Papers by Anushiya Ramaswamy
Callaloo, 2003
When Smita Narula, under the auspices of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch brought out Brok... more When Smita Narula, under the auspices of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch brought out Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables," the book was hailed as a major milestone in documenting the ways Caste definitions are used to oppress whole populations. By presenting first-person account interviews with more than 300 affected Dalits, and also lawyers, activists, and government officials involved in dealing with caste-based violence in India, Broken People provided powerful and alternative accounts of Caste discrimination that was able to counteract the official versions put out by the local, state and Central government authorities. Published in 1999, Broken People was one of the key evidences used by Dalit groups at the UN sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa in September, 2001, when they argued for the term "Caste" to be read similarly as "Race." There is nothing new about activities like the project by Human Rights Watch that attempts to provide some kind of legitimacy-usually in print form in our discursively organized societies-to the voices of the nameless victims whose very status as victims denies them of any other subjectivity. When Ida B. Wells-Barnett set out to document in her Red Record the particulars of individual cases of lynching in the late 1800s-in the year 1882 alone there were 161 instances of lynching in the United States-she sought to provide a detailed and particularized set of reasons for the violence against black bodies that contradicted the officially given, singular reason of black male sexuality. When three successful, black shop owners were lynched in Memphis, Wells-Barnett openly attacked the ideal of White Womanhood that was used as an umbrella to cover all forms of brutalities against the black community. In retaliation, her newspaper office was burned out; in turn, Wells-Burnett responded by styling herself as the "Exiled," an identity that allowed her mobility and extended the field of her social activism (see Patricia A. Schecter's Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform 1880-1930). If Wells-Barnett functioned as an activist in the public sphere, constantly questioning the Jim Crow legislations of her time (she had her Rosa Park moment too, and sued the public transportation company that forcibly made her move), the speakers in Remembering Jim Crow bear witness to the multiple ways in which they resisted, responded, survived, and slid around the dehumanizing edicts of the segregationist policies of their time. An ambitious, marvelously imaginative, massively coordinated and executed enterprise, the Behind the Veil Project took more than two decades to collect, edit, organize and present the more than 1,265 interviews collected and now
Society and Culture in South Asia
My essay looks at the Sri Lankan-born Tamil poet Cheran Rudhramoorthy’s recent poetry collections... more My essay looks at the Sri Lankan-born Tamil poet Cheran Rudhramoorthy’s recent poetry collections, Ajnar (‘Trauma’, 2018) and Tinai Mayakkam allathu Nenjodu Killarthal (‘Binary Overlapping or Struggles with the Heart’, 2019). Published almost a decade after the final war—the massacre of Sri Lankan Tamils by the state’s armed forces at Mullivaikal on 18 May 2009—these poems provide a searing counter-narrative to the official justifications. The finality of what took place at Mullivaikal, when what seemed like all the powers of the world had conspired to draw the 30-year Tamil militancy to an end, has provided Sri Lankan Tamils with a historical moment tied to a specific locus.2 The Ajnar and Tinai Mayakkam poems present Cheran as a poet for the dispossessed. These poems with their split movements between the homeland and new snowscapes erase the borders between the refuges of the diaspora and a lost island. Cheran’s poems and other writings—on grief, love, land and exile—are made ami...
There is a deeply painful moment in Ekow Eshun's travel narrative Black Gold of the Sun when ... more There is a deeply painful moment in Ekow Eshun's travel narrative Black Gold of the Sun when the London-born, young black protagonist goes to Ghana. It is important to note that this journey to his parents' home country is taken in a profoundly unromantic fashion (Who can forget Du Bois's rhapsodies on Africa?). Despite the hardship of his journey, Eshun hopes that he might be able to come to some kind of understanding of his black self when placed in the midst of other African bodies: that he would no longer feel like an exotic; that his feelings of being an outsider in the West and his search for a definable identity would come to an end when he could see similarities between himself and the people of Ghana. Instead, like Richard Wright in Black Power who despairs over the alienation he felt while traveling amongst the people of the Gold Coast in the 1950's, Eshun's feelings of disconnectedness and exile only become more pronounced the longer he stays in Ghana....
(2002). Tamil Dalit Literature and Bama's Karukku: A Case Study. South Asian Review: Vol. 23,... more (2002). Tamil Dalit Literature and Bama's Karukku: A Case Study. South Asian Review: Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 41-41.
On the surface, postcolonial studies and composition studies appear to have little in common. How... more On the surface, postcolonial studies and composition studies appear to have little in common. However, they share a strikingly similar goal: to provide power to the words and actions of those who have been marginalized or oppressed. Postcolonial studies ...
World Literature Today, 2004
ariel: A Review of International English Literature
Papers on Language Literature, Sep 22, 2008
World Literature Today, 2004
World Literature Today, 2004
Callaloo, 2003
... The following excerpt is taken from David Brion Davis' essay, "Terror in Mississipp... more ... The following excerpt is taken from David Brion Davis' essay, "Terror in Mississippi." Listen to Charlie Davenport, a former slave from Natchez, Mississippi, recollecting his slave life to a white female interviewer during the Depression. ...
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Papers by Anushiya Ramaswamy