மணற்கேணி பத்து இதழ்கள் குறித்த ஆய்வரங்கம் திருச்சியில் நடைபெற்றது. அது குறித்தும் மணற்கேணி இதழ் குறித்தும் இந்தியன் எக்ஸ்பிரஸ் நாளேட்டில் வெளியாகியிருக்கும் செய்தியினைக் கீழே பாருங்கள்.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
சண்முகம் சிவலிங்கம் மரணமானார்
சண்முகம் சிவலிங்கம் மரணமானார்
பாண்டிருப்பைச் சேர்ந்தவரும் , ஈழத்தின் மிகமுக்கிய கவிஞரும் விமர்சகரும் சிறுகதையாளருமான சண்முகம் சிவலிங்கம் இன்று அதிகாலை மரணமானார். இரவு படுக்கைக்குச் சென்றவர் காலையில் எழும்பவில்லை; மாரடைப்பு காரணமாக நித்திரையிலேயே அவர் இறந்துவிட்டார்.
இவரது மறைவு ஈழத் தமிழ் இலக்கிய உலகுக்குப் பேரிழப்பாகும்.
நீர்வளையங்கள், சிதைந்துபோன தேசமும் தூர்ந்துபோன மனக்குகையும் என்ற சிறந்த இரண்டு கவிதைநூல்கள் மட்டும் இதுவரை வெளிவந்துள்ளன. மார்க்சிய அழகியல் ரீதியில் அமைந்த விமர்சனக் கட்டுரைகள் பலவற்றை எழுதிஉள்ளார் ; கவிஞர் மஹாகவியின் முக்கியத்தினை நிலைநிறுத்துவதில் இவரது கட்டுரைகள் கவிஞர் நுஹ்மானின் பணிகளுடன் துணைநின்றன!
இவரது கட்டுரைகளும் அழகிய சிறுகதைகள் பலவும் கையெழுத்துப் பிரதியிலுள்ள இரண்டு நாவல்களும் கவிதைகளும் நூல்வடிவம் பெறவேண்டியது அவசியம் ; அவை ஈழத்து இலக்கிய த்துக்கு வளம் சேர்ப்பவை!
சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ் - இராஜபக்சே தனிமை சந்திப்பு உலகத் தமிழர்களிடையே அய்யத்தையும் அச்சத்தையும் ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளது - தொல். திருமா அறிக்கை
சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ் - இராஜபக்சே தனிமை சந்திப்பு உலகத் தமிழர்களிடையே அய்யத்தையும் அச்சத்தையும் ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளது
தொல். திருமாவளவன் அறிக்கைஇலங்கை சென்றுள்ள இந்திய நாடாளுமன்ற உறுப்பினர்கள் குழு இன்று இந்தியா திரும்புகிறது. பாரதிய ஜனதா கட்சியைச் சார்ந்த மக்களவையின் எதிர்க்கட்சித்தலைவர் திருமதி சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ் தலைமையில் செல்கின்ற இந்தக் குழுவில் இடம்பெற்றவை தமிழினத்தின் மீது அக்கறையோ, தமிழீழ விடுதலையில் உடன்பாடோ இல்லாத கட்சிகள் என்றும் இப்பயணத்தால் தமிழ் மக்களுக்கு எந்தப் பயனும் விளையப் போவதில்லை என்றும் சிங்களவர்களை சமாதானப்படுத்துவதற்காகத்தான் இக்குழு செல்கிறது என்றும் விடுதலைச் சிறுத்தைகள் கூறினோம். அதனை உறுதிப்படுத்தும் வகையில்தான் இக்குழுவின் பயணம் அமைந்துள்ளது. குழுவின் தலைவர் திருமதி சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ், இராஜபக்சேவை தனிமையில் சந்தித்துப் பேசியிருக்கிறார். இது குழுவில் உள்ள பிற உறுப்பினர்களை அவமதிக்கும் செயலாகும். இந்தியாவின் பிரதமர் அல்லது வெளிவிவகாரத் துறை அமைச்சர் போன்ற பொறுப்புகளில் உள்ளவர்கள் இவ்வாறு தனிமையில் சந்திப்பதை ஏற்கலாம். ஆனால் இவர் எந்த அதிகாரத்தின் அடிப்படையில் இராஜபக்சேவை தனிமையில் சந்தித்தார் என்ற கேள்வி எழுகிறது.
அத்துடன், செய்தியாளர்கள் சந்திப்பின்போது ஒன்றுபட்ட இலங்கையைத்தான் இந்தியா ஆதரிக்கும் என்று திருமதி சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ் கூறியிருக்கிறார். இதுவும் அவரது அதிகார வரம்பை மீறிய செயலாகும். எதிர்க்கட்சித் தலைவரான இவர் இந்தியாவின் வெளியுறவுக் கொள்கை தொடர்பாக எந்த அடிப்படையில் கருத்துச் சொல்கிறார்? இவ்வாறு கருத்துச் சொல்ல இந்தியாவின் பிரதமர் அல்லது குடியரசுத்தலைவர் இவருக்கு அதிகாரம் வழங்கியிருக்கிறார்களா? இது தமிழினத்திற்கு எதிரான நடவடிக்கை என்பது மட்டுமல்லாமல், உலகத் தமிழர்களிடையே பெரும் அய்யத்தையும் அச்சத்தையும் ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளது. இப்போக்கை விடுதலைச் சிறுத்தைகள் வன்மையாகக் கண்டிக்கிறது.
இத்தகைய கருத்தும் போக்கும் உள்ள பாரதிய ஜனதா ஆட்சிக்கு வந்தால் தமிழீழத்தை வென்றெடுக்கலாம் என்று தமிழகத்தில் சிலர் நம்பியும் பேசியும் வருவது வேடிக்கைக்குரியதாகும்.
அத்துடன், செய்தியாளர்கள் சந்திப்பின்போது ஒன்றுபட்ட இலங்கையைத்தான் இந்தியா ஆதரிக்கும் என்று திருமதி சுஷ்மா சுவராஜ் கூறியிருக்கிறார். இதுவும் அவரது அதிகார வரம்பை மீறிய செயலாகும். எதிர்க்கட்சித் தலைவரான இவர் இந்தியாவின் வெளியுறவுக் கொள்கை தொடர்பாக எந்த அடிப்படையில் கருத்துச் சொல்கிறார்? இவ்வாறு கருத்துச் சொல்ல இந்தியாவின் பிரதமர் அல்லது குடியரசுத்தலைவர் இவருக்கு அதிகாரம் வழங்கியிருக்கிறார்களா? இது தமிழினத்திற்கு எதிரான நடவடிக்கை என்பது மட்டுமல்லாமல், உலகத் தமிழர்களிடையே பெரும் அய்யத்தையும் அச்சத்தையும் ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளது. இப்போக்கை விடுதலைச் சிறுத்தைகள் வன்மையாகக் கண்டிக்கிறது.
இத்தகைய கருத்தும் போக்கும் உள்ள பாரதிய ஜனதா ஆட்சிக்கு வந்தால் தமிழீழத்தை வென்றெடுக்கலாம் என்று தமிழகத்தில் சிலர் நம்பியும் பேசியும் வருவது வேடிக்கைக்குரியதாகும்.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Milaka podi - a play
Milka Podi - Romanticizing the Dalit
Milaka podi is a play produced by Kattiyankari a theatre group consists men women and transgenders. It is based on a short story with the same name written by Bama- a Dalit woman writer.
The play is woven around two characters - Gengamma and Pachaiyamma. Gengamma is a land lord belongs to Naicker community. She is arrogant, cruel and living alone. She tortures her servants.
Pachaiyamma is a poor Dalit woman. She works hard to support her living. One day she collects grass from the field of Gengamma . Accidentally Gengamma came there and put chilly powder in the eyes of Pachaiyamma as a punishment . A few days later Pachaiyamma chased and thrashed Gengamma . The enmity grows like a wild plant.
Meanwhile the Dalit people started calling Gengamma as Milaka podi to ridicule her. One day the Dalit women failed to find work. So they went to the cotton field and collect cotton surreptitiously. Then Gengamma came there. Driven by anger she went and brought two policemen . Taking bribe the police men took the poor Dalit women to the station. On the way the women asked the policemen to allow them to urinate. They refused and ask ten rupees each as fine. Infuriated with this the women urinate at the station.
Living smile Vidya -a transgender, played the role of Pachaiyamma . Her performance is good. Another one transgender played the role of Gengamma . She also played it well. Performance of Some women - Amala, Kavinmalar - also worth to mention.
Though the lighting and music are good the play in total failed to make any impact because of the weak storyline . It is a stereotypical story. The Director of the play said that Dr A . Mangai only chose it. I wonder what induced her to do that. Because the portrayal of both Gengamma and Pachaiyamma are very naive and have no grain of feministic or Dalit perspective . It failed to interrogate why a woman like Gengamma behaves like that. The play reproduces the common sense notion and link the economic independence of a woman With abnormality and cruelty.
It also portrays the Dalit women in a poor light by shows them as thieves. This play simplify everything and romanticize the life of Dalits.
Thanks to Writer Ambai who organized the performance in part of a three days workshop of Dalit women writers here in Pondicherry . The workshop is in session up to 21st April.
I came out after the play and missed the opportunity to participate in the discussion. I believe that the participants are sensitive enough to raise these questions.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Why earthquake off Sumatra did not trigger a devastating tsunami
Main shock was magnitude 8.6 but horizontal seafloor movement meant warning buoys only measured small waves
People try to reach higher ground after a powerful earthquake off Banda Aceh, Sumatra island, Indonesia, prompted an Indian-Ocean-wide tsunami alert. Photograph: Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images
The earthquake off the coast of northern Sumatra in Indonesia began with a sudden shift in a strike-slip fault, a line of weakness in the sea floor where two huge bodies of rock can slide past one another.
Unlike the earthquake that triggered the devastating 2004 tsunami in the region, the sea floor moved sideways instead of vertically, meaning it displaced less water and did not send giant waves around the Indian Ocean.
Warning buoys, installed after the 2004 disaster, picked up a tsunami soon after the earthquake, but the highest waves that reached the nearby shoreline of Sumatra were only 80cm. The warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was later lifted, at 12.36GMT on Wednesday.
Seismologists traced the earthquake at 2.38pm local time to a depth of 14 miles (22km) and 250 miles (400km) from the coast of Banda Aceh. The slippage occurred in a fracture in a slab of oceanic crust that is bending downwards and beneath Sumatra. The US geological survey said the main shock was magnitude 8.6, which is extraordinarily high for a strike-slip fault.
Two hours after the main shock was felt, the area was hit by a magnitude-8.2 aftershock, probably caused by slippage along the same 125-mile fault. The huge release of energy redistributed stress to other weak spots in the crust, making them more likely to cause future earthquakes.
"After an earthquake occurs along a fault, stress is released in parts. But then, part of this stress is redistributed to other parts of the fault. This means that they are now more likely to become unstable, with many subsequent earthquakes. Aftershocks can continue for weeks and months after the main shock, sometimes even years," said Bruce Malamud, an expert on natural hazards at King's College London.
Malamud said there had been an average of 17 large earthquakes (magnitude 7 or greater) a year around the world since 1900, and about 15 a year since 1990.
Tectonic Summary of the Earth Quake
The M8.6 April 11, 2012 earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, occurred as a result of strike-slip faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Indo-Australia plate. The quake was located approximately 100 km to the southwest of the major subduction zone that defines the plate boundary between the Indo-Australia and Sunda plates offshore Sumatra. At this location, the Indo-Australia plate moves north-northeast with respect to the Sunda plate at a velocity of approximately 52 mm/yr.
Large strike-slip earthquakes, while rare, are not unprecedented in this region of the Indo-Australian plate. Since the massive M 9.1 earthquake that ruptured a 1300 km long segment of the Sumatran megathrust plate boundary in December of 2004, three large strike-slip events have occurred within 50 km of the April 11, 2012 even. These earthquakes occurred on April 19 2006 (Mw6.2), October 4 2007 (Mw6.2) and January 10, 2012 (Mw7.2). In all three cases, the style of faulting was similar. These events align approximately with fabric of the sea floor in the diffuse boundary zone between the Indian and Australian plates.
The M8.6 April 11, 2012 earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, occurred as a result of strike-slip faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Indo-Australia plate. The quake was located approximately 100 km to the southwest of the major subduction zone that defines the plate boundary between the Indo-Australia and Sunda plates offshore Sumatra. At this location, the Indo-Australia plate moves north-northeast with respect to the Sunda plate at a velocity of approximately 52 mm/yr.
Large strike-slip earthquakes, while rare, are not unprecedented in this region of the Indo-Australian plate. Since the massive M 9.1 earthquake that ruptured a 1300 km long segment of the Sumatran megathrust plate boundary in December of 2004, three large strike-slip events have occurred within 50 km of the April 11, 2012 even. These earthquakes occurred on April 19 2006 (Mw6.2), October 4 2007 (Mw6.2) and January 10, 2012 (Mw7.2). In all three cases, the style of faulting was similar. These events align approximately with fabric of the sea floor in the diffuse boundary zone between the Indian and Australian plates.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/
earth quake
Magnitude 8.6 - OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
2012 April 11 08:38:37 UTC
Earthquake Details
- This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.
| Magnitude | 8.6 |
|---|---|
| Date-Time |
|
| Location | 2.311°N, 93.063°E |
| Depth | 22.9 km (14.2 miles) |
| Region | OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA |
| Distances | 434 km (269 miles) SW of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia 550 km (341 miles) SW of Lhokseumawe, Sumatra, Indonesia 963 km (598 miles) W of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia 1797 km (1116 miles) WNW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia |
| Location Uncertainty | horizontal +/- 13.5 km (8.4 miles); depth +/- 2.6 km (1.6 miles) |
| Parameters | NST=395, Nph=397, Dmin=514.3 km, Rmss=1.52 sec, Gp= 18°, M-type=(unknown type), Version=B |
| Source |
|
| Event ID | usc000905e |
- Did you feel it? Report shaking and damage at your location. You can also view a map displaying accumulated data from your report and others.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Caste matters in the Indian media
03 JUNE 2006
Caste matters in the Indian media
If television and newspaper coverage of the anti-reservation agitation was indulgent and one-sided, the lack of diversity in the newsroom is surely a major culprit.
3 June 2006
The Hindu
Caste matters in the Indian media
Siddharth Varadarajan
MY FIRST brush with caste prejudice in higher education came in 1999, when a group of Dalit students from the University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS) came to see me at my office in another English newspaper where I worked at the time as an editorial writer.
The students were residents of the hostel and had silently borne the brunt of casteist abuse and discrimination for some time. Whether by happenstance or design, the Scheduled Caste students were confined to two floors and not assigned rooms elsewhere in the building. In the dining hall, they were forced by the forward caste majority to sit together at one end. If a Dalit student sat somewhere else, he would be abused. "Bloody shaddu," one of them was told when he sat amidst others by mistake, "you cannot eat with us."
The Dalits put up with this harassment and humiliation because, as one of their parents told them, "you have to become a doctor at any cost." But the abuse eventually turned to violence and when one of the students was badly beaten and another had his room ransacked, they decided to go on a dharna. This is also when they ended up in my office.
After hearing them out, I requested the head of the Metro section to send someone to UCMS to cover the story. I was promised a reporter would be sent soon. Several days went by but nothing appeared. It turned out no reporter was assigned. I tried again, this time going one notch higher in the editorial chain-of-command. Again there was no response. Eventually, I decided to do the story myself. I spent half-a-day at the college, interviewed the college authorities, the students on dharna as well as the general category students. One of them admitted reluctantly to using the slur `shaddu' for the Scheduled Caste students but only as a `pet name'.
I filed the story but it did not appear the next day or the day after. Nobody ever said the story was not interesting or not up to scratch but for some reason space could never be found. The story finally appeared, in a cut and mutilated form, a full month after the Dalit students began their dharna. Needless to say, the travails of the Dalit students at UCMS were not considered newsworthy enough by other newspapers or by any of the news channels.
I narrate this story because of how it contrasts with the extraordinary indulgence the national media showed the nearly month-long anti-reservation agitation of doctors and medical students at AIIMS and other colleges. Despite the 24x7 presence of TV cameras, the daily protests in favour of reservation by AIIMS doctors and staff under the banner of `Medicos Forum for Equal Opportunities' were virtually blacked out. One channel showed the counter-protest last Sunday only when a `citizen journalist' presented it with footage he had shot. Often, it was impossible to separate the breathless TV reporters from the anti-reservation doctors they were reporting about. The insensitive and casteist forms of protest some of them adopted — the `symbolic' sweeping of streets, the shining of shoes, the singing of songs warning OBCs and others to `remember their place' (`apni aukat mein rahio') — were put on air without comment by the channels. Nobody asked what kind of doctors these `meritorious' students were likely to become if they had such contempt towards more than half the population of India. And in a media discourse which routinely reports the protests of the underprivileged only as "traffic jams" and other disruptions to the "normal" life of the city, the suffering of poor patients as a result of the AIIMS strike figured largely as a footnote to the "heroic" struggle the medical students and junior doctors were waging.
Amidst the hysteria induced by the media coverage, no one cared to point out how indulgent the AIIMS authorities themselves were being towards the anti-reservation strike. Earlier this year, when a section of doctors concerned about higher user fees being imposed on poor patients sought to protest, they were warned of dire consequences. Under the terms of a High Court order, no protest or demonstration is permitted within the AIIMS campus. Yet nobody demurred when the anti-reservation students occupied the lawns, put up shamianas and coolers and received the "solidarity" of traders, event managers, and IT employees (whose employers usually ban their own staff from ever striking work.)
While there were honourable exceptions — Outlook, The Hindu , and Frontline among them, as well as individual reporters in some newspapers and channels — would the media's coverage have been more balanced had there been a greater degree of caste diversity in the newsroom and editorial boards of our newspapers and channels? Put another way, in egging the forward caste students on to oppose any extension of reservation, were forward caste editors and reporters reflecting their own personal impatience with the idea of affirmative action? Was the media coverage, then, a display of trade unionism by the privileged?
There are no official or industry statistics but every journalist is aware of the extent to which forward castes dominate the media. When B.N. Uniyal surveyed the scene in 1996, he found not a single Dalit accredited journalist in Delhi. Today, the position is unlikely to be much better. At a recent meeting of Journalists for Democracy, it was reported that an informal survey had found that the number of accredited North Indian OBC journalists in Delhi was under 10. I myself have counted the number of Muslims with accreditation to the Press Information Bureau and they barely cross the three per cent mark. In Chhattisgarh, a recent attempt to send Tribal journalists on a training programme had to be dropped because there was none.
One is not saying the absence of Dalit or OBC journalists is the product of conscious discrimination though that factor cannot be ruled out. But the reality of their absence is something the media must have the courage to acknowledge.
In an ideal world where professionalism is paramount, the caste or religious affiliation of a journalist should not matter. But journalism that has little or no space for the majority of citizens is bound to end up missing out on the complexity of the society it seeks to cover. Story ideas will not be taken up, or if taken up then covered only from a particular perspective. To be sure, many of the negative trends so evident in Indian journalism — the shrinkage of space, the lack of coverage of rural India or of the problems of poor Indians, the episodic, frenetic nature of news, the cult of the Sensex, the preoccupation with trivia and sensationalism — will not be cured by newspapers and TV channels hiring more Dalit, OBC, and Muslim journalists. But greater workplace diversity will certainly infuse a greater degree of vitality in the newsroom as wider varieties of lived experience intrude upon and clash with the largely urban, rich, forward caste Hindu certitudes of the overwhelming majority of journalists.
Far from seeing affirmative action as a threat, India's media houses should look upon the entry of Dalit, Tribal, OBC, and Muslim journalists as an opportunity to broadbase their journalism and make it more professional and authentic. Last year, Ankur and Sarai-CSDS provided teenagers in the now-demolished slum cluster of Nangla Machi with computers. The daily diaries and fly-sheets they produced even as their homes were being brought down by bulldozers is journalism of as high a quality as anyone can find in India today (Interested readers should visit the Nangla Machi site here). Certainly their writings tell us more about the reality of "slum clearance" than any of our TV channels, and in prose that is better than what one normally gets to read in our newspapers.
As the OBC and SC-ST youths who want to become doctors and engineers are saying, merit is not simply a score that can be bought by parents who have the money to invest in the most expensive education for their children. It is also about the talent that all children have within them regardless of their caste or socio-economic background. A society — or an industry like the media — which does not find a way to tap that talent will only end up impoverishing itself. Specifically, media houses must seriously think about starting internships and training programmes for Dalit, Tribal, Muslim, and OBC students interested in becoming journalists.
Reservation, affirmative action, targeted expenditure, and investment are all means of society helping people unlock their inherent talent. As pro-reservation scholars such as Yogendra Yadav, Satish Deshpande, Purshottam Aggarwal, and others have argued, the United Progressive Alliance Government's current approach is not necessarily the best one. But by conducting a shrill campaign and encouraging forward caste students to launch an ill-conceived agitation, the media themselves foreclosed the possibility of a rational debate on what the best way of building an inclusive education system really is. When the dust settles, the media should introspect and ask what they can do to make society as a whole more inclusive. Encouraging conversation and not hectoring is one way. But another is surely to diversify the newsroom by consciously bringing in those sections of society who have hitherto been excluded. There are a million stories out there waiting to be told. If only we allow the storytellers to do the telling.
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