s life: our first glimpse of Clarinda is her reading and discussion of Sakuntala with her grandfather. Clarinda later converts to Christianity while discussing Sanskrit and Biblical texts with her lover, the English officer Lyttleton, and as a widow she ultimately earns respect and honor from the Palamcottah Christian community when she begins a school for indigent children. In each of these three key moments in Clarinda’s life, Madhaviah continually references both British/Christian and Hindu/Brahmin texts and sometimes inserts translated quotations in a way that facilitates a comparative look at the way both culture’s literary and religious traditions bear on women’s issues. In this way, I would argue that Madhaviah as author takes a stance that Vinay Dharwadker calls “the ambidextrous subject,” situating his text and Clarinda within South Asian and Western traditions to bring out both criticisms and praise for each culture's treatment of women and conceptions of the feminine. Clarinda herself stands for the victimized and the ideal woman from certain late Victorian and early twentieth century Brahmin traditions, allowing Madhaviah to reflect on the present problems and future goals for women’s social reform on the subcontinent. "East meets West: The Unusual Life and Thought of Frances Swiney (1847- 1922)" Allison Coudert University of California, Davis Frances Swiney (1847-1922) was a Theosophist, eugenicist and evolutionary feminist, whose work was highly original and discussed in such well known journals as the Westminister Review. She was born in India and started life as a painter of Indian landscapes and domestic scenes, which were exhibited in Madras. She returned to Britain as a married woman in 1877 and became involved in feminist politics. She wrote a great many books dealing with the evolutionary superiority of women and their right to control marital sex. In making her case, she drew on ancient texts as well as modern science. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate the influence of Swiney’s background and experiences in India on her mature thought. "East-West Conversions: Lutheran Missionaries in Eighteenth-Century South India" Gail Finney University of California, Davis In the early eighteenth century King Frederick IV of Denmark issued a call for clergy to transmit the Gospel to India. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682-1719), a German