The Importance of Tradition (தமிழ் மரபு) for members of the Tamil Diaspora

This is the speech I gave at the UC Berkeley Seventh Annual Tamil Conference on the topic of தமிழ் மரபு (Tamil Tradition) -- (The introduction in bold is what I can remember from what I improvised based on the notes and additions I had made to my "script" ... The rest should be relatively faithful to the speech I delivered) ...

[வணக்கம், my name is Dharshan Chandramohan. I studied Tamil under Kausalya Auntie for three years (here) at Berkeley while I completed my undergraduate degree in Bioengineering. So as you can see this isn't particularly my area of expertise; though I guess you could say I have the experience of being Tamil, which is something. It has been thoroughly inspirational to listen to all of the phenomenal scholarship being presented here at the conference, and to this end I would like to thank Professor Hart and Kausalya Auntie for giving me this opportunity to deliver these remarks on the importance of Tamil Tradition (மரபு) for members of the Tamil Diaspora.]

There are approximately three million native Tamil speakers living outside of India and Sri Lanka -- taken with their descendants, generations of Tamil children born and brought up abroad, for whom Tamil is increasingly often a second language, the overall size of the Tamil diaspora can be said to be closer to ten to twelve million Tamil people -- scattered across the globe. Our people have settled in Canada, Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, the United States, and many other countries, shaping their communities by the customs, traditions and belief systems that unite them. For the generations born and brought up abroad -- for my generation -- those customs, traditions and beliefs take on a special meaning: informing and rooting our identity as Tamil people by inspiring us and connecting us to the richness of our Tamil heritage.

The experiences of people brought up in the culture of the diaspora are as varied as the regions in which they settled and their reasons for migrating. Many Tamil people left India in the past in pursuit of economic opportunity in the colonial era and beyond. Some followed family who settled in distant lands. More recently many Tamil people have fled the discrimination, war, and genocide in Sri Lanka, as was the case with my family. While our experiences and histories are as unique as the many members of the diaspora I feel that many of the aspects of the Tradition that unites us can be seen in examples from my own life. So while I cannot claim to speak for all members of the diaspora community, I would like to share with you a few examples of how Tamil Tradition, and the study of Tamil itself, has changed my life and how I understand my heritage.

Before I can articulate how Tamil Tradition has shaped my identity as a member of the Tamil diaspora -- I must first describe what I mean by Tradition. It is important to realize that, in my experience, for someone being brought up abroad, Tradition -- by which I mean the customs and rituals that we practiced and the lessons we were taught as my sister and I were being raised -- did not have the same meaning for us as I imagine they would have for someone brought up in Sri Lanka. While for my parents growing up in Sri Lanka the daily practices, ceremonies, and rituals were embedded in the context of the culture that surrounded them, for my sister and myself Tradition became the vehicle by which we grew to understand the meaning of our cultural heritage. Specifically, the customs we practiced and the stories we were told were the way we came to understand our cultural identity.

As I was growing up, I recall asking a lot of questions regarding our customs. One of the main customs we practice in my family is going to the temple regularly -- especially on festival days, such as Sivarathiri. I remember once during Sivarathiri when I was in High School asking the priest what the "story" was behind the holiday. He laughed and told me that there was no story -- it was just an auspicious day calculated by the alignment of the stars for the worship of Lord Siva; sensing my confusion he then proceeded to tell me a number of stories about auspicious things that were supposed to have happened on Sivarathiri. That moment stood out for me as a time when I came to understand my culture a little bit better -- in contrast to Western culture in which most holidays commemorate discreet events, I realized, many of our holidays merely mark the passage of time. In addition to questioning cultural practices I came to understand the importance of community and family over the course of the many traditional ceremonies that marked landmarks in our lives. In this way Tradition served as a platform on which to base my understanding of our cultural values.

Even more than rituals and customs, stories have helped shape my understanding of what it means to be Tamil. I remember that each of the bedtime stories my father would tell me was attached to a lesson. I learned about justice from Maṉunīdhi Chōḻan, who sacrificed his own son beneath the wheels of his chariot to make amends to a cow for the killing of her calf. I learned about patience from Kirisāmbāl who always waited patiently for the last vadai and was rewarded. I learned about compassion from Pāri who gave up his chariot in the forest so that a lowly vine would have a perch to grow upon. Encountering these stories again in Tamil class solidified my association of these values with my culture. In this way the language and the rich literary Tradition of Tamil has taught me what it means to be a Tamil person. To me, a Tamil person respects all creatures, demonstrates patience, practices justice, and follows the examples set in the numerous other stories that I have heard in childhood or read and studied more recently; to do otherwise is to turn my back on the ancestral wisdom that was passed down to me in the form of the Tamil literary tradition.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend and I happened to reflect upon my understanding of my cultural identity. His conclusion was that as a member of the Tamil diaspora community I seemed to be searching for my roots. This to me confirmed the importance of Tradition/மரபு especially in the context of the millions of children growing up abroad. And this is why I am fundamentally grateful to Professor Hart, Kausalya Auntie, and the Tamil Department, here at Berkeley, for providing me and many others the opportunity to study Tamil, and explore the depths of its Tradition, in a higher academic setting. Tradition is what serves to root us -- to guide us -- to make us into not only true தமிழர்கள் [Tamil people] but also better human beings.

30 April 2011
Berkeley, CA

--

... Ultimately, I think this talk went over better with the community members than with the scholars. Although, I did get a few of the scholars complimenting me and thanking me for my words. In all honesty, I am touched that the community members appreciated my speech; it is really on behalf of them that I was speaking -- though I would be lying if I didn't say I felt a little slighted by the scholars... If only because I deeply respect the work that they're doing and those of them that complimented me seemed to do it only cursorily (politely, dutifully). There were two other things I realized: (1) With the retirement of Professor Hart I may never be invited back to speak at the Tamil Conference again. (2) Only now -- (Today: 2 May 2011) 2 days after delivering this speech -- in the course of trying to figure out how to transliterate Maṉunīdhi Chōḻan "properly" did I realize that he was a Tamil King of Sri Lanka ... The story of the sacrifice he made to the cow in the name of justice for her calf has always resonated with me! I now feel more deeply connected to the tale -- more rooted in my conviction in the sacrifices necessary for the path of righteousness.


~ DC

Notes on a title

... Often I have much to say, but when it comes time to write things down I end up -- hesitating. When I asked one of my friends for advice on what to do in such a situation he said I have two options: wait until I had something to say, or force it. I have decided to take the later, since, a little practice never hurt anyone; and, usually when I do have something to say in the process of pouring it out I spill my emotion to quickly and lose steam -- or work it over until it is completely meaningless, or devoid of sentiment. Therefore -- before this devolves into the kind of self-centered, stream-of-consciousness blogs I'm used to writing --

Notes on a title:
(Before I begin, allow me to situate myself...) The words Karuppu and Sivappu in Tamil mean quite simply: Black and Red. These colors mean a great deal more to me. I am a Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil, born in England, and raised in the United States. I have come to understand my history at the intersection of many narratives ... many threads in a narrative web of existance -- perhaps it is fitting that in Tamil the same word can mean both thread and narrative: நூல் (nūl). I understand myself as having inherited the struggle against the discrimination that my parents faced in Sri Lanka, the legacy that British colonialism had sewn reaping cycles of hatred, ethnocentrism, recrimination. I see reflections of that legacy in ethnic conflicts, oppression, injustice, and neocolonial exploitation around the world. But I stand in a position of privilege relative to my brothers and sisters who never made it out of Sri Lanka -- who two years ago faced the bombs and the slaughter, who two years later still cannot return to their homes, and face de facto status as second-class citizens. How do I come to terms with being born in the country whose empire enslaved my people (and scattered them so my language is spoken as far and wide as the West Indies and Singapore; Tanzania and Dubai)? I find solace in the words of Black poets and intellectuals -- struggling against oppression in the United States, the culture where I was raised -- who understood ... double consciousness, being a Westerner to my people and an Immigrant in the west ... But the hardest to swallow is that feeling of guilt -- the shame of this privilege sticks in my throat.


I feel that the culture that raised me is not the culture of America. Nor is it the culture of England (although, admittedly, my time in England was the brief first two years of my life), nor -- I am ashamed to say -- is it entirely the culture of my mother and father (although I cling to that most dearly -- and seek it out voraciously). The culture I have come into is one that spans the globe -- one that reaches across divides and attempts to build bridges, make connections -- it is a culture of resistance. I have read, felt, imagined, celebrated, laughed and wept with Native Americans (Ojibwe, Lakota, Pueblo, Navajo, Cherokee, Chumash), Palestinians, Zimbabweans, South Africans, Filipinos, Blacks, Mexicans, Salvadorians, Chileans, Nigerians, Indians, Jews, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Persians, the Irish, Haitians, and peoples of many other nations. This is not a laundry list of people with whom I am in solidarity... it is a reminder that the world is full of stories.


But what does this have to do with black, or red, or any color for that matter? Recently I have been reading words about and from the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion National (the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN for short) -- words that have spoken to me, particularly when they say, "The world we want is a world where many worlds fit..." and, "Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves." Red and Black are the colors of the battle flag of the EZLN -- and the colors of the anarcho-syndicalist/anarcho-communist flag pictured above; they are also the colors of the ruling party of Tamil Nadu in India (the DMK -- a party which hardly seems to stand for anything anymore ... but whose historical ideology was the advancement of Dravidian peoples). And, although it is politically and socially problematic to call myself Black in the United States, I have always identified with the color (not the anthropological construct we call the "race" with whom I stand in solidarity) -- the black sheep, the black night, the dark of my skin (the shame of saying "brown" because brown is the color of mud)... Is it a small wonder that the English word "pariah" derives from a Tamil word? Red is for the blood that flows through my veins, for the color of the LTTE flag that gave me a profound mixture of hope, shame, ambivalence and confusion growing up, and for the color of the kungkumum that my grandmother used to apply to her forehead with the back of a nail.


So I think Black and Red is a good starting point.


In Solidarity,
DC

... I must say I have rather done exactly what I said I wouldn't insofar as writing a self-centered, stream-of-consciousness post. Oh well; practice makes perfect. And a short semi-biography is not a bad start I suppose...