Wednesday, 26 December 2018

Multiculturalism and the Social Fabric! - A Review


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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