ஊர்...

பொதுவாக நான் தமிழ் வகுப்பில் படித்தப்போது எமது வாத்தியார் (பேராசிரியர் கௌசல்யா ஹார்ட்) சோதனைக்காக எங்களிடம் இப்படி சிறிய கேள்விகளை எழுதி கேட்பார்:

ஊர்...
ஊர் என்றால் என்ன? --யாதும் ஊரே யாவரும் கேளிர்-- என்று ஒரு சிறந்த பழகவிஞர் கூறினார். உங்கள் எண்ணத்தில் இந்த பழமொழிக்கு என்ன அர்த்தம்? தமிழ் நாட்டில் தெருவில் அல்லது பஸில் அல்லது ரையிலில் போகிறபோது பல ஜனங்கள் --நான் ஊருக்கு போகிறேன்--  என்று சொல்வதை நீங்கள் கேட்டுக்கொள்ளலாம். ஒருவருடைய சொந்த ஊர் என்றால் என்ன? உங்கள் சொந்த ஊரை பற்றி கொஞ்சம் எழுதுங்கள்.

நான் கஷ்டப்பட்டு படித்த தமிழை மறக்கக்கூடாது என்று நினைத்து இந்த கேல்விகளுக்கு தமிழில் விடை எழுத முயற்சி செய்வேன்.

In the above, loosly translated, I have set out to answer, in the spirit of Kausalya Auntie's Tamil Class assignments, the following questions:

Ūr...
What does ūr mean (to you)? A famous old poet once said "Whatever the ūr [place, town], all are my kindred". What are your thoughts on the meaning of this proverb? In Tamil Nadu one might hear someone say, "I'm going to my town" on the street, in a bus, or on a train. What does it mean to have a "hometown" (sontha ūr)? Write a little bit about your "hometown".

For the sake of practicing my Tamil, and so that I don't forget -- I am going to try to write as much as I can on this topic in Tamil and then translate what I have written... As an exercise in bilingualism I suppose.


I would like to make two points that I cannot make in Tamil: (1) I picked rather a complicated topic to start with -- the word ūr is extremely difficult to translate into English (as you might be able to tell from above), while capturing the same connotation and shades of meaning. The word ūr -- which literally means "city" or "town" -- is pregnant with many additional meanings in Tamil culture which I shall try to elaborate in English below (after what I'm afraid will be a rather rusty attempt at communicating some rather complex feelings in Tamil). And (2) I would like to apologize for the fractured structure of this bilingual post -- only insofar as it might be difficult to read. However, I feel that such a format is both productive for me -- in that it will encourage me to think bilingually and potentially push my expressive capabilities in both languages -- and instructive for the reader -- in that it will give the reader a taste of some of my difficulty and frustration with trying to be as comfortable and expressive in my native tongue as I can somewhat manage in English.

Let us begin this bilingual experiment:


*   *   *

ஊர்...

(with help from Appa)
ஒரு செடி வளர மண் வேண்டும்; அதே போல ஒரு மனித வளர்ச்சிக்கு ஊர் தேவை! பழைய காலத்தில் மனிதர் வாழ்வதற்கு நிலம் முக்கியமானதாக இருந்திருக்கும். அந்த நிலையில் சமூகம் வளர்ந்திருக்கும்! அந்த நிலத்தில் அந்த சமூகம் ஒரு ஊரை கட்டி எழுப்பியிருப்பார்கள்! அந்த ஊருடைய பெயருக்கு அர்த்தம் அந்த நிலம், அல்லது அந்த கிராமத்தில் வசிக்கும் மனிதர்கள், அல்லது ஊரில் இருக்க கூடிய கட்டடங்கள் அல்லது அரசியல் அல்லது அந்த ஊருக்கு பெயர் கொடுத்த கோவில் கூட -- எல்லாவற்றையும் மீண்டும் -- அந்த ஊருடைய பெயருக்கு அர்த்தமாக அமைந்திருக்கலாம் ஒரு மக்கள், ஒரு குணம், ஒரு பண்பாடு!

நான் பிறந்த ஊர் எனக்கு சொந்த ஊர் இல்லை. எனக்கே ஒரு சொந்த ஊர் இல்லை. இலங்கையின் போரினால்  தமிழ் மக்களுடைய பிள்ளைகளுக்கு ஊருடைய அர்த்தம் புரியாது. எங்கள் பிறந்த நாட்டுக்கு, வளர்ந்த நாட்டுக்கு -- மீண்டும், அந்த நாட்டின் மொழியும் -- எங்களுக்கு சொந்தம் என்று கூறமுடியாது! அடிக்கடி எங்களுடைய நிறத்தையும், நாங்கள் பேசுகிற விதத்தையும் பொறுத்து அந்த வெளிநாட்டின் சமூகம் எங்களை பிரித்துவைக்கும்!

அதனால் நான் ஊர் உணர்ச்சியை தொலைத்தவன் என்று கவலைப்பட்டேன். ஆனால் இந்த ஜூன் மதத்தில் நான் கனடாவுக்கு போனபொது எனக்கு அந்த ஊர் உணர்வு உண்டாகியது...

*   *   *

The above essay was accomplished with much effort and many corrections from my father. Still, I think it manages to convey some of what I feel when I think of that elusive sentiment that is described by the word ūr in Tamil.

To give you a sense of the simplicity of the thoughts I am able to express and the difficulty I have articulating complex ideas in Tamil I have included, below, a translation (or re-translation) of what I have written in Tamil above.

*   *   *

Ūr...
A small plant requires soil to grow; in that same manner for a person's growth ūr is necessary. In ancient times land was important for people to live [a person's life was tied to the land]. In those places societies would have grown. On that ground that society will have built up a town (ūr)! The name of that town would signify the land, or the people living in the village, or the buildings of the town, or the government, or the temple from which the town took its name -- more than all of these -- equivalent with the town's name would be a people, a way of life, a culture!

The town in which I was born is not my town. I do not have a town to call my own. Due to the war in Sri Lanka, the children of Tamil people [who grew up abroad] do not understand the meaning of ūr. The countries in which we were born or raised -- moreover, the language of that country -- is not something we can claim as our own! Often our color or the way we speak might set us apart from society in these countries!

This is why I feel I am one who has lost his sense of home (ūr). However, when I visited Canada in June I got a sense of this feeling...

*   *   *

I had originally intended to continue the essay to describe my first experience visiting family by myself in Toronto, where a good number of my relatives live. However, the difficulty of communicating these simple ideas, and the errors which I made and then had to correct with the help of my father made me give up the exercise. At least having gotten this far felt like a personal triumph. I think that the sense of loss which I feel in relation to ūr is akin to the sense of loss I feel at finding it so difficult to express myself in my own language.

It's a bit of an uphill battle, but I persist when I can find the time. I try to read the news (BBC World Service in Tamil), poetry, stories, essays, or even personal blogs -- and more often than not I get through only a few sentences, looking up words as I go. I've developed a bit of a system for looking up words. My main resources are J. P. Fabricius's Tamil Dictionary (published in 1972 and hosted by the University of Chicago as one of their Digital Dictionaries of South Asia) which is good for literary forms of words but not so good for neologisms or some of the terminology found in the news. If I can't find the term there I look for the word on the Tamil Wikipedia using various permutations of the root (since Tamil is an agglutinative language) to try and tease out the meaning. It's tediously slow going and I don't retain all of the vocabulary, but I feel like it's worthwhile.

Anyway, thus ends my bilingual experiment. Hopefully the practice has done me some good...

~DC

Memoricide

 

(ↄ) May 2011, Husam Zakharia

... When the bombs and bullets aren't enough -- the eraser will do! The comic above was drawn by a close personal friend of mine, a Palestinian-American whose other art (including this comic) is showcased here. It's uncanny how much the bridges of solidarity built between struggles against injustice, discrimination, and oppression are more like mirrors -- wherein we see the same process of power exploiting the same tools for control: misinformation, repression, oblivion (to borrow a Zapatista expression). It is a process of destroying memories, rewriting histories; it is a process refuted by Edward W. Said in his 2003 Preface to his 1978 text, Orientalism, when describing the destruction of the Iraq National Library and Archive in the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion:

What our leaders and their intellectual lackeys seem incapable of understanding is that history cannot be swept clean like a blackboard, clean so that "we" might inscribe our own future there and impose our own forms of life for these lesser people to follow. (Preface, p. xviii)

 Reflected in my mind as I read these words -- once more I caught a glimpse of the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library -- and I felt a surge of the same defiance. The library in Jaffna has since been rebuilt, but the process of suppressing the memory and history of the suffering of Tamil people is still in effect: particularly in the context of the Sri Lankan government's refusal to acknowledge the UN Panel of Experts report (a.k.a. the Darusman Report) on alleged war crimes committed (by both sides) in the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009.

So to attempt to reconcile the concept of "memoricide" -- the systematic and  comprehensive erasure of the history of a people and their struggle against injustice -- we will attack the following key issues: (1) Memory (i.e. the recognition of injustice) as crucial to institutional integrity and as a precursor to honest reconciliation; (2) The importance of impartiality -- which cannot be separated from the corresponding pitfalls and the illusion created by confusing impartiality with symmetry; and (3) To whom does the responsibility of upholding the integrity of institutional memory fall?


On Memoricide:
Two years ago the government of Sri Lanka hailed with trumpets and fanfare the defeat of the LTTE and victory in the civil war that had plagued Sri Lanka (ostensibly) since 1983 (although the roots of the conflict go back much further -- some would say to Independence in 1948). And with the end of the war the government has heralded with equal celebration the beginning of an age of "reconciliation" -- complete with a (purportedly) South Africa-inspired reconciliation commission known as the Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation in 2010. However, it is now two years on and -- independent of the continued suffering of Tamil people living under military occupation, not to mention in poverty with limited access to resources -- the government continues to refuse to even acknowledge the memory of the war and the brutal scars left it upon the experiences of the Tamil people. I can say with conviction that there has been no good-faith effort on the part of the Sri Lankan government taken to bring about reconciliation -- in fact, even the bare minimum, i.e. an honest evaluation of the tragedy and the human cost of war, has not been done. The Commission on Lessons Learned, with it's severely watered-down findings and skewed, lackluster results, has produced -- I can imagine -- some trove of documents on the narratives of people whose lives have been ruined by the war; a mountain of data that I'm sure will never again be read, let alone acted upon. This severe historical nearsightedness -- now with the rejection of the UN report -- is another link in the chain that the Sri Lankan government would love to use to wrap up Sri Lankan Tamil history and culture and throw it in the sea.

This is not the first time our memories have been expunged from the "official record". As a part of their project to remake Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese and Buddhist nation politicians, and academics, citing the Mahavamsa, made a case for the historical continuity and the antiquity of the Sinhalese presence in Sri Lanka. Nevermind the hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence, or the archaeological finds (including potsherds with Tamil Script in Jaffna) that suggest that Tamils have lived in Sri Lanka at least as long as the Sinhalese. The government (and at times the population) conveniently forgets these facts to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from the massacre of their brothers and sisters -- whom they would much rather call foreigners. This is a truth that we, as Tamils, must remember as well -- we must cling to the understanding that Tamils and Sinhalese are both Sri Lankans with compassion and hope if reconciliation is ever to succeed.

This is the message of A. Sivanandan's novel When Memory Dies, published in 1997 -- the book makes the argument that if reconciliation is to succeed we cannot forget our common heritage and our shared history. This is the same appeal made by the Zapatistas to the "civil society" of Mexico and the world -- when they claim at once to be Indians and Mexicans -- invoking as the colors of their rebellion the flag of Mexico. I wonder if such a consciousness is not beyond us, as Tamils -- continuing to struggle against oppression in the aftermath of open warfare. More on this later...

There is one specific memory that I would like to share (at the risk of the Sri Lankan government accusing me of digging up old ghosts): that is, the police attack on the 1974 World Tamil Research Conference. This incident is first and foremost an example of a direct attack on Tamil culture as an institution; the police in this instance were very literally attacking Tamil history, both in the sense of the assembled scholars and of the historic event (the first and last of its kind to take place in Sri Lanka). But more personally, I remember searching for the details of this event a few years ago, while trying to help a friend with a project on the war in Sri Lanka. I remember having the surreal experience of being absolutely unable to find any details regarding this event -- an event which I knew happened, because my father was there -- in a "credible" source (i.e., one that could be used in a research paper). The only sources I found were first hand accounts or commemoration articles posted on "pro-Tamil" websites. This was an event that I would think would be central to illustrating the grievances of the Tamil people -- an attack on their culture, history, and heritage -- and I could not find any discussion of it anywhere!

This problem seems chronic -- when coupled with the nearsightedness of the current regime, especially in their approaches to reconciliation, the only thing that can be said is that there is a fundamental lack of sincerity and more importantly integrity in the reconciliation process. There is a glaring lack of meaningful discussion about Tamil grievances (minus some pandering, half-hearted talks with Tamil political leaders), and a concerted effort to sweep government abuses under the rug while playing up the "terrorist" nature of the LTTE (and the "heroic" role of the government in stopping them).

The necessity of institutional integrity in the reconciliation process goes hand in hand with the importance of impartiality. Impartiality, I believe, is the most difficult standard for the reconciliation process. Even proponents of the Darusman Report -- for all its third-party "objectivity" -- fall prey to a type of fallacy. Many, predominantly Western, news agencies have equated the impartiality of the Darusman Report with the fact that it makes allegations of war crimes committed by both sides. The underlying assumption here is that the magnitude and impact of war crimes committed by each side is equivalent -- however, making such an assumption crucially undermines the reconciliation process! Such assumptions, though common in the West, are blind to the asymmetry of abuses -- the imbalance of power concentrated in the hands of the government means that: (a) abuses committed by the government impact the Tamil civilian population more heavily and pervasively than LTTE attacks on civilians; (b) LTTE abuses, undertaken out of desperation, (unintentionally or intentionally) hurt their own (Tamil) civilian population compounding their woes; (c) the LTTE is no longer a factor (which can be said -- cynically, perhaps -- to be their "punishment") -- meaning that the only institutional entity that can be held accountable is the government; because (d) any former LTTE members are now civilians, in name and in deed, and therefore, attempting to hold the Tamil civilians en masse accountable for the LTTE's actions (vis-à-vis their leadership's decisions) is tantamount to collective punishment.

That is not to say that we Tamils are exempt from the responsibilities that come with reconciliation. The Tamil people, especially those of us in the diaspora, are among the few who can hold the Sri Lankan government accountable to history and memory. Though, that is not to say that we should ourselves forget: the importance of dignity; the feeling of unity, of compassion; and the meaning of integrity. It is our responsibility not to let our discourse devolve into the competing propaganda that characterized the discussion about the situation in Sri Lanka while the war was going on. At the same time, we have a responsibility to give voice to the situation as it exists "on the ground" in Sri Lanka for our Tamil brothers and sisters -- although, we should also reach out to Sinhalese organisations and individuals who are guided by good faith.

There is a reason it was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa -- without truth there is no reconciliation, and without integrity there is no truth. Therefore, discipline in our discourse, as well as in our minds, is paramount -- we must be committed to restoring Sri Lanka to a land of peace and dignity if we are ever to take pride in our heritage or find promise in our future.

Forgive me for the long post! There were a number of ideas that I wanted to express, hopefully I still managed some semblance of cohesion. To conclude, I want to emphasize the theme that was present in the beginning: Sri Lanka is not special -- "memoricide" is common in conflicts around the world, and I think, in addition to integrity, solidarity makes a fine weapon! So long as our narratives continue to intersect, and our stories continue to be mirrors, we will share in each others' memories and push forward towards justice.

~DC

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...