Queen Mary’s College, Chennai has always
prided itself on a host of laurels and luminaries, over the decades, - vibrant
stalwarts and academics who’re shining minarets to the credo of this
century-old institution!
The College has added yet another graceful
feather to its cap, with the recent event of such grand proportions, that
occasioned the book release of a 545-page strong intellectual treat in its
Campus on 07 December 2018 at 3 pm.
The who’s who of academia had turned up
in hugey numbers at the Assembly Hall, QMC to catch the D-day’s event line-up!
Hon. Ms. Susan Grace, Consul General of
the Australian Consulate-General in Chennai launched the book, and a host of luminaries
spoke on the occasion, including the likes of Dr. Vinod Daniel, Chair,
AusHeritage, Ms. Kathleen Hosie, Information Officer, United States Information
Office, Chennai, Prof. C. T. Indra, Former Prof & Head, Dept of English,
University of Madras, and Prof. Eugenie Pinto, Former Principal, QMC, Chennai.
Now, I’d be doing injustice to the book,
if I rob from off it, the sheen and the specifics that catapult this voluminous
intellectual treat for its aura and its applause as well!
So off we go, to the specifics of this
delightful book!
The book is titled, Multiculturalism and The Social Fabric in Australia, America &
India, and it appeals to you
right from its high-quality cover design, that’s woven into its texture myriad colours
that tint, tone and adorn the effulgent backdrop to a brownish hue, with Dr.
Maria Preethi’s inimitable artistic elegance agmark-attested all over!
This volume begins with a blazing bestowal
of a dedication to the Queen Mary’s College and the ideals it stands for, with
an impactful and eloquent quote by Miss. De La Hey, the Founder Principal of
the college. It goes thus –
Here
we are a large community of various castes and creeds speaking various tongues.
Let each member of the community preserve her own individuality and yet draw
from her studies, from her games, from her intercourse with her companions a
widening comprehension of the meaning and the value of life, a deepening
resolution to make her life one of usefulness, of service and of help.
Three colourful pictures prelude a
perfect premiere to the profound musings contained within its fabric! Especial
is a picture taken by the Editor herself, (Dr. Maria Preethi) of an Aboriginal
Stencil Art on Rock at Carnarvon Gorge, Central
Queensland, Australia.
Next comes the brilliant introduction to
the book, that acts a mighty co-text that serves to contextualize and thereby validate
the plethora of scholarly articles in the book. The 40-page introduction would
indeed merit a separate study in itself, and I wish, academics who work on
Multiculturalism would do well to read through this scholarly take by Dr. Maria
Preethi, titled, “Multiculturalism, The Social Fabric And The Text”.
The introduction ambles up its way gently
forward with a personal descriptor on the author’s tryst with the Australian multicultural
landscape, that heralds the opening paragraph! Right from the restaurants that
lined up the city’s (Sydney) streets, to the physiognomy of the people, to the
university’s structure, comprising restaurants and students of various hues and
colours, the terra firma here, in Oz, far removed from homeland, so uniquely
reinforced the multicultural ethos in its ambience and its clime as well!
Perspectivising multiculturalism, the
author pings on the need to look beneath the ‘cosmetic’ celebration of
diversity, to have a look at the real challenges and also to
appreciate/recognize/engage with the historical, political and social processes
that constitute multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, to the author, is in one
sense as old as humanity, and as recent as today.
Dr. Preethi then proceeds to delve deep
into the notion of understanding ‘Difference’, through an insightful interview
with Australian Aboriginal writer, Fiona Doyle. A similar illustration
involving ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ she’s gleaned from yet another interview
she did with Dalit leader Geethanandan who shared the leadership with Adivasi
leader C. K. Janu in the struggle for land rights for Adivasis in Kerala.
Then follows a critique of the nomenclature, ‘Literature
in India’ as a redundant, superfluous, homogenizing term, that doesn’t quite
share with the realities! Citing from Raveendran, she quotes, “one cannot
certainly present Indian literature as the expression of an essential Indian
spirit or of a commonly shared sensibility, because the nation in question is
stable only on the map of the world. Its borders keep changing from writer to
writer from reader to reader and from subject to subject. This is what one is
to deduce from the lack of a perfect fit that exists between the images of
India appearing in, or the nations constructed by Saadat Hasan Manto, Mahasweta
Devi, Gopinath Mohanty, Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, Laxman Gaikwad, Bama, VKN, U.
R. Anantha Murthy and Sashi Tharoor to mention a few representative ‘Indian’
writers… These writers dwell in different Indias and to speak of them as
sharing a common culture and a common sensibility is to beguile oneself.”
Next comes her interesting take on World
Literature (as evidenced even today in the syllabi of courses in colleges and
universities) as Eurocentric!
Thereafter follows, an intense analysis of the
Social Fabric vis-à-vis Melting Pot, Salad Bowl and Mosaic, wherein all three
models are said to assume a difference based on ethnicity, and preclude other
types of differences.
This is followed by a description of
early indigenous societies and their texts, that date human presence in
Australia as being around 40,000 years ago or even further than that. Given
this Aboriginal worldview, the land itself becomes a text. Similar evidence of ‘texts’
from the American and Indian perspective are also dealt with.
The silence of the Aboriginal voice in
specific periods of their history, with a chronological portrayal of
representative texts down the years!
Then comes up a very interesting take on
the description/depiction of India as a multicultural society, and how the
slogan, “Unity in Diversity” has been drummed up into the consciousness of
Indians through the (state nurtured) heroic narratives of the Independence and
post-Independence phase of our history.
In its elegantly posited rubric on the
Multicultural ethos that governs the social fabric and the text, with reference
to the three nations in their respective contexts, the Introduction proves a
delightful ‘red carpet’ty ushering in, for the reader to drink deep of the
wonderful papers of myriad hues that are such a relish to the heart and the
mind alike!
The articles have been beautifully structured into an array of fifteen contextualized topics,
ranging from
Regionality,
Textuality and Intertextuality, to
Historiography,
culture and tradition, to
Indian
diaspora, to
Indigeneity,
to
Marginality,
Discrimination and Protest, to
Stereotyping,
Hybridity and Hegemony, to
Gender,
Human Rights and Representation, to
Ethnicity
and Gender, to
Alternative
Sexuality, to
Ecological
Concerns and Ecocritical readings,
you have something of grandiose proportions,
for every multicultural soul out here served on a captivating platter of sorts!
Published by Emerald Publishers, the book
has got its elegant lustre and its sheen both on its elegant contours and on its
contents as well, that makes the 'journey to the interior' - within its weave and its texture - quite a rewarding one at that!
Congratulations to Dr. Maria Preethi Srinivasan on this meticulous, marvellous and monumental work of sorts!
We are so proud of you, Ma'm!
And to all dear and prospective readers out there, bonne lecture folks!
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