The Light of Knowledge

Front matter

THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE

EXPERTISE

CULTURES AND TECHNOLOGIES OF KNOWLEDGE

Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations Note on Transliteration

Introduction: Of Light, Literacy, and Knowledge in the Tamil Countryside p

FoREWORD

It is with the greatest pleasure that I introduce you to Frank Cody’s The Light of Knowledge. In it, Cody brilliantly analyzes the work of the Arivoli Iyakkam, one of the largest literacy movements in the world, which mobilized millions across Tamil Nadu between 1990 and 2009. The Arivoli lyakkam sought to increase the political participation and leverage of rural women and aspired to help them attain new, enlightened autonomy through literate access to science and knowledge. A range of socialist literacy movements inspired the movement, especially Paulo Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed.” Beginning as a volunteer-driven, nongovernmental project, such was the complicated and transitional situation of Indian statecraft during the period—as Nehruvian national developmentalism increasingly gave ground to visions of liberalization and globalization—that the Arivoli lyakkam quickly found itself drawn into the interstices of nongovernmental and governmental authority. Cody shows how the work of the movement was strained by competing conceptions of development and citizenship in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet literacy viii Foreword was a locus of aspiration and a zone of social imagination claimed by all, whether to deepen the basis of national citizenship and collective purpose or to open a gateway to a new regime of individuated liberal freedom and autonomy.

As fascinating as the backdrop of “socialist politics in a decidedly neoliberal age” is, competing regimes of governmentality are not the real story here. Drawing on the analytic techniques of both linguistic and cultural anthropology, Cody delves deeply into the epistemic practices of the Arivoli Iyakkam movement itself. Here, Cody pinpoints a crucial tension between, on the one hand, faith in the promise of literacy to emancipate the self from social restraint and, on the other, recognition that literacy is a power-laden social practice in its own right. Cody does not argue that there is some fundamental incommensurability between the lifeworld of Tamil peasants and enlightenment accounts of the interconnection between literacy, science, and freedom. Instead, he gestures to the deeper paradox “at the heart of . . . pedagogical practice” within “charismatic Enlightenment” activism that people must, in essence, be charmed and trained to be free. In this respect, Cody finds that the pedagogical practices of the Arivoli Iyakkam often chafed against its principles, leading him to consider the generative intellectual labor of village activists to produce a coherent, and coherently “Tamil,” practice of enlightenment. He argues that it was the critical and reflexive practices of activists themselves that aligned, so far as this was possible, the senses of freedom incorporated in traditional Tamil culture with socialist models of emancipatory enlightenment. The Arivoli Iyakkam thus mutated Freirean pedagogy into a distinctively Tamil form, creating a new “rural humanism,” as Cody terms it. It is the epistemic and linguistic virtuosity of the activists, as well as their considerable social and cultural impact in rural Tamil Nadu, that is the beating heart of Cody’s account.

When the Expertise series began three years ago, The Light of Knowledge was exactly the kind of transversal, horizon-opening project I had hoped to be able to recruit. Knowledge has long been a crucial zone of inquiry in anthropology and the human sciences. Indeed, anthropology’s long rumination on knowledge—whether, in the beginning, on “reason”

and “belief,” later on “culture” and “identity,” or more recently on “expertise” and “epistemology”—has contributed generously to the conceptual apparatus of the discipline. The Expertise series has sought to recognize

Foreword 1x and extend this generosity. By centering the series in the anthropology of knowledge, my colleagues at Cornell and I have hoped to solicit rich and compelling ethnographies that demonstrate that epistemic practices and forms remain crucial objects of inquiry for anthropology and the human sciences. This is a question, on the one hand, of finding effective ways and research objects through which to narrate and analyze the broader complexities of human experience. But it is also a question of the search, after the (timely or untimely) diminishment of culture theory, to nurture anthropological theory that speaks effectively across many fields and subfields of the human sciences.

Our goal is not to develop a new unifying signature concept (for example, to replace theory of “culture” with that of “knowledge”). Rather the idea is to use the foundational importance of epistemic factors across many domains of life to encourage, for example, studies of politics to connect conceptually with those emerging from media studies or to help research on medicine to form new links to studies of religion. We human scientists seem increasingly suspicious, and reasonably so, of unifying signature concepts in the era of the lateral connectivities of digital media. Still, the premise of Expertise is that more can and should be done to augment the capacity of the plurality of ethnographic field knowledges to communicate more effectively with one another. This seems to me an appropriate horizon for anthropological theory in the digital era. Thus one might think of the Expertise series as a constellation of experiments to highlight different research nodes or meshes through which the anthropology of knowledge can help provide new connectivities between and among other fields. Daromir Rudnyckyj’s book, the first in the series, elicited unexpected connections between anthropological research on development, modernity, and religion through a study of New- Age managerial ideology in Indonesia. In Iver Neumann’s ethnography of a diplomatic corps, the first of its kind, we found a reimagination of states and their relations with each other through the eyes and hands of those who perform the intimate expertise of managing status, honor, and reputation between governments.

In the case of Cody’s book, the operational node is “activism.” The trajectory of the Arivoli Iyyakam’s literacy activism transects and connects anthropological research on power and governance, movements and ideologies, media and knowledge. His project helps define and extend the x Foreword analytic potential of an emergent area of ethnographic research that highlights activism as a key mediating expert practice in the transformation of social and political subjectivities. Comparable work in recent years includes David Graeber’s and Jeffrey Juris’s research on antiglobalization and direct action movements, Angelique Haugerud’s research on satirical activism in the United States, Cymene Howe’s research on sexual rights activism in Nicaragua, Sally Engle Merry’s work on human rights activism, and Maple Razsa’s research and films on Croatian anarchism. In each case, we find studies of what goes on behind-the-scenes in social movements and public political discourse, of the work of activists to leverage the legitimacy of universalizing principles (like human rights or freedom) for what are nevertheless always very local purposes. And, just as in Cody’s book, we find that activists often solicit unique mediations between translocal and local knowledges. This entire field of research, but Cody’s book particularly, makes us rethink how transnational political discourses operate, how ideologies like Freirean pedagogy are translated and transformed by grassroots political actors and intellectuals, forcing seemingly universalist principles to acquire a plurality of distinct cultural inflections (inflections that, at the same time, are also able to reshape the local knowledges on which they draw). Cody and his colleagues thus reveal activism as a crucial and generative juncture of modern power and knowledge, perhaps especially as neoliberal governance has sought to rely more and more on civil society and social movements to take on vital projects of social and political subject formation.

With these preliminaries in mind, I invite you to enjoy what is also simply a remarkable story of one of the most impactful social movements of the past century.

Dominic Boyer October 2012

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the product of many conversations and exchanges with family, friends, activists, and colleagues. I thank the friends and families who have made me feel at home in Pudukkottai. S. A. Karuppiah, an activist whom readers will come to know well through the course of this book invited me to come live with his family in Kovilpatti. Karuppiah remains a lifelong friend and his interpretations of the Arivoli Iyakkam and life in Tamil Nadu more broadly have played a very large role in shaping my own. I thank him and everyone in Kovilpatti, especially S. Arangulavan, S. A. Tangavelu, K. Rajalakshmi, N. Nadiyammai, and D. Minakshi for their care, companionship, and affection. K. Amutha and her sisters, D. Nadiyammai and T. Sridevi, helped me with survey work. In Katrampatti Colony, N. Velan and V. Rajalakshmi taught me about the pasts of a village. Many thanks to A. Chithra, A. Govindammal, K. Kuttaiyamman, V. Marakatham, K. Nadimuttu, S. Nalayini, K. Palaniyayi, N. Parimala, N. Racamani, A. Santhi, S. Santhi, K. Sudha, K. Sumathi, T. Vinitha, and all those who opened their hearts to me in xii Acknowledgments

Katrampatti. Poets R. Neela, Subi, and family in Mangalapuram provided not only generous doses of affection and sustenance but these friends and fellow writers also provided a space, along with the room in Alangudi, to discuss literature, philosophy, and politics. Nothing I can write could possibly convey the gratitude I feel for those who have welcomed me as part of their ar.

Conversations with Senthil Babu first convinced me that this was a story worth telling. His own work inside and outside the academy continues to inspire, as does his desire to interrogate the gap between the production of scholarly knowledge and politically effective activist praxis. I thank him and the TNSF and PSF leadership, especially Dr. V. B. Athreya, who took the time to help in developing a historical and regional perspective on the events I saw happening before me in Pudukkottai. Poet Muttu Nilavan and other members of the Progressive Writers and Artists Association in Pudukkottai and Alangudi consistently engaged with my work at a number of meetings, formal and informal. I continue to reflect on these discussions over the years and I look forward to many more. I also thank Usha Nandini and the Vidiyal Kalai Kulu of the Alangudi region and R. Rajkumar, the former district coordinator of the Arivoli lyakkam in Pudukkottai, as well as Arokiyarani, Arumugam, Chitra, and Nagarattinam, at the literacy office, and especially the block coordinators, Abu Bakar, Chinnalagan, Ilango, Megala, Paramasivam, Ramalingam, Sivakumar, Sheik Muhammad, Sundari, and Vallal. Their ceaseless reflection upon their own work contributed greatly to the shape of my research in Pudukkottai.

In Chennai, I benefited greatly from frequent meetings with my guide at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, A. R. Venkatachalapathy, during my fieldwork. The friendship continues, now across continents. V. Geetha has been a model of intellectual courage and generosity. Aruna Rathnam’s insights and friendship have been critical to this project. François Gros and M. Kannan of the French Institute in Pondicherry also provided stimulating discussion of this work and of a related research project on village history.

In the United States, I thank Webb Keane, Judith T. Irvine, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, and Sumathi Ramaswamy for their contributions and generous support in helping me formulate and execute the research for this book. Others at the University of Michigan who deserve special

Acknowledgments xiii mention include Fernando Coronil, Alaina Lemon, Bruce Mannheim, Barbara Metcalf, Thomas Trautmann, and Katherine Verdery for their parts in building the atmosphere of engagement that contributed to this work. Fernando is dearly missed by so many who had the good fortune to study with him. Sharad Chari deserves perhaps the most immediate credit for helping me to think about the relationship between political activism and the materialities of language. Lee Schlesinger has been a mentor since I first arrived at Michigan. I am indebted to Professor K. Karunakaran for introducing me to Tamil and to South Asian sociolinguistics. Friends Laura Brown, Naisargi Dave, Karen Hébert, Olivera Jokić, Emil Kerenji, Jonathan Larson, Edward Murphy, and John Thiels provided an amazing community in Ann Arbor. William Nelson and Eliot Tretter have been my brothers and intellectual companions since childhood, and Aparna Balachandran and Chandan Gowda have been dear friends and fellow researchers both in India and in the United States.

Friends and colleagues who have generously engaged with this work, sharing encouragement and insights over the years, include Shahid Amin, Barney Bate, Ruchi Chaturvedi, Val Daniel, Ujala Dhaka, Susan Gal, Matthew Hull, John Kelly, William Mazzarella, Lisa Mitchell, Anand Pandian, Nate Roberts, Ravi Sriramachandran, Ajantha Subramanian, and Anand Vaidya. Michael Silverstein has been a longtime interlocutor who saw big things in small signatures early on in my research. Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities and Department of Anthropology provided the perfect environment in which think about how to develop the manuscript for this book. Thanks to everyone at the society’s seminar for feedback on an early formulation, and I especially express my gratitude to Paul Nadasdy and Marina Welker for their friendship and gracious hospitality in Ithaca. Toronto has proven to be an inspirational place to work because of the people I have come to know there. Darshan Ambalavanar, Ponni Arasu, R. Cheran, Sudharshan Duraiyappah, Chelva Kanaganayakam, Srilata Raman, and Aparna Sundar have become friends and fellow travelers in the field of Tamil studies. Friends and colleagues in Toronto who have helped me refine the story I tell include Joshua Barker, Ritu Birla, Girish Daswani, Naisargi Dave, Christoph Emmrich, Andrew Gilbert, Jennifer Jackson, Kajri Jain, Michael Lambek, Tania Li, Paul Manning, Bonnie McElhinny, Andrea Muehlebach, Natalie Rothman, xiv Acknowledgments

Jack Sidnell, and especially Alejandro Paz, who read through the entire manuscript. I have been very fortunate to teach a remarkable set of graduate and undergraduate students whose questions and comments have helped define the writing of this book.

I learned much from comments and critiques made by workshop, seminar, and colloquium participants in a wide range of venues, including the Stockholm University Department of Anthropology, Princeton University South Asia Colloquium, Harvard University South Asia across Disciplines Colloquium, Cornell University Anthropology Colloquium, University of Chicago Anthropology Seminar, Yale University Vernacular Public Spheres in South Asia Workshop, Madras Institute of Development Studies Seminar Series, and Johns Hopkins University conference on Signatures. I have also benefited from presenting my work at meetings held by the American Anthropological Association, American Ethnological Society, Association for Asian Studies, American Comparative Literature Association, Canadian Anthropology Society, Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin, Annual Tamil Studies Conference in Toronto, and Michicagoan Linguistic Anthropology Conference. Portions of chapter 5 were previously published in 2009 as “Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India,” Cultural Anthropology 24(3): 347— 80, and parts of chapter 1 in 2011 as “Arivoli’s Humanism: Literacy Activism and the Senses of Enlightenment,” in World without Walls: Being Human, Being Tamil, edited by C. Kanaganayakam, R. Cheran, S. Duraiyappah, and D. Singh (Toronto: TSAR). I thank the reviewers of these pieces and the editors, especially Kim and Mike Fortun, for their suggestions.

The research for this book was funded by the Connaught Foundation at the University of Toronto, the Mellon Foundation and Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Grant, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and a Rackham Fellowship from the University of Michigan. In India, institutional affiliation was kindly extended by K. Nagaraj and A. R. Venkatachalapathy of the The Madras Institute of Development Studies.

Acknowledgments xv

Dominic Boyer and Peter Potter at the Cornell University Press have been exemplary editors. I thank them for their expert guidance, and I thank Susan Specter, who saw the manuscript through production, and Lisa DeBoer, who created the index. I also extend my gratitude to Barney Bate for an extremely useful set of comments on the manuscript and to the second reviewer at Cornell for providing important contributions as well.

My mother and stepfather, Ariane and Ron Thompson, raised me in a house full of books, helped me first go to India, and have supported me every step of the way. They and my sister, Melinda Cody, my father, Edward Cody, and my nieces, Lola and Chloe, have put up with a lot while I conducted research and wrote this book. My grandparents, Andrée and Gaston Espinasse, who passed away during my research, were perhaps my most important role models. No expression of gratitude could begin to repay the debt I owe them. The Ramans and the Ramachandrans have given me yet another home in Chennai. Uma and Mohan Raman have followed my work in Pudukkottai with curiosity and encouragement. They gave me a place to rest and reflect, and they have become family. I would like to acknowledge Mr. M. Ramachandran, whose great heart and love of Tamil touched everyone who met him. And finally, Bhavani Raman has acted as my eyes through this entire process. This book could not have been written without her care and critique. Her love and intellectual companionship have made this work what it is, and me who I am.

ABBREVIATIONS

AIADMK © All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

BGVS Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti

BPL below poverty line

CEC continuing education center

CEP continuing education program

CPI(M) Communist Party of India (Marxist)

DK Dravida Kazhagam

DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

DRO district revenue officer

DSMS District Supply and Marketing Society

DWCRA Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas GAD gender and development

GONGO government organized nongovernmental organization IAS Indian Administrative Service

ICS Indian Civil Service

IPTA Indian People’s Theatre Association xviii

IRDP KSSP NGO NLM PDS

PSF SGSY TNSF UNESCO

VAO WID

Abbreviations

Integrated Rural Development Program Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad nongovernmental organization National Literacy Mission

Public Distribution System

Pondicherry Science Forum Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana Tamil Nadu Science Forum

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

village administration officer women in development

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

Tamil terms have been transliterated in the text and in transcripts using the University of Madras Tamil Lexicon scheme. For the sake of readability, names of people, deities, political parties, castes, and places appear in their more recognizable Anglicized forms, for example, “Pudukkottai” or “Rajalakshmi.” When appearing as discrete words, Tamil terms are pluralized in the English manner, by adding an “s.” Most non-Tamil Indian terms are employed without diacritics, using commonly recognized Anglicized spellings. All translations from Tamil speech and from written texts in Tamil are mine unless otherwise noted. In a number of passages and transcripts I have represented spoken forms according to local spoken convention rather than literary spelling conventions, in the same manner as Tamil fiction authors but in transliteration.

THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE