This thesis examines masculinity in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora through two ritual practices, kavat&dotbelow;i and viratam. I argue that these practices are expressions of masculine identity and articulations of anxiety rooted in the refugee experience. Kavat&dotbelow;i, a ritual piercing and ecstatic dance, and viratam, a rigorous fast, reconstruct masculinities fragmented by expatriation and the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Through ritual performance, men fashion themselves as the selfless heroes of traditional Tamil literature without negating their fluency as modern Tamil-Canadians. By voicing rupture and enacting reprieve, the men who perform these rites incur individual catharsis. New non-Brahmin masculine identities that draw their authority from renunciation and asceticism as opposed to social privilege emerge in this diasporic context. Employing analyses of literature, political propaganda, and ethnography this thesis demonstrates the powerful relationship between ritual performance and masculine identity. In kavat&dotbelow;i and viratam, the male body becomes the site of contested personal, political, and religious narratives.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2001.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This dissertation is about an anti-caste movement among Dalits (the oppressed as untouchable) in South India, the Parayar. Since the late 19th century, members of this caste, and a few others from Tamil-speaking areas, have been choosing to convert to Buddhism based on conscience and conviction. This phenomenon of religious conversion-social transformation is this study's focus. By combining archival research of Parayar's writings among Tamil Buddhists, as these Parayar, settled in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, are called, I have attempted to understand this movement ethno-historically. In pre-colonial times, though the sub-continent's societies were hierarchical, the hierarchies were fluid and varied: i.e., the high-low or self-other dichotomies were neither fixed nor based on a single principle. The most significant effect of the encounter of British Colonialism and India was to precipitate an unprecedented master-dichotomy of singular and absolute form of self and other, as colonizer and the colonized. This had three consequences. (a) India was itself seen as singular and served as the Self to the colonial Other in an absolute dichotomy; (b) the role of essentializing the Indian Self was assumed by the brahmin; (c) this in turn resulted in an internal dichotomy between the brahmin-essential self and the non-brahmin-non-essential other. The means chosen to fix this dichotomy was to nominate the non-essential other's paradigmatic representation, the Dalit. I intend to read against the grain of the binary logic that was inaugurated at the moment of the colonial encounter by means of Tamil Buddhists' oppositional, reconstructional, and representationaldiscursive practices.

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study of the cultural formations of moral and political community among Tamils displaced and dispersed by three decades of war and political violence in Sri Lanka. Drawing on twenty months of field research among Tamils living in Toronto, Canada and Tamil Nadu, India, I inquire into the histories, discourses, and practices of diasporic activism at the end of war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Tamils abroad were mobilized to protest the war, culminating in months of spectacular mass demonstrations in metropolitan cities around the world. Participant-observation among activists and their families in diaspora neighborhoods and refugee camps, and their public events and actions, as well as semi-structured interviews, media analysis and archival work, reveal how “diaspora” has become a capacious site of political becoming for the identification and mobilization of Tamils within, across, and beyond-nation states and their borders. Part One of this study considers how migration and militancy have historically transformed Tamil society, giving rise to a diasporic politics with competing ethical obligations for Tamils living outside Sri Lanka. Chapters One and Two describe and analyze how distinct trajectories of migration and settlement led to diverse forms of social and political action among diaspora Tamils during Sri Lanka’s 2002 ceasefire and peace process. Chapter Three turns to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka to contrast narratives about the emergence of Tamil politics, nationalism and militancy with diaspora narratives developed through life history interviews with activists. Taken together, these chapters provide a layered social and historical context for the ethnography of Tamil diaspora life and activism. Part Two of the dissertation ethnographically explores how and why Tamils in Canada and India protested the recent war, soliciting their states, national and transnational publics, and each other to “take immediate action” on behalf of suffering civilians. Chapter Four examines diaspora community formation and activism in Toronto, a city with the largest population of Sri Lankan Tamils outside Asia, in the wake of Canada’s ban on the LTTE. Chapter Five turns to refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, India, to discuss how camp life shaped refugee politics and activism, while Chapter Six follows the narratives of two migrants waiting and preparing to migrate from India to the West. Chapter Seven examines how Tamil activists in Toronto and Tamil Nadu publicly invoked, represented, and performed suffering to mobilize action against the war. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the modes of Tamil migration, asylum-seeking, and diaspora activism that emerged in response to the war’s end and its aftermaths. In their actions of protest and dissent, I argue that Tamils from Sri Lanka create new modes of belonging and citizenship out of transnational lives forged from wartime migration and resettlement in multicultural and pluralist states. A political subject of “Tamil diaspora” has thus emerged, and continues to shape Sri Lanka’s post-war futures. This ethnography contributes to scholarly debates on violence, subjectivity and agency; the nation-state and citizenship; and the politics of human rights and humanitarianism at the intersections of diaspora, refugee and South Asian studies.

This thesis analyses the Tamil minority problem in Sri Lanka in the light of self-determination and state sovereignty. State practice with respect to self-determination is discussed, in particular cases of Aaland Island, Katanga, Biafra and Bangladesh. Historical background, location and composition, as it relates to the Tamil minority problem in the country, are described, and the specific issue of self-determination in the Sri Lankan context of secession is dealt with. The research attempts to ascertain the legal conditions which would warrant secession. / Master of Laws (Hons.)

I examine the concept of "culture" being promoted in the Canadian policy of multiculturalism and by Tamil refugees safeguarding their culture in Quebec. I take culture in its relation to power as my focus. I explore what culture means to the Tamils, and how the Canadian ideology of multiculturalism is implicated in the way Tamil "culture keepers" (re)construct their cultural identity. / This research addresses popular "multiculturalism" movements which use anthropological notions of culture but fail to problematize the notion of culture itself. I illustrate how and why the concept of culture is itself culturally embedded and historically shaped, and thus dense with political implications. / It also addresses anthropological approaches which avoid realist ethnography because of its political implications. I argue that a focus on culture in its relation to power is necessary in order to examine anthropology's own continuing involvement in imperialism.

Thesis (LL.M. (Hons.)) -- University of Western Sydney, 2005. / Master of Laws, University of Western Sydney, School of Law. Includes bibliography.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Leipzig, 1999.