published_or_final_version / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This study explored public library provision to the Tamil Community in Singapore using a focus group methodology. Results of the study were analysed and implications for the library services for the Tamil community in Singapore outlined. Improvement is needed in collections, facilities, programming and services, particularly in the area of provision to young people. Among other suggestions, the participants proposed an Internet portal in Tamil. Many indicated that the library could help in promoting the usage of Tamil language in Singapore through facilitating the reading and use of the Tamil language. Participants perceived this as vital to preserve the Tamil culture in Singapore and ensure its survival as part of the country’s unique cultural heritage in the future. The Tamil language among the other Indian languages has been given official status in Singapore, and this recognition of Tamil as a national language has given the Tamils intrinsic satisfaction. The language provides them with a living link to their ethnic culture. They believe the library can help them regain their cultural identities and also assist them in repositioning themselves well in Singaporean society. The contribution of this study to the professional literature is the idea of cultural identity being central in public library services to special user groups.

The thesis explores the role and impact of the internet on Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora political activism, focusing on both the experiences of political activists and on an analysis of web content related to diaspora activism. The central argument of the thesis is based around the relationship between political agents and cyberspace. The thesis argues that the political strategies and tactics adopted in the Tamil diasporan political sphere have changed with an increased dependence on the internet changing with it the politics and lives of individual activists. Cyberspace is presented as a site of power struggle with power as both an objective and source in micro-political struggles. The thesis also highlights the double sense of space attributed to cyberspace, both as a space facilitating political activism and as a qualitatively new space for politics. It traces the manifestation of violence in cyberspace based on its extensive reach and the collateral damage it can cause in political conflicts. Also the thesis argues that these intense web engagements for domination and resistance within the diaspora communities cause the emergence of new political priorities in Tamil diaspora politics. These do not parallel political developments in the conflict back in Sri Lanka. The thesis is based on research conducted from 2005 to 2008 during heightened rivalries between supporters of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and dissident Tamil diaspora political activists which involved the extensive use of cyberspace for political purposes. The empirical research consisted of an integrated framework of online and offline research. The offline research was based on eight months of fieldwork in London including interviews with Tamil diaspora political activists across the spectrum from pro-LTTE to anti-LTTE dissidents. The online research was based on the technique of Web Sphere Analysis, which enables a framing of web content into a coherent unit of analysis.

This thesis explores the workings of the information technology (IT) industry in the South Indian city of Chennai, and its impact on middle-class identity formation. It adopts a distinctly gendered approach in its analysis, while also commenting on themes that travel beyond conventional feminist research. It draws on a variety of qualitative sources, including 61 interviews with IT employees, managers and executives, diversity consultants, IT union leaders, labour rights activists, bureaucrats and college placement officers; participant observation at IT conferences, protest meetings, and political events, as well as limited observation on the 'office floor'; and diverse documentary material, including government and industry reports, websites and legal frameworks. The aim of this narrative-driven thesis is to capture some of the complexities of IT employees' lived realities, contextualised within the local and global processes that impact this transnational industry. The thesis begins with an exploration of specific practices within the industry that contribute to employees' heightened insecurity and situates fledgling attempts at collective action on labour issues within performances of 'middleclassness'. It then unpacks the construction of gender roles by and through the industry, while identifying sites of contestation and agency for employees. This is followed by a closer examination of the industry's diversity and inclusion initiatives, specifically those concerning workplace sexual harassment, as seen through a socio-legal lens. Finally, it problematises the hegemonic figure of the 'techie' through an analysis of IT employees' multiple identities and their articulation within the workplace. Collectively, the data chapters challenge the normativity of discursive framings of employees and policies within the industry. More broadly, this thesis calls for 'thick descriptions' (Geertz 1973: 6) of labour relations in local contexts, while emplacing these within transnational capital circuits. It also argues for a more nuanced interrogation of the fluidity of class formation through employment in certain industries, particularly in postcolonial settings.

This study of mural painting in southern India aims to change the received narrative of painting in South Asia not only by bringing to light a body of work previously understudied and in many cases undocumented, but by showing how that corpus contributes vitally to the study of South Indian art and history. At the broadest level, this dissertation reworks our understanding of a critical moment in South Asian history that has until recently been seen as a period of decadence, setting the stage for the rise of colonial power in South Asia. Militating against the notion of decline, I demonstrate the artistic, social, and political dynamism of this period by documenting and analyzing the visual and inscriptional content of temple and palace murals donated by merchants, monastics, and political elites. The dissertation consists of two parts: documentation and formal analysis, and semantic and historical analysis. Documentation and formal analysis of these murals, which decorate the walls and ceilings of temples and palaces, are foundational for further art historical study. I establish a rubric for style and date based on figural typology, narrative structure, and the way in which text is incorporated into the murals. I clarify the kinds of narrative structures employed by the artists, and trace how these change over time. Finally, I identify the three most prevalent genres of painting: narrative, figural (as portraits and icons), and topographic. One of the outstanding features of these murals, which no previous scholarship has seriously considered, is that script is a major compositional and semantic element of the murals. By the eighteenth century, narrative inscriptions in the Tamil and Telugu languages, whose scripts are visually distinct, consistently framed narrative paintings. For all of the major sites considered in this dissertation, I have transcribed and translated these inscriptions. Establishing a rubric for analysis of the pictorial imagery alongside translations of the text integrated into the murals facilitates my analysis of the function and iconicity of script, and application of the content of the inscriptions to interpretation of the paintings. My approach to text, which considers inscriptions to be both semantically and visually meaningful, is woven into a framework of analysis that includes ritual context, patronage, and viewing practices. In this way, the dissertation builds an historical account of an understudied period, brings to light a new archive for the study of art in South Asia, and develops a new methodology for understanding Nayaka-period painting. Chapters Three, Four, and Five each elaborate on one of the major genres identified in Chapter Two: narrative, figural, and topographic painting. My study of narrative focuses on the most popular genre of text produced at this time, talapuranam (Skt. sthalapurana), as well as hagiographies of teachers and saints (guruparampara). Turning to figural depiction, I take up the subject of portraiture. My study provides new evidence of the active patronage by merchants, religious and political elites through documentation and analysis of previously unrecorded donor inscriptions and donor portraits. Under the rubric of topographic painting I analyze the representation of sacred sites joined together to create entire sacred landscapes mapped onto the walls and ceilings of the temples. Such images are closely connected to devotional (bhakti) literature that describes and praises these places and spaces. The final chapter of the dissertation proposes new ways of understanding how the images were perceived and activated by their contemporary audiences. I argue that the kinesthetic experience of the paintings is central to their concept, design, and function.

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.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were branded as the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in January of 2008. The Tamil Tigers are held responsible for perfecting the use of suicide bombers, inventing the suicide belt, being the first to use women in suicide attacks, and killing nearly 4,000 people in the one year prior to 2008. The LTTE is the only terrorist organization to have assassinated two world leaders, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa. They were also the first to acquire air power and their strike on Sri Lanka’s World Trade Center was the largest terrorist assault before the September 11 attacks in 2001. It took the government of Sri Lanka over thirty years to rid the country of this powerful terrorist group. This paper will investigate what caused the fall of the Tamil Tigers. In my second chapter, I will evaluate the policies and military strategies adopted by the government. My third chapter will look at the role of international actors in the conflict and their effects. Lastly, in my fourth chapter, I will examine key mistakes made by the LTTE that may have led to its own demise. In chapter five, I will analyze three possible causes for the defeat of the LTTE and what was the most significant in bringing its fall. It will also include its potential for replication in other countries and effects on foreign policy moving forward.

Tamil cinema is marked by its remarkable output of films and reception across the globe. More than 5000 films were produced in Tamil during the last century alone, and Tamil films have a longer and denser history of reception among the South East Asian diaspora--in countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, mainly among the Tamilians and other South Indians--than films made in any other Indian language. The studios of Madras, arguably the most influential in shaping a film industry in terms of its form and content outside the classical Hollywood system, were at the center of Tamil cinema's productivity during the defining decades of the 1940s and 50s, a period marked by British Rule, the Second World War, India's independence, and the electoral politics of the Dravidian movement. However, a sustained and scholarly study of this history has been marked by its absence, primarily due to the enormity of the task, the challenges associated with data collection, and the availability of archival materials. Therefore, my primary objective in this dissertation is to fill this void, and study the most eventful period in the history of the Madras studios (1940-57) when they produced their landmark and seminal films. An understanding of the history of the studios and a detailed reading of their major films sheds light on the complex intersection of the cultural, economic, and political factors which shaped the studios and their owners, and the type of productions they were interested in. Tamil cinema is often criticized as verbose and theatrical mainly due to lack of parallel and art cinema movements like in neighboring states of Kerala and Karnataka. The "Madrasi Picture" has become the convenient way to label a melodramatic tearjerker juxtaposed with comedy. My challenge to this perception in this thesis, therefore, is to foreground Tamil Cinema's theatrical roots embedded in folk traditions and the Parsi theatre, and its ability to navigate through multiple influences, and yet retain a specificity of its own in terms of innovative genres, narrative devices, and formats which keep significantly influencing Indian popular cinema.

This study endeavours to explore the diasporic processes of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sydney, their cultural life, their migration patterns, their long-distance nationalism and their audiovisual media consumption. In doing so it presents a social profile of the Sri Lankan Tamils in Sydney while exploring the communities' demographical and topographical features. The ethnic unrest in Sri Lanka and the changing immigration policies in Australia were the major factors influencing migration of the Sri Lankan Tamils to Australia. This study delves into the various aspects of everyday Tamil life, like Tamil periodicals, associations, films and schools. It is an attempt to understand the individual, cross-cultural and communal dynamics of the way these cultural institutions are used by Sri Lankan Tamils in Sydney to maintain and negotiate their cultural identity in Australia. / Master of Arts (Hons)

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.)