Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2000 17:17:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Indian vernacular: To Cyberdiva


Cyberdiva,

Indeed, the main reason I try to write about regional languages of India is to be out there
in the poco-space, as a pointer, inviting interested parties to enter the lush growths right
next to the proper field of post-colonial studies. What am I saying? There are all these
literatures, very old ones and new ones, all cultural expressions of vast unknown human populace,
almost all with histories of colonialism (Western colonialism is just one of them, not even the most recent), and perhaps, these literatures need to be "kept" in mind, in our discussions and our writings
and other pontifications.

(I am feeling a little naughty: I wonder whether "the poco studies proper" is better described as a well-manicured golf-course; so clean and so easily reminding one of a corpse that has just been prepared by the mortician, ready for the viewers! If at all I am problematizing a location for "postcolonial studies" as our beloved Cyberdiva suggested, it is to the wild
weeds and the unkempt bushes beyond the golf course, not easy to enter, not "nice" either, not inviting.....)

Thomas Palakeel


Cyberdiva wrote:

> As I implied in my last response to Josna's response to you - is this not the problem of location for "postcolonial studies" as a field?
>
> r
>
> Thomas Palakeel wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I was expecting there would be a volley of responses from readers of various regional literatures of India. Why the silence? (Shamelessly I admit, I am one of those readers (Malayalam) and I ought to be making my own voice heard. Instead, I think, it is much more interesting if I just challenged everyone else to respond.
> > Aren't there any natives out there? Are they all Englishwallahs who can't read
> > any of those "vernaculars". One of the most interesting observations Arundhati Roy
> > made on her wonderful Charlie Rose appearance was that in India most people don't really know any language, although too many claim they know English and many other regional languages. Guess what Charlie Rose asked? How come all these wonderful English stuff coming out of India? Are the Indians doing that good of a job with education? (something to the effect.)
> >
>
> ****************************************************
> Radhika Gajjala
> http://www.cyberdiva.org/
> http://www.cyberdiva.org/stuff.html
> http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000/4425/
> http://moo.hawaii.edu:7000/599/
>
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---