Shanthini Pillai

Transnational Tamil television and diasporic imaginings

The dynamics of globalization and digitization are not only shaping a new media order but also making significant impacts on the cultural dimensions of an older societal order in the case of the Tamil Diaspora. The emerging transnational phenomenon of Tamil television challenges constructed boundaries, contests traditionally homogenized spaces such as those of nation and homeland, questions the principle of territoriality and opens up the sphere both from without and within the national space. New media practices and flows are shaping media spaces with a built-in transnational connectivity, creating contemporary cultures pregnant with new meanings and experiences. This article aims to map the developments around transnational Tamil television. It scrutinizes the nature and impact of Tamil media emerging from Singapore and Malaysia on other parts of the diasporic Tamil world, and also alternatively, the nature and effect of Tamil media from India and elsewhere in Singapore and Malaysia. Issues of multiculturalism and the transnational media’s impact and culture will be interrogated to enable the analysis of the global remapping of media spaces and to address key issues related to situated transnational Tamil cultures.

Memory and the Diasporic Creative Imagination: Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day

The focal point of this paper is the concept of transnational memory and the blurred and fluctuating boundaries of ties with the nation that was once home as depicted in Evening is the Whole Day, a novel by Preeta Samarasan, part of the emergent community of new Malaysian diasporic writers. New Malaysian diasporic writers in the context of this paper are taken to refer to writers who were born in Malaysia but are now settled elsewhere in the globe, and yet are recognizably transnational in that their writings focus on the older country and memories of family, community, and a nation that once was. The discussion expands existing scholarship on diasporic memory such as Rushdie’s argument of the broken mirrored refractions by introducing the concept of another cartography of memory, that of appendages of Other memories such as fleeting images from the repertoire of literary (and historical) archives, textual tradition, and its influence on diasporic creative writing. This is framed against Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “synchronic warehouse,” a term he has used to refer to the “politics of memory” that reside within the concept of “the past” that no longer reflects a simple return but a space which allows for the recasting, redirecting, and editing of memories. Seen in this light, the paper concludes that the novel becomes the synchronic warehouse that projects a multiple imagined perspective of the nation, reimagined in a multitude of scenes that ultimately appear distinctly anomalous.

The Apostolic Vicariate of Western Siam and the Rise of Catholicism in Malaysia and Singapore

This article examines the emergence of the Catholic Church in Malaysia and Singapore in the modern period through an exploration of the Apostolic Vicariate of Western Siam (1841–1888). The establishment of this Catholic institution—a temporary territorial jurisdiction in missionary regions that precedes the creation of new dioceses—was key to advancing the transition of the Church from its older colonial model towards a modern national Church. Focusing on the work conducted by French missionaries of the Missions Etrangeres de Paris ( MEP ) over these five decades, we analyze the process of developing a local clergy and setting up the socio-cultural scaffolding of the contemporary Catholic Church in the Malay Peninsula. We pay special attention to how MEP missionaries skilfully navigated their missionary activities through encounters with Malay rulers and British colonial officers to secure the creation of a Catholic elite independent of the Portuguese Padroado . Our argument suggests that the apostolic vicariate and the dynamism of the French MEP missionaries in colonial Malaya opened up the pathway for the rise of the ethnic Catholic elites in modern-day Malaysia and Singapore.

Bound by the Sea: Transnational Sri Lankan Writings and Reconciliation with the Homeland

For most transnational Sri Lankans, the ethnic conflict that has submerged the island is often positioned as a significant aspect of their lives. Many transnational writers tend to focus on the ethnic conflict as well as the aftermath of leaving the homeland. Despite leaving, the homeland and the memories of the island tend to travel with the transnationals as they move to a new home. One crucial aspect of the memory of the homeland is the sea which surrounds the island. The sea is often perceived as an image that binds them to their homeland. The sights and sounds of the sea often offer both pleasant and traumatic memories, especially for those who have left the homeland. With this in mind, this paper seeks to discuss the ways in which selected transnational writers of Sri Lanka present their memories of the homeland as expressed through the image of the sea. This paper will probe into two novels by transnational Sri Lankan writers; Nayomi Munaweera’s Island of A Thousand Mirrors and Randy Boyagoda’s Beggar’s Feast. The discussion will be framed by Avtar Brah’s notion of home, as being found within the “lived experiences of a locality”. The images of the sea as presented by these writers will then be used to determine the possibility of reconciliation with the homeland or the perpetuation of trauma. Keywords: home; Sri Lanka; transnational memory; Sinhalese writings; sea DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-02

Re-engaging Sri Lanka as a site for reconciliation or a perpetuation of trauma: Roma Tearne's Brixton Beach

Memory and home are often at the core of transnational diasporic writings. Transnational Sri Lankan writers are no exception as one often finds that the homeland of Sri Lanka is often the site for memories that jostle between spaces that are both pleasant and traumatic. This paper focuses on the ways in which Brixton Beach, a novel by transnational writer Roma Tearne, explores the intricacies of the Sri Lankan relationship amongst family members and ethnic members of the society. The discussion, framed by Avtar Brahs concept of home as both mythic desire and lived locality, will delve into the memories of Sri Lanka that emerge in the narrative thread to ultimately uncover whether these memories point at a sense of reconciliation or a perpetuation of trauma that heightens the exile from the homeland.

Transnational Collaboration and Media Industry in South India: Case of the Malaysian—Indian Diaspora

We now talk of diasporas, and the double or triple spaces temporal, cultural, spatial they occupy. Multiplicity in thought, memory, and space seems to define individuals and societies everywhere. It is no longer possible to retain the view that you come from a single-strand dominant culture. The majorities define the minorities as much as the reverse; in other words, the changing periphery causes alterations at the centre, if there is still a centre. (Maniam, 1996)

From the fringes of the diasporic garment: creative pageants of Indian Christian identity from Malaysia and Singapore

There is no denying the great power invested in the inventiveness of the diasporic imaginary to reterritorialize Indian culture‐scapes into local contexts. Malaysian and Singaporean Indian diasporic writers are no exception. For a long while, the tendency of most discussions of writings from these countries has been to focus on the syncretism of identity politics of a mainly Hindu experience. Yet, the Indian diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore consists also of those who are Christians. Would there be different modulations to the tones, inflections of the diasporic experience when the creative imaginary intersects and negotiates with the Christian, the Indian as well as the Malaysian and Singaporean experience? Would the attendant myths and metaphors also take on different characteristics as a result? These are issues that this paper aims to investigate through a study of selected writings from Malaysia and Singapore that reflect nuances of an Indian Christian heritage. The ultimate aim of the paper is to highlight the reterritorialization of the Indian self from a community that has remained on the fringes of the garment of discussions about writings from the Malaysian and Singaporean diasporic Indian community.