Tamil Jains: fluid histories in stone

Tamil Jains, a minority indigenous to Tamil Nadu, face an uphill battle of protecting their unique heritage. The task has been undertaken disparately by the State, the community and NGOs. Mahima A Jain writes on the challenges of protecting Jain heritage and attempts to reshape the historical narrative. This is the second of two South Asia @ LSE articles by Mahima A Jain on the Tamil Jain community. Read her first piece ‘The Tamil Jains: A minority within a minority’ here

Alex & I: Against Indifference

This text and photo essay concerns a series of portraits made with a community of Tamil refugees living in Bangkok who refer to themselves as ‘the Bachelors.’ The project was initiated by refugee and one-time media figure, Sanjeev ‘Alex’ Kuhendrarajah who hoped his peers would tell their own stories to an ‘international community.’ With reference to Judith Butler’s Frames of War (2009), I have sought to ‘discursively frame’ the images by considering the discrimination these young single men encounter living in the margins of this South Asian metropolis, awaiting the outcomes of their re-settlement applications.

Akhbar-Akhbar Tamil Dan Pemikiran Tentang Kaum India Di Tanah Melayu, 1946 – 1960

Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menilai sejauh mana pemikiran akhbar-akhbar Tamil memainkan peranan dalam isu-isu kaum India di Tanah Melayu dari tahun 1946 hingga 1960. Penilaian ini dibuat dengan memfokuskan tiga buah akhbar Tamil iaitu Tamil Nesan, Tamil Murasu dan Jananayakam. Penilaian adalah berasaskan pemikiran ketigatiga akhbar Tamil tersebut dalam isu-isu kaum India seperti kesedaran politik, penubuhan dan perjuangan MIC, soal kewarganegaraan kaum India, peranan MIC dalam soal kewarganegaraan, kesedaran etnik Tamil, pendidikan Tamil, tabiat meminum todi dan permasalahan buruh India. Kajian ini mendapati bahawa pemikiran akhbar Tamil Nesan, Tamil Murasu dan Jananayakam yang diterjemahkan melalui ruangan rencana pengarang telah memainkan peranan penting dalam isu-isu kaum India serta memberi dorongan kepada kaum India untuk memperjuangkan hak mereka di Tanah Melayu. Pemikiran ketiga-tiga akhbar tersebut yang disampaikan melalui pandangan, cadangan, kritikan, teguran dan desakan telah memberi kesedaran kepada kaum India supaya sentiasa bersatu padu dan bekerjasama dalam menuntut dan memperjuangkan hak mereka serta mengekalkan identiti India di Tanah Melayu. The aim of this research is to study the thinking of Tamil newspapers and their role on issues related to Indians in Malaya from 1946 to 1960. The assessment is made by focussing on three Tamil newspapers, namely Tamil Nesan, Tamil Murasu and Jananayakam. It is based on the thinking of the three Tamil newspapers on issues related to Indians such as political awareness, establishment and struggles of MIC, Indian citizenship, MIC’s role on citizenship, Tamil ethnic awareness, Tamil education, habit of consuming toddy and problems concerning Indian labourers. The findings of this study show that the thinking of Tamil Nesan, Tamil Murasu and Jananayakam had played important roles on issues related to the Indians in Malaya. The thinking of these newspapers which are translated through the editorials had encouraged the Indian community to voice their rights in Malaya. The thinking of the Tamil newspapers which were conveyed through views, suggestions, criticisms, exhortations and persistence, raised awareness among the Indians to stay united and work together in demanding and fighting for their rights and maintaining the identity of Indians in Malaya

Multilingual gendered identities: female undergraduate students in London talk about heritage languages

In this paper I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and early twenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in which the participants enact ‘culturally intelligible’ gendered subject positions. This frequently involves negotiating the norms of ‘heteronormativity’, constituting femininity in terms of marriage, motherhood and maintenance of heritage culture and language, and ‘girl power’, constituting femininity in terms of youth, sassiness, glamour and individualism. For these young women, I ask whether higher education can become a site in which they have the opportunities to explore these identifications and examine other ways of imagining the self and what their stories suggest about ‘doing being’ a young British Asian woman in London

An NGO-Implemented Community-Clinic Health Worker Approach to Providing Long-Term Care for Hypertension in a Remote Region of Southern India.

Poor blood pressure control results in tremendous morbidity and mortality in India where the leading cause of death among adults is from coronary heart disease. Despite having little formal education, community health workers (CHWs) are integral to successful public health interventions in India and other low- and middle-income countries that have a shortage of trained health professionals. Training CHWs to screen for and manage chronic hypertension, with support from trained clinicians, offers an excellent opportunity for effecting systemwide change in hypertension-related burden of disease. In this article, we describe the development of a program that trained CHWs between 2014 and 2015 in the tribal region of the Sittilingi Valley in southern India, to identify hypertensive patients in the community, refer them for diagnosis and initial management in a physician-staffed clinic, and provide them with sustained lifestyle interventions and medications over multiple visits. We found that after 2 years, the CHWs had screened 7,176 people over age 18 for hypertension, 1,184 (16.5%) of whom were screened as hypertensive. Of the 1,184 patients screened as hypertensive, 898 (75.8%) had achieved blood pressure control, defined as a systolic blood pressure less than 140 and a diastolic blood pressure less than 90 sustained over 3 consecutive visits. While all of the 24 trained CHWs reported confidence in checking blood pressure with a manual blood pressure cuff, 4 of the 24 CHWs reported occasional difficulty documenting blood pressure values because they were unable to write numbers properly. They compensated by asking other CHWs or members of their community to help with documentation. Our experience and findings suggest that a CHW blood pressure screening system linked to a central clinic can be a promising avenue for improving hypertension control rates in low- and middle-income countries

Fisheries Stakeholders and Their Livelihoods in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry

Fisheries Management for Sustainable Livelihoods (FIMSUL), is a project implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the Government of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in India under the World Bank Trust Fund. The project aims at establishing frameworks, processes and building capacities of various stakeholders especially the Government, to facilitate the planning, design and implementation of appropriate fisheries development and management policies. The project includes a series of stakeholder consultations and consensus building apart from detailed review and analysis in the areas of stakeholders, livelihoods, policy, legal and institutional frame work and fisheries management. Based on this, the project comes up with various options. Stakeholder and livelihoods analysis is an essential part of the project. Hence, the team developed a detailed methodology for stakeholder consultations which includes district level stake holder consultation, focus group discussions, household interviews and validation meetings. The stakeholder and livelihoods analysis following the above steps were done through six NGO partners working along the coast of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry who were initially trained on the methodology. The NGO partners : PLANT, GUIDE, FERAL, SIFFS, DHAN Foundation and TMSSS, especially a team of dedicated staff engaged by them had done an excellent work in completing comprehensive field exercises and bringing out 12 district/regional reports. These are published separately. This report is a compilation, and complete analysis of the stakeholders and livelihoods based on all the field level consultations.This report is expected to be an important reference to primary stakeholders' perspective of the important stakeholders in the sector, the livelihoods and livelihoods changes, the adaptive and coping mechanism, the relationships between the stakeholders and their hopes and aspirations. For any development intervention for any sector or stakeholder group, region-wise in marine fisheries in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the information from this report could be an important starting point

Traditional vocations and modern professions among Tamil Brahmans in colonial and post-colonial south India

Since the nineteenth century, Tamil Brahmans have been very well represented in the educated professions, especially law and administration, medicine, engineering and nowadays, information technology. This is partly a continuation of the Brahmans’ role as literate service people, owing to their traditions of education, learning and literacy, but the range of professions shows that any direct continuity is more apparent than real. Genealogical data are particularly used as evidence about changing patterns of employment, education and migration. Caste traditionalism was not a determining constraint, for Tamil Brahmans were predominant in medicine and engineering as well as law and administration in the colonial period, even though medicine is ritually polluting and engineering resembles low-status artisans’ work. Crucially though, as modern, English-language, credential-based professions that are wellpaid and prestigious, law, medicine and engineering were and are all deemed eminently suitable for Tamil Brahmans, who typically regard their professional success as a sign of their caste superiority in the modern world. In reality, though, it is mainly a product of how their old social and cultural capital and their economic capital in land were transformed as they seized new educational and employment opportunities by flexibly deploying their traditional, inherited skills and advantages

"They think we're OK and we know we're not". A qualitative study of asylum seekers' access, knowledge and views to health care in the UK

<i>Background</i>: The provision of healthcare for asylum seekers is a global issue. Providing appropriate and culturally sensitive services requires us to understand the barriers facing asylum seekers and the facilitators that help them access health care. Here, we report on two linked studies exploring these issues, along with the health care needs and beliefs of asylum seekers living in the UK. <i>Methods</i>: Two qualitative methods were employed: focus groups facilitated by members of the asylum seeking community and interviews, either one-to-one or in a group, conducted through an interpreter. Analysis was facilitated using the Framework method. <i>Results</i>: Most asylum seekers were registered with a GP, facilitated for some by an Asylum Support nurse. Many experienced difficulty getting timely appointments with their doctor, especially for self-limiting symptoms that they felt could become more serious, especially in children. Most were positive about the health care they received, although some commented on the lack of continuity. However, there was surprise and disappointment at the length of waiting times both for hospital appointments and when attending accident and emergency departments. Most had attended a dentist, but usually only when there was a clinical need. The provision of interpreters in primary care was generally good, although there was a tension between interpreters translating verbatim and acting as patient advocates. Access to interpreters in other settings, e.g. in-patient hospital stays, was problematic. Barriers included the cost of over-the-counter medication, e.g. children's paracetamol; knowledge of out-of-hours medical care; and access to specialists in secondary care. Most respondents came from countries with no system of primary medical care, which impacted on their expectations of the UK system. <i>Conclusion</i>: Most asylum seekers were positive about their experiences of health care. However, we have identified issues regarding their understanding of how the UK system works, in particular the role of general practitioners and referral to hospital specialists. The provision of an Asylum Support nurse was clearly a facilitator to accessing primary medical care. Initiatives to increase their awareness and understanding of the UK system would be beneficial. Interpreting services also need to be developed, in particular their role in secondary care and the development of the role of interpreter as patient advocate