Archives de catégorie : Publications récentes

World Development – article “Lives in Exile”

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World Development
Lives in exile? Perspectives on the resettlements of Sri Lankan refugees in
Tamil Nadu, India
Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud

This article looks at subjectivities and regimes of homing from a position of liminality and questions the placements dynamics displayed by Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu, India. Based on long-term and longitudinal fieldwork conducted in Keezhputhupattu refugee camp near Pondicherry between 2010 and 2023, this study analyses the experience of the refugees, which combines a “know-how” that they have developed due to a life in exile since 1983, which is linked, among other things, to a sometimes well-developed diasporic network; and a restrictive agency that has been granted to them by the Indian and Tamil Nadu authorities, which places them in a regime that is intended to be exceptional. The results of the study are significant and show how families spanning three generations may reproduce their new normalcy and negotiate their lives.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24000998

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Publication récente sur Sri Lanka et les diasporas

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Les minorités tamoules à Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour

Identités, intégrations socio-spatiales et transnationalités

janvier 2024

Delon Madavan

et ouvrage propose, à travers une analyse tant spatiale que politique et culturelle, dans une perspective comparative à l’aide de trois terrains asiatiques (Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour), d’étudier les différents modes et degrés d’intégration des minorités tamoules, tant localement (évaluer leur citadinité), nationalement (évaluer leur citoyenneté) que mondialement (situer leurs transnationalités diasporiques).
L’analyse des politiques menées par la puissance coloniale, puis par les trois États indépendants à l’égard des minorités, permet de mieux comprendre leurs impacts sur le sentiment d’identification et d’intégration des Tamouls à la nation, ainsi que sur leur répartition dans ces villes. À l’échelle locale, les politiques urbaines développées par les États, qui selon les cas préservent ou détruisent les
ethnoterritoires, transforment l’empreinte urbaine et la pratique de la ville des Tamouls et influent sur la façon dont ils perçoivent leur appartenance à la nation.
Enfin, les liens transnationaux et les dynamiques migratoires internationales contemporaines des Tamouls dans ces trois pays ont aussi des conséquences sur leur identification et leur intégration

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New publication on Sri Lanka

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Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka

Edited By Kanchana N. Ruwanpura, Amjad Mohamed Saleem

2024, Routledge

ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka offers a comprehensive survey of issues facing the island country and an overview delineating some key moments in the country’s contemporary polity, economy, and sociality.

This book outlines aspects and influences foundational to understanding a country defined by its economic and political turmoil, and rift with public distrust in today’s shifting geopolitics. Chapters by various established scholars highlight this book’s pivotal contribution in situating Sri Lanka’s turmoil and deprivation in this current conjuncture.

The handbook is structured in seven parts:

  • Nations and Nationalism
  • Politics, State and Institutions
  • Economy and Political Economy
  • Work and Life
  • Environment and Environmental Politics
  • Society, Social Systems, and Culture
  • Moment of Flux, Looking Ahead

Each part includes on average six chapters covering the social sciences and humanities to survey emerging and cutting-edge areas of the study of Sri Lanka. Multi-disciplinary in focus, the book also includes an introductory section and concluding section, which creates the space and platform for senior, mid-ranking, and junior academics to engage in dynamic conversation with each other about contemporary Sri Lanka. Including scholarship from Sri Lankan experts, the handbook creates academic output, which chimes with broader calls in academia on decolonising the academic landscape.

An important reference work, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students from wideranging academic disciplines and a focus on Sri Lanka, Asian and South Asian studies, sociology, environmental politics, development, labour, management, political economy and anthropology.

Open access version available at: Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka | Kanchana N. Ruwanpura,

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Post-war literature in Sri Lanka

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 The Routledge Companion to Sinhala Fiction From Post-War SriLanka

Edited By Madhubhashini Disanayaka Ratnayake

2024, Routledge India This companion presents a critical collection of Sinhala resistance literature from Sri Lanka. It includes translated short stories and excerpts from Sinhala novels, written after the civil war in the country. Featuring national award-winning writers, the selected texts share a common theme of resistance as the writers write against an exclusivist nationalism that was propagated through mass media and platforms of party politics in Sri Lanka during the war.

The volume addresses crucial issues such as the fate of civilians in war, the role of religion in Sri Lankan polity, media censorship, the experience of women in war, as well as the current education system and youth problems in present day Sri Lanka. It highlights an alternate discourse that runs among the ethnic Sinhala group and contributes to the overall movement towards peace and reconciliation among the different ethnic communities in Sri Lanka.

A unique addition to the growing oeuvre of translated Sinhala literature, the companion will be indispensable to students, scholars, and researchers of ethnic studies, war and peace studies, peace and conflict studies, literature, cultural studies, political sociology, and South Asian studies, particularly those interested in Sri Lankan literature.

Uprooting the Pumpkin

Selections from Sri Lankan Tamil Literature, 1950-2012

Edited by Chelva Kanaganayakam

2016, Oxford University Press

 

The socio-political transformation of Sri Lanka that began in the 1970s, and continued for several decades thereafter, has been a major factor in shaping a literature that brought new and innovative forms of expression. This anthology brings together around forty poems, fifteen short stories, and one play in translation by eminent Sri Lankan literateurs, scholars, and translators dealing with Sri Lankan life at home and abroad spanning a period of sixty years. Voicing the agony, anxiety, and hardship of migration from different perspectives, this broadly representative collection is an important contribution to the study of exile literature.

 

Many Roads Through Paradise: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Literature

Edited by Shyam Selvadurai

2014, Penguin India

Shyam Selvadurai pieces together the best of Sri Lankan poetry and fiction in this anthology. From the Sinhala and Tamil writers of the 1950s to diasporic writers of today, from stories of love and longing to those of brutality and death, this masterfully constructed anthology will give you a rich sense Sri Lanka’s history, its people and the stories they have to tell.

From Martin Wickramasinghe’s Gamperaliya (1944), the first modern Sinhala novel, to the poetry of Puthuvai Ratnathurai, the official bard of the LTTE, who was among the thousands who disappeared after the end of the civil war in 2009, this anthology on Sri Lankan literature draws a long arc.

 

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Archiving memories

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‘Herstories’ of Resilience and Hope

“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.” – Chimamanda Nģozi Adichie

Herstories project is based on the idea that generally, women and children are the most affected by war and peace. Yet, women’s voices are the least heard mostly because they are oral histories, and are hardly ever recorded. As it passes from their memory and ours, it will also vanish from history.

HERSTORIES attempts to address this gap, by collecting mothers’ narratives from the ground (South, East and North Sri Lanka). Primarily because mothers are guardians of memory – narrating stories, collecting photographs and keeping the family history alive – when a mother is asked her story, she speaks not only of herself but of her family, neighbours and village. As a result she creates a composite view of a time period, a place and a set of identities that is truly unique. Together, these lives of others even though very personal individual stories, create a collective set of narratives that add faces, names, places, character, hopes, dreams, challenges, strength, courage and ‘flesh’ to an era in Sri Lankan history that must not be forgotten.

https://theherstoryarchive.org/

Extract:

Photo-essays Kilinochchi District

I want the best for my children

A mother of three from Kilinochchi speaks of her struggle to survive and wishes for a better future

English: I have three children. We had a terrible time during the war, no food, no water. We were in Manukulam when a shell struck my husband. I was 22 when he died. We lived in a refugee camp in Chettikulum for about a year after that. When their father died I told my children that they should not worry because I will take care of them. I always do my best to provide them with what they need. 

Tamil: எனக்கு மூன்று பிள்ளைகள். போர்நடந்த காலத்தில் உண்ண உணவோ குடிநீரோ இல்லாது நாம் மிகக் கஷ்டத்தை அனுபவித்தோம். நாம் மாங்குளத்தில் இருந்தபோது எனது கணவர் செல்லடிபட்டார். அவர் இறக்கும்போது எனக்கு 22 வயது. அதன் பின்னர் ஒரு வருட காலமாக நாம் செட்டிகுளத்திலுள்ள அகதி முகாமில் வசித்தோம். தகப்பன் இறந்தபோது எனது பிள்ளைகள் எதற்கும் கவலைப்படக்கூடாதெனவும் நான் அவர்களைப் பராமரிப்பேன் எனவும் கூறினேன். அவர்களுக்குத் தேவையானவற்றை வழங்குவதற்கு நான எப்போதும் என்னாலானதைச் செய்வேன். 

https://theherstoryarchive.org/photo-essays-kilinochchi/i-want-the-best-for-my-children/

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Books on caste in Sri Lanka

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Selvy Thiruchandran’s book, Caste and its multiple manifestations. A study of the caste system in Northern Sri Lanka (2021) is insightful and informative. Going through language forms and cultural practices that depict caste structures, the book also brings out a contrast between strategies in India and Sri Lanka with regard to avoiding caste: Referring to Periyar (1993) and Ambedkar, the author explains: “They both held the view that Hinduism was the biggest or the only cause for casteism. Ambedkar was perhaps ignorant of how Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have to be of a specific high caste to adorn the high positions of Buddhist order and institutions. Daniel’s ancestry was originally Hindu of the Turumbar caste, the lowest in the caste ladder. He was converted to Christianity and assumed the Christian name Daniel. Daniel raises the question through his novel whether conversion is the means of caste liberation. He answers in the negative and calls it, Kanai — a mirage/an illusion or an illusory image of water with inverted reflections.”

After mentioning the key figures who perpetrated caste-based structures (Arumugam Navalar) and those who fought against them (   , the author also deals with long-lasting consequences of caste, especially in the context of conflict. Speaking of the refugee camps set up after the end of the war, she refers to the socio-economic disadvantages that are accentuated by caste: “Does caste play a role in the lives of the people who live in the refugee camps? One could say that it starts very early in the composition of the inmates. Those of the high caste have escaped the violence of the war by migrating to other countries or by moving to the city of Colombo. They were also able to return to their former habitats during the periods of ceasefire and continue to live there. Those who belong to the lower strata of a caste became internal refugees. It is estimated that there is a disproportionate presence of the Panchamar caste in the refugee camps. (Silva, Sivapragasma and Thanges (2009:65) That they have to live for long periods in these centres (e.g. Alady camp) is symptomatic of continuing inability to move out due to lack of resources. In addition to this they also face a disadvantaged status by being subjected to other socially unjust discrimination relating to caste ” (page 137).

Ajith Balasuriya in Legacy of Palmyra: The Victims of Dual Horizontal Inequalities in Northern Sri Lanka (Colombo University Press, 2023) uses caste as the main focus in analysing the conflict in Sri Lanka. “Considering the duality of the protracted conflict in Sri Lanka, this study clearly identifies caste-based socio economic inequalities within the Tamil community as one of the fundamental causes of the conflict. Caste based socio-economic inequalities are not a unique phenomenon in the Tamil community, but parallels can be seen among the Sinhalese as well” (p 106).

“(…) this study argues that Horizontal Inequalities can be seen in a dual form within the ethnic Tamil community, among lower and upper castes. Lower-caste Tamils have been discriminated or affected by HIs twice. First, from the inequalities imposed by majority Sinhalese, and secondly from the inequalities from upper-caste Tamils who are a part of their own ethnic group” (107).

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Books on the war

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Beyond Check-points: Stories of Human Resilience in troubled Sri Lanka by Duleep de Chickera.The Diocese of Colombo, 2023.

Extracts:

Counting shells – How plantation Tamils joined the LTTE controlled areas
“The daily lives of these twice oppressed humans redefined human desperation. They were on their own, among their own and in need of protection from their own. Their presence served the cause of those near and far. They had to be there to churn out cadres with no questions asked; just as they produced the best tea in the world for the lowest possible wages with no questions asked. Decades of suppression had conditioned them to passively obey. They were the idea ingredients for a fascist regimes; the ‘indispensable-dispensable’, dressed in rubber slippers and fed with layers of indoctrination.”

People of conscience
“As several like Fr. Clifford were learning, it was daily doses of restrictions and not carefully clichée statements in impressive assembly halls that stimulated these conscience corners of human resilience. All the UN’s motions and all the parliaments of the world brought little relief when tyranny strode down lonely byways in the darkness of night.”

“If you happened to be the Tamil from beyond the border, you had to be Tiger on this side. This is the plain message I got again and again,” he sobbed. Hell, for the young Tamil fleeing the LTTE, was a place that moved with you.”

Beyond Checkpoints
“The check point culture was much, much more than the visible or the moment. Those who met there carried heavy baggage that had to be unpacked in a matter of moments. For the few who stood there through the day, the ability to observe, question, screen and ensure all was well with courtesy, a thousand times over, was commendable. For the many who passed through, the ability to be patient and understanding when questioned or searched several times a day, was equally commendable. That these interactions occurred without incident through the day and night, spoke volumes about the goodwill and co-operation between those who stood and those who moved.”

“But for now this is our life, looking into peoples’ bags and getting scolded by everyone. What to do, this is our fate.”

 

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De Lanerolle and the French Connection

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“The Odyssey and Living Legacy of sieur de la Nérolle.” Neptune Publications.
Yasmin Rajapakse, 2019.

 

 

Le livre en français

La Nérolle – Huguenot charentais de l’escadre de Perse à Ceylan (1672) 

Yasmin Rajapakse,
Gérard Narjoux (Traducteur)

Les Indes Savantes

Résumé

L’ambassadeur de France, le Sieur de La Nérolle, gravit la passerelle pour monter à bord du bateau le Triomphe de la Marine royale et n’en redescendit que pour mettre le pied sur le sable fin de Ceylan (Sri Lanka) à Trincomalee, le 21 mars 1672, durant le règne du roi Rajasinghe II (1635-1687). Il y passera le reste de sa vie, et y fera souche. Jusqu’à nos jours, ses descendants restent en contact avec La Nérolle (commune de Segonzac en Charente).
Cet ouvrage retrace l’histoire de ce noble charentais parti avec l’escadre de Perse, formidable flotte envoyée par Louis XIV pour concurrencer les Hollandais et établir un empire commercial dans l’océan Indien.

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LST New Publication Series – “පුරවැසි සංවාද”

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We are pleased to inform you that LST has initiated a new publication series that covers the ongoing issues in Sri Lanka. The publication will be published from Sinhala and Tamil languages.  
 
Please click HERE to download the full publication or download the attached PDF file.

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Online Museum of Memory and Coexistence

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The International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to launch its online Museum of Memory and Coexistence.  The museum will seek to celebrate diversity, coexistence, resilience and solidarity, while archiving social exclusion, loss, and personal trauma. 

​​It​ is part of a larger ICES initiative to explore the use of arts, and physical and digital spaces, to facilitate social healing, archive narratives of the past, and build creative spaces for talking about a shared future and non-recurrence.

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“‘I thought I was a bad son’: the emotional distance between migrants and their children” by Guy Gunaratne

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In 1951, Guy Gunaratne’s Sri Lankan father learned English by reading in a London bookshop. Almost 70 years later, the same shop sells his son’s novel.Guy Gunaratne considers their very different journeys.

To read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/02/story-father-immigrant-experience-guy-gunaratne?CMP=share_btn_fb

Source: The Guardian

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“Culture persane et médecine ayurvédique an Asie du Sud” Fabrizio Speziale

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Résumé. Cet ouvrage traite des interactions entre l’Ayurveda et la culture médicale persane en Asie du Sud. Il présente, pour la première fois, une étude du mouvement de traduction en persan des sources ayurvédiques qui a eu lieu à partir du XIVe siècle. L’image de la culture ayurvédique reflétée par les traités persans offre un nouvel éclairage sur l’histoire de l’Ayurveda à l’époque de l’hégémonie politique musulmane en Asie du Sud. Les traités persans appliquent de nouvelles catégories à l’analyse des matériaux traduits et ils transforment les modalités de présentation du savoir ayurvédique. En parallèle, l’ouvrage de Fabrizio Speziale aborde le phénomène symétrique de persanisation de l’univers intellectuel des médecins hindous qui, à travers l’apprentissage du persan, s’approprient des connaissances médicales de la culture musulmane.

English abstract. This book looks at the interactions between Āyurveda and Persian medical culture in South Asia. It presents, for the first time, a study of the translation movement of Ayurvedic sources into Persian, which took place from the 14th century onwards. The image of Ayurvedic culture emerging from Persian texts provides a new insight into the history of Āyurveda under Muslim political hegemony in South Asia. Persian treatises apply new categories to the analysis of translated materials and transform the way Ayurvedic knowledge is presented. At the same time, Fabrizio Speziale’s book deals with the symmetric phenomenon of Persanization of the Hindu physicians who, through the learning of Persian language, appropriated medical knowledge of Muslim culture.

 
À propos de l’auteur :

Fabrizio Speziale est Directeur d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris. Il a largement publié sur l’histoire de la médecine ayurvédique dans le monde indien et est le directeur de Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (www.perso-indica.net).

Fabrizio Speziale is Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Center for South Asian Studies, Paris. He has published extensively on the history of medicine in the Indo-Persianate world and is the chief editor of Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (www.perso-indica.net).
 

Google books preview:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=HntTDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false  

https://brill.com/abstract/title/35649

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“Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste among South Asian Americans” by Equality Lab

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“This report came out of a community driven survey conducted in 2016 and has now emerged as a crucial document that both presents the first evidence of Caste discrimination in the US and helps to map the internal hegemonies within our communities. It also provides insight into how the South Asian community balances the experiences of living under white supremacy while replicating Caste, anti-Dalitness, and anti-Blackness.

As the South Asian American community, we are uniquely situated to redeem the errors of history as well as set the tone for a progressive conversation around Caste, both here and in countries of origin.”

via: https://www.equalitylabs.org/caste-survey-2018

To download directly the report: https://nofile.io/f/OXRXwaHU0dG/Caste+Survey+2018+Full.pdf

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“Friday et Friday” de Antonythasan Jesuthasan alias Shobasakthi, en librairie à partir du 5 avril 2018

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“Friday et Friday” de Antonythasan Jesuthasan alias Shobasakthi.

Nouvelles traduites du tamoul (Sri Lanka) par Faustine Imbert-Vier,

Élisabeth Sethupathy, et Farhaan Wahab

Une enfance à Allaipiddy, au nord de Sri Lanka, la guérilla tamoule, l’errance, l’exil en France… Autant de motifs et de personnages qui habitent l’œuvre d’Antonythasan Jesuthasan : Diana la Ronde, pétrifiée par le bruit des bombes, qui remue ciel et terre pour obtenir son abri ; Pratheeban, le demandeur d’asile, floué pour une poignée de kilomètres ; les 37 Mouvements de rébellion, bien décidés à se tailler la part du lion ; Layla, la petite dame du numéro 7, que son nom de code – Oiseau jaune – finit par trahir, ou encore le chevalier de Kandi, condamné à devenir un coq en pâte aux frais du Comité central.
À travers tous ces portraits, c’est aussi celui du narrateur qui se dessine, tout en humour et en finesse – le roman d’une vie, le miroir d’une âme et d’un peuple qui sait que c’est parfois en perdant de vue le rivage que le cœur se remet à flot.

A propos de l’auteur

Si l’on connaît son visage grâce au superbe Dheepan de Jacques Audiard (Palme d’or à Cannes en 2015) dont il est l’acteur principal, Antonythasan Jesuthasan est surtout écrivain reconnu – auteur de quatre romans, plusieurs recueils de nouvelles et de nombreux essais, pièces de théâtre et scénarios.

Antonythasan Jesuthasan – alias Shobasakthi – est né en 1967 à Allaipiddy, un village à l’extrême nord de Sri Lanka. Ancien enfant soldat du Mouvement de libération des Tigres tamouls, il arrive en France en 1993 où il obtient l’asile politique. Il vit désormais à Paris.

Son œuvre est traduite pour la première fois en français. L’adaptation cinématographique de la magnifique nouvelle Friday, qui se déroule dans la communauté tamoule du quartier de la Chapelle, à Paris, est en cours de réalisation.

Le dossier de presse du livre est accessible à travers ce lien : dossier_presse-572162dp-mars-18pdf

Une première revue du livre a été rédigé par Véronique-Atasi et peut-être lu sur son blog atasi.over-blog.com

Pour plus d’information, vous pouvez consulter le site de la maison d’édition Zulma qui a publié Friday and Friday.

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New articles on religiosity among Tamil Hindu youths in Norway by Valen Kleive

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Hildegunn Valen Kleive has recently published two articles (one in English and another in Norwegian) looking at religiosity among young Tamil Hindus in rural Norway.

The first (in English), ‘Belonging and Discomfort: Young Hindu Religiosity in Rural Norway’ is published in the Nordic Journal of Religion and Society and may be accessed here.

The second ‘Mestring og balanse. Trekk ved ung hindureligiøsitet’ is published in Prismet and may be accessed here. An English translation will follow at a later date.

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