Memory, history, and casteless consciousness
Tamil Buddhists in modern South India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9285804 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gajendran Ayyathurai (University of Göttingen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 9-26 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian History and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1947-2498 • E-ISSN: 1947-2501 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19472498.2022.2162730 |
| OpenAlex | W4313597400 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 24 |
The study of memory and caste-based oppressed communities in India and in the Indian diaspora is largely an unexamined field. If caste was an imposition of the self-privileging groups then, how do we understand the memory and history of the subalternized communities? Likewise, if those Indians who were oppressed by the brahminical invention of untouchability were actually not untouchables, then in what ways do marginalized Indian communities re-member and sustain their intrinsic cultural and historical identities? Do their language, literature, philosophy, and knowledge practices present alternative perspectives about their memory and history beyond caste? This paper aims to address of some of these questions by focusing on the Buddhist movement of the Tamils, who had been marginalized as outcastes, Parayars/Paraiyars/Pariah. It examines the varying ways Tamil Buddhist cultural and communicative memory affirms their casteless and anticaste identity in colonial India. Furthermore, it argues that a direct consequence of such a retention and revival of Buddhist memory in modern India was that these subordinated communities could sustain alternative ways of identifying, representing, and centering themselves beyond brahminical valorizations of caste
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Caste · Colonialism · Diaspora · Literature · Pariah group · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Tamil · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Law · Philosophy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
How Societies Remember
The British Discovery of Buddhism
The Ethics of Memory
Canon and Archive
Cultural Memory and Early Civilization
The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam
Communicative and Cultural Memory
Passions of the Tongue
Another Harmony
Giving an Account of Oneself
A companion to cultural memory studies
Living Buddhism
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
Negative Campaigning
No One Cries for the Dead
Beyond Caste
Brahmanism
The Cosmopolitan Vernacular
The Wisdom of Elders
Rival Mission, Rival Science? Jesuits and Pietists in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century South India
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |