Editorial

Identity is an issue that continues to vex the Australian mind and attracts serious engagement. It is not only the individual who is confronted with that crisis, not only the Aboriginal people, the white immigrants, the coloured migrants, the non-resident Australians, but more importantly also the state. In other words, how is identity to be looked at in national terms? There is the globalisation, too, of physical space. And the question is rooted in philosophy as well, if we understand philosophy as a discipline that can help us look for and find coherence among the disordered and varied contingencies of lives of individuals. And of course the Australians are not alone in this engagement with the issue of identity.

National identity results from decisions that the state takes. For instance, if states accord dual citizenship, as recently India has decided to do, it means so much to people who have had emotional links with India through what they have read or have heard about their cultural roots. It opens up new possibilities, hopes, dreams, aspirations, expectations and promises. Similarly, the 1967 referendum in Australia that recognised the Aboriginal people as citizens of the state helped provide them voice and space or at least held promise of it. Identity politics, implicated as it is within structures of domination, invariably leads to an inscription of identity, whether it is in relation to the Aboriginal people or others.

The decisions make one look to the future though identity averments relate only to the past.

In recent years Australian identity in terms of policy has also pointed to the potential of its relation with Asia. There is a plethora of possibilities there that thecurrent possibilities portend to stretch their gaze to. There are opposing points of view that have to be contended all along. Wisdom of the policies can only be established through time but the seriousness with which the engagement is taken might determine the outcome.

Through dialogue, discussion, debate, and deliberation at the conference we hope to look at the issues of Identity, Representation and Belonging and through publication of our deliberations provide a wide overview and perspective. The themes and sub-themes of the conference throw up immense possibilities for an expansion of horizons - of working not only within the confines of specified areas but also looking at the dynamics of interdisciplinary interaction. The response to the issues has been overwhelming from academics and scholars both from Australia and India and we look forward to a fruitful exchange of ideas.

Santosh Sareen

Seminar Reports

Portraying India: Interpretration, Identity, Myth (September 3, 2003)
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

How does a postcolonial nation negotiate with the process of abrogation and appropriation at work within it? What is the relationship of individuals vis-à-vis the intra and inter post-colonial nation(s)? How does the material culture (books, films) of such nations reflect/represent/reconstruct national identity/ies? These are only some of the questions that the seminar, ‘Portraying India: Interpretation, Identity, Myth’, hosted by the Australia-India Council on September 3, 2003 at the India Habitat Centre, addressed.

The welcome speech by the Australian High Commissioner, Ms Penny Wensley took a brisk and positive look at Australia-India ties with their shared colonial past. The first session, featured three speakers: Prof. Jim Masselos (President of the South Asian Studies Association [SASA]); Prof. Narayani Gupta (Dept of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia) and Mr. Rory Medcalf (First Secretary and Head of Public Affairs Section, Australian High Commission). The keynote presentation by Prof. Jim Masselos, entitled ‘Multiple Reality: Multiple Meaning in 19th Century India’, was illustrated by well-chosen photographs and highlighted three major aspects. One, that the European gaze at India and Australia was similar in the 1890s; two, the contrast between the photographs of, British soldiers versus Indian recruits: not just along sartorial lines but also in terms of stance, demeanour and indeed the entire personality where one came across as hardcore professionals and the other, school boyish; and the third, the desire of the subjects to bridge the gap between themselves and their oppressors was visible in the posturing of various individuals which reflected the way they wished to project themselves. Prof. Gupta’s talk on ‘What is the use of a book without pictures?’ provided a practical insight into history textbooks for school-going students. Lamenting on the insipidity of the texts and the few, dull and often meaningless pictures available in these books, Prof. Gupta justified the complete distaste for history as a subject as also the resultant lack of a historical perspective in students, in India. Prof. Gupta did commend the work of Ekalavya, a Maharashtrian publishing house which she thought was exemplary in its efforts to make history textbooks pleasurable reading. Mr. Rory Medcalf’s account of John Lang’s rather colourful life in his presentation on ‘The writings and wanderings in India of Australia’s first novelist, John Lang (1816-1864)’ was informative as well as interesting. Given that John Lang lived and died in India in the mid-1800s and wrote in detail about his experience here, it is a pity that his writing is not accessible to us; they could well contain a mine of knowledge about the life and times of Indian people under colonial rule from an outsider’s perspective.

Aptly entitled ‘Reading India, Writing India’, Inez Baranay’s talk was a background to her latest novel, Neem Dreams. Set in India, the book is an outcome of her close interaction with Indians. That India defies definition, is paradoxical and changing and yet retains some unchanging core qualities, was her broad observation on India. Her talk also discussed issues of neo-colonialism and the unfortunate losses that tradition suffers in the hands of modernity. The penultimate speaker, Mr. Ravi R Vasudevan, Co-Director, Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, spoke on ‘International Co-ordinates in Indian film making practice’. Mr. Vasudevan screened excerpts from an old film ‘Light of Asia’ (based on the long poem by Sir Edwin Arnold) made for the viewership of the Empire; as also excerpts from new Hindi films that more often than not comfortably fit in bizarre foreign locales. While in the former film, the film makers had used the opportunity to subvert depictions of colonial power, the new film makers crossed national boundaries with such ease that a kind of homogenized global community could be imagined to exist. Thus Mr. Vasudevan’s paper dealt with the imaging of India in ways that do a violence to the manner in which representations of India are made in an orientalist and in a nationalist discourse. The final presentation was by Ms. Safina Uberoi, a Sydney-based film and television producer and director, well known for her award-winning documentary ‘My Mother India’ (about identity, family, India and Australia). Her talk unraveled the rather mystifying title of her presentation, ‘Selling my grandmother: Making Multi-cultural product for Australian audiences’. Given the multi-racial identities of Australian residents, there seems to be a premium on ethnic origins to qualify in Australian mainstream culture. So Ms. Uberoi’s attempts to make films on what she considered relevant topics (Australian construction workers, to cite an example) fell foul with the financiers and had to be aborted. Realising that if she wanted financial support, she would have to surrender to the expected and take up the “identity problem”, Ms. Uberoi ultimately settled for ‘Selling my Grandmother’. Beautifully interspersed with her own film clippings, Ms. Uberoi’s talk was a frank look at the issues of identity crisis that non-natives have to handle.

The seminar’s success could be gauged by the questions that the interested audience raised. All other factors like the warmth of the hospitality extended and the cool, pleasant ambience, added up to a day meaningfully spent.

Swati Pal

The symposium kicked off with a welcoming traditional barbeque on Sunday evening, that provided an informal forum for the delegates to meet in a relaxed environment setting the tone for the ensuing four days. The sessions commenced the next morning with a traditional Nyoongar welcome by the eminent Aboriginal writer Alf Taylor. The keynote speakers, Professor and creative writer Edwin Thumboo and Professor Bruce Bennett proferred some radical rethinking in the direction of Postcolonial Studies, contesting the very term post colonial in lieu of the new term, ‘Independent literatures’. Sue Boyd, the distinguished Australian diplomat also gave an important analysis of the current political and social climate in Australia and around the world.

The symposium also covered a mélange of issues ranging from media studies to the conference theme of good or evil as moral absolutes. Pertinent discussions on the conference theme of good or evil being moral absolutes were initiated with Prof. Santosh Sareen’s evaluation of the Mahabharata, The Tiger of Malgudi and the film Pinjar and in Sunil Govinnage’s review of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.

The participation of Aboriginal writers like Kim Scott and Alf Taylor rightfully honoured and acknowledged the first nation peoples’ importance and presence in Australia. Several papers on aboriginal studies were presented. Wolfgang Zach’s appraisal of Jack Davis’s plays highlighted the political and social dialectics inscribed in his plays that catapulted his works beyond the realms of literature. The exploitation of aboriginal culture by new age capitalist forces was succinctly conveyed in John Eustace’s critique of the novel Mutant Message Down Under and the Dumbartung movement combating the misappropriation of aboriginal culture by non aborigines. The evening was rounded off with book reading sessions by prominent authors like Kim Scott and Simone Lazaroo from Australia, Kirpal Singh from Singapore and Agnes Lam from Hong Kong.

Identity politics also featured prominently at the symposium. Complexities of Australia’s multicultural identity and its political and social implications were discussed in detail by Sonia Mycak, Tseen Khoo, Jen Tsen Kwok, Dean Chan and others. Romit Dasgupta and Loretta Ho examined the debates involving homosexuality in Japanese cinema and in contemporary China respectively. The day also saw book readings by Rosemary Stevens, Sapardi Damono, Tony Casella and Fay Zwicky and the launch of Complicities and Westerly.

Accompanied by wine tasting, further readings at the picturesque Jane Brooks Winery, in Swan Valley was another informal affair which literally raised everyones’ spirits and provided a welcome break from serious academic concerns. Renowned writers Edwin Thumboo, Sunil Govinnage, Miriam Lo and Suchen Christen Lim, the writer in residence at UWA, shared their latest works with the other delegates amidst a lot of good cheer and applause.

The last day of the conference witnessed the theme of cultural intersections with papers ranging from ‘India in the Australia imagination’ by Dr. Suman Bala, Souk Yee Wong’s, ‘Nationalist Discourse in Singaporean Literature’ and ‘Looking at Representations of Women in Indonesian Children’s Literature’ by Suzie Handajani. Divya Anand’s paper focussing on the much neglected terms ‘Nature’ ‘Native’ and ‘Natural’ and Rupak Borah drawing attention to the Moro situation in the Phillipines underscored the need to refocus and reconfigure the existing paradigms of theoretical considerations.

The seminar drew to a close with John Romeril, the famous Australian playwright bringing the audience up-to-date with the artists’ scrutiny of cultural issues in Australia. Sue Boyd also regaled the audience about her cross-cultural encounters while she worked as a diplomat in various Asian countries and commented on the current political issues of the world including the Iraq situation in an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The symposium culminated with a lively dinner at the nearby Chinese restaurant. The organisers of the symposium, Prof. Dennis Haskell, Pamina Rich and Megan McKinley need to be congratulated for the smooth progression of the conference and the wide range ofthought provoking and stimulating topics that were discussed. As Sonia Mycak remarked at the closing panel the greatest success of the seminar was in opening a space to acknowledge your ignorance without feeling embarrassed or discomfited, which says a lot, in view of elitism and chauvinism plaguing recent conferences in the academia.

Divya Anand

The flavour of Australia continued to tickle the academic taste buds of students and academics at the University of Madras with a variety of interesting activities related to featuring fare from Down Under in the form of visiting academics, writers-in-residence, theatrical performances and an on-going course on Australian Studies.

Under the MOU signed with the Hawke Institute, University of South Australia and the India Studies Program of the Univesity of Madras, Mr. Adrian Vickary from that Institute was a Visiting Scholar to the Department of Political Science in Nov-Dec 2002. Under the same MOU, Professor G.K. Prasad of the Political Science Department, MU, was an Exchange Fellow to the same Institution in Adelaide. He also visited the University of Wollongong to discuss the MOU which is underway with the University.

Ms. Inez Baranay, was Writer-in-Residence with the English Department in Nov-Dec 2002. Her visit was sponsored by the Australia-India Council. She also conducted a Creative Writing Workshop for the participants of the Teachers’ Refresher Course in English in Nov. 2002.

Dr. R. Azhagarasan, Lecturer, Department of English, presented a paper on ‘Textuality and Post-colonialism’ at a conference organised by Professor Paul Sharrad of Wollongong University in Nov 2002.

Dr. Philip Edmunds of Griffith University was sponsored by the Australia-India Council to teach the Core Course on Australian Studies to the students of MA IIyr. during Jan-Feb 2003.

Curtain Call’, the theatre wing of the English Department staged the Australian play, The Stolen as part of a two-day workshop on ‘Mediating Culture through theatre’ in Jan 2003. The play was directed by Professor P. Rajani and the cast entirely made up of students from the University and affiliated colleges.
K. G. Naga Radhika, Full-Time Ph.D Research Scholar in the Department of English was awarded a three-month Fellowship to Australia by the AIC to gather materials for her research on Australian Aboriginal Theatre. In Australia she also met writers,theatre troups, academics and scholars.

C. T. Indra

Interview
Rosy lips, dimpled chin and some dreams

A halo of unruly golden curls, peach and cream complexion, pink lips curved in a disarming smile and sparkling, bluish-green eyes, Inez Baranay could well have stepped out of that famous nursery rhyme ‘Rosy lips, dimpled chin...’ But with a recently acquired PhD degree (for her thesis entitled ‘Sun Square Moon: the Self and the Text’), six published books, fiction as well as non-fiction, behind her and with the entry of her newly launched Neem Dreams in the market, her school teaching, travelling, television researching, script writing, editing and journalism, yoga sessions, commitment to social causes like the gay movement, it is no wonder that Inez Baranay is far more complex than her appearance may initially indicate. She comes across as incisive but humane in her critical analysis, mature yet idealistic in her attitudes and postcolonial yet humanist in her understanding of the contemporary world. This is consistently conveyed through her verbal as well as written discourse.

Born in Italy of Hungarian parents, Inez Baranay has never been troubled by any ‘racial memories’ and feels she is completely Australian, having lived all her life Down Under. Yet, in a world of hybridity, which she calls a global phenomenon, Inez has frequently experienced the pain (and sometimes the novelty?) of being the ‘other’ in Australia due to her origins. This ‘otherness’ that has been thrust upon her by white Australian natives is part of, what she explained in a talk with JNU students, a larger agenda - the engagement with an ethnic identity is now currency to qualify in mainstream Australian literature. However, since Inez is quite at ease with this ‘displacement’ which she says, stems from her very birth, she finds the necessity to deal with an ‘identity problem’ problematic. Thus while at one level Neem Dreams may well be read as a quest for selfhood and self-expression, it is equally a novel about issues as diverse as patent rights; nature cure; multiculturalism and transculturalism; assimilation and appropriation; tradition and modernity. To quote her own words: “When I write a novel, I engage with something I’m passionate about.”

Like most authors, Inez Baranay claims to have used her imagination and her experiences imaginatively to create her fiction. Where she does differ is in her expressed involvement both as a writer, as also an individual, with her creative work. As she says, “the self and the text create each other.” To what extent this happens is anybody’s guess but Inez does not shy away from speaking about her connectedness with the characters in Neem Dreams. Admitting that she often finds herself split into two opposing parts, in this novel she actually felt that she was being divided into four; so she feels she has “most in common with Pandora”, “least with Jade”, can enter with perfect accord into Meenakshi’s emotional space and finds herself, at least in many superficial ways, different from Andy. Where she feels close to all of them is in their identity as (foreign) travellers to India; for Inez, travelling allows one to assume the identity that one is most comfortable with because “universal courtesy” and mutual sensitivity prevents this identity from being challenged; hence it is the one time that one’s sense of self is most in focus. Inez had been toying with the idea of writing a novel set in India (based on her own interest while travelling here) for very long. It so happened that while at Cairns (Queensland) in 1993, she came across someone selling neem products. At around the same time the entire controversy about neem tree patents had flared up. Instinctively, Inez felt that this would serve as a trope for her novel set in India - a site for the intersection of all the discourses that her interactions with people and experiences had generated. It took almost a decade of working upon this idea (alongside the numerous other projects that Inez was handling) for Neem Dreams to finally materialise.

If Inez Baranay is to be believed, then her statement that her work is an extension of her self, could be put to test by reading this latest novel, to decide whether it brings the author closer to us or makes her more of a mystery. Either outcome would be interesting.

Swati Pal
From The Sunday Pioneer, Book Review Section, September 14, 2003

Review
Indian Dreams

Inez Baranay’s Neem Dreams breaks new ground in its attempt to capture the spirit of India through one of its sacred objects - the neem tree. Opening as it does with an emphatic statement, ‘it is a free tree’, it goes on to question if it is still a free tree. The rest of the book attempts to explore this question in relation to four characters, each of whom is connected in one way or the other with this ‘miracle tree’.
Coming from the land of the ‘Dreaming’, there are no explicit references to Aboriginal Dreamtime—the mythical time of creation. Yet perhaps in a way, this book is a new dreaming—an attempt to rework the myth of the neem into the ethos of a post colonial India—an India in which her culture and tradition is forced to come to terms with her ‘progressive’ present; a dreaming that reaches out to India, warning her of multinational designs, of her own conniving politicians and of her headlong rush towards globalisation.

Four characters dream their personal dreams with the neem as their leit motif. The acrid bitterness of the tree perhaps suggests that what this writer/activist reveals may be a bitter pill to swallow but swallow one must if a cure is to be effected. At the heart of the controversy over patents and foreign markets lies the veneration and respect for traditional wisdom. We are aware of the ill effects of international patents on indigenous medicines and resent the intrusion of multinationals. Somehow intellectual property rights don’t seem to apply to India’s age-old customs and traditions. It is a free for all that Western markets shamelessly exploit. Jade and Meenakshi represent the polarities of this argument, while Pandora, the eco-feminist would like to write a book on the subject— sharing as she does the resentment over the attempt to patent a tree! Andy, the British lawyer, comes to India to scatter the ashes of his partner Patrick in the holy Ganges. HIV positive himself, India affords him the spiritual comfort that eluded him back home. He sees that life is a challenge in this country. Perhaps he can find a cure for his condition in the leaves of the neem.

The seven vignettes on the neem tree anchor the fiction to the fable, extending the fabulator’s art to incorporate modern myths of corporate wheeling and dealing with a travelogue of sorts. Pan-Indian in scope, the setting moves from Varanasi to a small town in the south—the flavour of Indian English blending with the ‘chai’ sold in clay cups at the Jolly Tea Shop.

Inez Baranay’s perception of India is truly amazing. She has put her finger on the pulse of the country—nothing has escaped her keen observation. Her eye for detail is remarkable. From waxing eloquent on the art of pouring tea to the patterning of ‘mehendi’— she moves from power politics to population control, from religious sentiments to communal violence—in a mixture of humour and satire that is a mark of her fiction.

A ‘global soul’ as she likes to call herself, the novel moves from Sydney to Darwin,to New York to India’s metros, her holy places and her little known villages. Pursuing personal dreams that remain elusive, her Western characters hurtle headlong into a nightmarish conclusion —pushing and being pushed by forces beyond their control.

On the edge of the sacred the novel speculates on the need for a vision — the need to re-imagine the past in the continuum of the present.

Eugenie Pinto

Anouncement

Australian Studies Fellowships for Indian University Teaching Staff and Postgraduates

Fellowships for the study of Australia are available in 2004 as part of the Australain Studies program of the Australia-India Council (AIC)

Eligibility : Indian nationals employed in, and Indian postgraduate students enrolled at, Indian universities. Applicants must be undertaking research on issues related to Australia. Applicants in the following fields are particularly welcome:

• Australian litt, politics & history
• Environment and health
• Film, media, communications and performing arts
• Issues relating to Indigenous Australians
• Ethnicities and multiculturalism
• Tourism
• Gender studies
  

Terms : Up to six senior and junior fellowships will be offered in 2004, tenable for period of from 4-12 weeks. The sum awared is intended to cover an economy airfare to and from Australia, approved internal travel and an accommodation and living allowance. The maximum amount for a single fellowship is AUD$ 10,000.

Criteria : Senior fellows will be selected on the basis of (i) demonstrated commitment, partly evidenced by publication and teaching, to the study of Australia and issues related to it; (ii) the quality of the research project to be undertaken during the fellowship; (iii) the likehood of significant publication or other Australian studies work emanating from the fellowship. Junior fellows will be selected on the basis of (i) record, (ii) dissertation topic and progress, and (iii) the quality of the proposed Australian studies research project.

Deadline : Deadline for the first round of application is 31 January 2004.

Application : For information about the application form : Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia.

Membership Form

Our New Members - 2004