---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Cynthia Stephen <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:51 PM Subject: [goodbookz] Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics * To: [email protected], ndsf-india <[email protected]>, [email protected]
A singularity called Dalit * Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics * By Ravikumar; Translated from the Tamil by R. Azhagarasan with a Foreword by Susie Tharu Samya, Kolkata, 2009, 298 pp., Rs 650 ISBN 81-85604-76-2 By: Paul Sharrad We are now used to seeing tough, uncompromising poems and simple, gritty life stories from Dalit writers. We may even have become inured to them and buried their protests in conference papers and anthologies. This book fights indifference and condescension. It catalogues from first-hand experience the destruction of homes, the torture of wrongfully arrested people, the imprisonment of children, imbalances in education funding, election-rigging - all the outrages of caste exclusionism - but it refuses to be contained as 'mere victim experience'. The writer is an activist-intellectual who commands an impressive range of reference: from Gramsci to Guha, Frederick Douglass to Jacques Derrida, Kafka to Kundera. As an organic intellectual, he can present conference papers without any comfortable intellectual distancing. *Venomous Touch* is a collection of journalistic reportage, cultural analysis, historical investigation, radio talks and conference papers about the condition of Dalit people in Tamil Nadu. Ravikumar is a scholar of Tamil, a smallpress publisher, and general secretary of ViduthalaiCiruthaikal Katchi. The strength of this collection is its strong base in local social issues: the texture of collecting data on killings, mobilising coalitions of small organisations, mounting protest marches. It is a clear example of the need to attend to the particular regional dynamics of Indian politics in order to address problems effectively; a Dalit in Tamil Nadu is shaped by different forces than a Dalit in Maharashtra or Bihar. http://www.biblio-india.org/showart.asp?inv=18&mp=MJ09 Cynthia Stephen Independent Researcher and writer Bangalore, India -- Cynthia Stephen Independent Writer and Researcher And may you be blessed with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do things which others tell you cannot be done "Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily." Margaret Atwood : Canadian Literary Icon. __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links messages posted here are automatically fed to our website www.openspace.org.in MARKETPLACE Mom Power: Discover the community of moms doing more for their families, for the world and for each other Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 2 New Members Visit Your Group Search Ads Get new customers. List your web site in Yahoo! Search. Sitebuilder Build a web site quickly & easily with Sitebuilder. Y! Groups blog the best source for the latest scoop on Groups. . __,_._,___ -- http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
