Abraham And Schendel's The Making Of Illicitness Analysis
As in Abraham and Schendel’s, ‘’Introduction- The Making of Illicitness’’, nations are an arbitrary political form, a common quality all nations share. And it is the story of national borders which vouch for this arbitrariness. Annexations, break-ups and unifications create a change in national borders. Yet, nations try all the time to hide their arbitrariness and recover them as authentic. The divergence of these two aspects of arbitrariness and authenticity lead to the idea of a nation as an utopia; a never-realisable project of violence. And pursuing this utopia can only be ever-elusive.
To expand on this idea, two stories will be illustrated (before you) which will act as evidence for the nation being a source of constant anxiety and …show more content…
A section of Tamil-speaking south wanted to form their own nation, the so-called Dravida Nadu. But the committee wasn’t willing to separate the identity of south India and hence produced a past which bound together the souther and the northern regions of India : ‘’Ayodhya, Madura and Vrindavan in the north are places sacred to the memory of Rama and Krishna, but Rama’s journey across the south to Ceylon is deeply enshrined in Hindu memory, and pilgrim places like Kanchi and Rameswaram have equal claim to reverence.’’ But this mix of myth and history was unfortunately not experienced and interpreted the same way. Taking the case of Rama’s southward journey, south dissenters looked at it with a different perspective. They believed, ‘’In Dravidian propaganda the southward march of Rama to the lair of the evil King Ravana, abductor of Sita, is nothing less than the allegorical story of the triumphal Aryan progress over the original Dravidian inhabitants of India. Thus the epic is a racial insult before half told.’’ As a result, the bond between the north and south of India is based on silencing alternative interpretations of the past. Thus, (this acted as a ..)acting as a source of anxiety. This is the story of regional unity the committee tried to
To expand on this idea, two stories will be illustrated (before you) which will act as evidence for the nation being a source of constant anxiety and …show more content…
A section of Tamil-speaking south wanted to form their own nation, the so-called Dravida Nadu. But the committee wasn’t willing to separate the identity of south India and hence produced a past which bound together the souther and the northern regions of India : ‘’Ayodhya, Madura and Vrindavan in the north are places sacred to the memory of Rama and Krishna, but Rama’s journey across the south to Ceylon is deeply enshrined in Hindu memory, and pilgrim places like Kanchi and Rameswaram have equal claim to reverence.’’ But this mix of myth and history was unfortunately not experienced and interpreted the same way. Taking the case of Rama’s southward journey, south dissenters looked at it with a different perspective. They believed, ‘’In Dravidian propaganda the southward march of Rama to the lair of the evil King Ravana, abductor of Sita, is nothing less than the allegorical story of the triumphal Aryan progress over the original Dravidian inhabitants of India. Thus the epic is a racial insult before half told.’’ As a result, the bond between the north and south of India is based on silencing alternative interpretations of the past. Thus, (this acted as a ..)acting as a source of anxiety. This is the story of regional unity the committee tried to