“Plucking the Stars (நட்சத்திரங்களைப் பறித்தல்). Arulraj Ulaganathan” by B. Skanthakumar (Polity)

Plucking the Stars (நட்சத்திரங்களைப் பறித்தல்) conjures memory from Arulraj Ulaganathan’s childhood on a tea plantation in Haputale, where he was born in 1992 and raised in a line room; as well as those of generations before him on a cruel incomplete 200-year passage from coolies to citizens. He wants, he says, to give “voice through my art to the silenced histories of the Malaiyaham [Hill Country]”. And so he does, in ways that stir and stay with us.

The artist’s second solo exhibition ran between 14 and 31 January 2026 at the Curado Art Space on Park Road in Colombo, spread across its second and third floors, which are accessible by stairs only. It was staged in collaboration with the ninth edition of Colomboscope; whose artistic director Natasha Ginwala crafted with the artist the useful notes for the catalogue from which I take my cues below.

The artiste’s exhibition full review by B. Skanthakumar is available on Polity Website

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

anthony’s Goreau-Ponceaud’s article’s “Lives in exile? Perspectives on the resettlements of Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu, India” published in World Development Volume 180, August 2024 is readable for free there

Abstract

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.

” 16,000 SL refugee kids born in India stateless” by The Times of India

“About16,000 children born to Sri Lankan refugees in India are stateless since they do not have Sri Lankan citizenship and enjoy a mere refugee status.”

Many of us who never physically crossed any borders were yet born as refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people in foreign countries, as was I. Unlike me, however, most of these children will remain stateless for much of their life, if not all of it. For some it may take ten years, for others it may take a whole life to become ‘human’.

via: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/16000-SL-refugee-kids-born-in-India-stateless/articleshow/46094412.cms