Tinai 3 (by Nirmaldasan and Nirmal Selvamony, November 2003-July 2004)
-- Reviewed in the Journalism Online newsletter (October, 2004)
 by Daniel Sanjiv Roberts (d.s.roberts@qub.ac.uk) 
School of English, Queen's University Belfast --

Literary criticism in the West has been turning lately to what has
been termed 'ecocriticism', a critical approach emphasising the
relationship between literary text and ecology, in response to a
growing sense of man's continual degradation of our world and indeed
his threat to the future of our planet. As technology shrinks the
boundaries of physical space in ways unimagined by earlier
generations, questions regarding the sustainability of western
technologies and lifestyles become ever more urgent. Yet there is
also a sense that such questions cannot be answered globally. Global
answers such as those provided by the UN or World Bank or similar
organizations tend to be complicit in multinational and global
structures and are often heedless of smaller communities and local
differences. So also, perhaps western models of ecocriticism do not
always face the realities of Indian literary and social existence.
Critics and writers in India (Arundhati Roy most famously, thanks to
the publicity of her Booker prize) have been aware of such
controversies and have been responding in their way to the sense of
crisis or danger evoked as India becomes a major player in the world
market. Issues such as land, ownership and ethical responsibility
become crucial in such an engagement. 'Tinai' requires to be placed
in this context of social and literary criticism. Turning to the
concept of Tinai, articulated in early Tamil texts such as the
Tolkaappiyam, the editors of tinai, Nirmal Selvamony and Nirmaldasan,
attempt to recuperate from it a workable scholarly, literary and
social conception, one that is rooted in regional traditions as well
as being responsive to modern conditions of development and
significant western influences.

Issue number 3 of tinai begins with a scholarly examination of the
tinai concept, surveying a range of modern commentators and reviewing
the different approaches to the concept of tinai as an ecoregion. The
word is shown to have literary, semiotic, aesthetic, ethnological,
aetiological, anthropological, societal, materialistic, political,
geographical, ecological and epigraphical meanings, and two later
sections of this erudite essay suggest the comparative possibilities
of tinai, and the present-day persistence of tinai structures in the
social life of rural and tribal peoples. From a scholarly
perspective, this essay provides a fascinating intellectual sounding
of the concept and establishes a wide base for the recovery of tinai
as a living concept of real relevance in the Tamil-speaking regions
of South India. A more contentious application of the term would be
in the 'nativist' ramifications that are also cited. The notion
(which Selvamony quotes from Paranjape) that 'any human being or
literature can stand tall only in its own native land and linguistic
group' seems unnecessarily cramping in its implications. Migrations
of human beings have always been part of human history for a variety
of reasons and fortunately human culture has shown great adaptability
and strength in facing new environments and other cultures, unlike
plants and wild animals which don't often thrive outside their native
environments. One may argue that the works of some of the greatest of
literary writers, Salman Rushdie or Saul Bellow, emerge from these
confrontations. And even Shakespeare, often regarded as
quintessentially 'English', derives his reputation as a national icon
largely from nineteenth-century critics; his own vision though based
in English literary culture, particularly of the metropolitan stage,
was hardly nativist, regionalist or nationalist in the senses that we
understand these terms. While modern patterns of migration have made
us aware of newly migrant groups (who are often the victims of
prejudice), perhaps we should realize that migrations have always
been part of human history, leaving their mark on racial and cultural
makeup so that nobody but a bigot can claim a cultural or racial
purity for themselves. The Aryan settlement of India is now seen by
most Indian historians as a gradual and complex development, not
the 'invasion' thesis beloved of the nineteenth-century racialists
and colonialist historians. The concept of tinai, recovered as it is
from a pre-caste community life, needs to be able to recover that
sense of egalitarianism without the racialized layering of
colonialist histories.

Nirmaldasan's essay 'Nativism in Paradise Lost' attempts a somewhat
paradoxical reading of Milton's epic in relation to the concept of
nativism. If nativism is 'the natural bond that links people to their
place of birth' it is remarkable that both Raphael and Adam can
hardly be said to have been 'born' in Heaven or Paradise
respectively. In terms of Miltonic theology, while Raphael presumably
has an eternal existence in heaven outside of time, Adam is created
as an adult in Paradise, a place he has no links of 'birth' (or
maturation) with. Yet despite this difficulty of origins,
Nirmaldasan's essay achieves some insightful readings of Milton's
conceptions of political hierarchies, a product no doubt of his
disappointed Republican sympathies. Other articles in tinai 3
include 'Roots and Wings' and 'The Spirit of Innocence' two
collections of poems by Nirmaldasan, in which historical, theological
and natural themes are interwoven. Several poems can be seen to
develop Christian themes within a native Tamilian setting, such
as 'Christopanishad' and 'The Kites of Triplicane'. The verse seems
indebted mainly to ballad forms, and suits the subject matter
sometimes with real felicity. 'Working Overtime' is a critique of
child labour and education in the form of a dialogue between two
brothers Bo and Joe, aged 6 and 8, reminiscent in its deceptive
simplicity and apparent artlessness of some of famous Lyrical Ballads
poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge. A final chapter on 'Oikopoetic
Method' by Nirmal Selvamony distinguishes usefully between
oikopoetics and tinai poetics. Though both deal with culture and
environment, 'Oikopoetics' appears to have a wider applicability in
that it is not regionally based and does not carry indigenous
implications. A reading of Lawrence's 'Snake' provided by Selvamony
demonstrates the practical aspects of this mode of criticism.

As an alternative to western ecocriticism, 'tinai' is a valuable and
exciting concept. The term will need to be reinterpreted through the
lens of a modern consciousness to be taken up by a sizeable following
today. Selvamony and Nirmaldasan have provided a brave start with the
Tinai venture; their success can be judged in time. Apart from the
literary and critical work reviewed, the concept is potentially
activist in nature and can find useful application in the social and
political arenas. Readers of tinai will surely look forward to such
developments.