PRESS RELEASE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD CONFERENCE

11&12 AUGUST, 2007

UNIVERSITY MALAYA

WELCOME TO THE CRADLE OF GLOBALIZATION: THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD!

The University of Malaya is proud to announce a major Arts and Social Science initiative: The Indian Ocean World. A two day international conference and mixed media event, the conference addresses the great significance of the Indian Ocean as a “contact zone” linking Southeast Asia with the rest of the world. Deemed “the cradle of globalization,” it is the Indian Ocean which spawned the great movements of peoples, commodities, cultures, and beliefs.

Renowned historians, cultural analysts, dancers, documentary film-makers and academics, stemming from diverse centres of learning in Australia, India, the Philippines, Germany, South Africa, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, will gather together during this intensive and exhilarating two-day event to perform and discuss this great ocean’s past, present, and future.

An event for those interested in drawing their own water, rather than having it drawn for them, the Indian Ocean World calls upon those committed to ideas, to culture, history, and the arts, to join us in reflecting on and debating the meaning of this great Ocean. The home of Sinbad and the magical milk sea; the holy crossing for those journeying to Mecca; the cradle of international trade and Zheng He’s supreme Treasure Fleets, the Indian Ocean not only captures the imagination but remains a force to be reckoned with as the Tsunami of December 2004, which destroyed the lives of over 200000 people, still reminds us today.

With the national and interregional creation of a wider community it has become all the more important that we begin to recover and re-imagine the rich cultural diversity that made Malacca one of the greatest port cities of the world and modern Malaysia an important regional and inter-regional player in economic and cultural exchange. Join us on this great seafaring journey across charted and uncharted waters!

Event title: “The Indian Ocean World” An International and Interdisciplinary Conference organised by the Dept of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Malaya

Event description: In line with the objectives of SEAP (Southeast Asian Postcolonialities – an international colloquium hosted by the University of Malaya’s Arts and Social Sciences Faculty in 2006) the forthcoming conference – The Indian Ocean World – will reaffirm the on-going preoccupation with the location and agency of Southeast Asia within a global imaginary. We will have an art exhibition at the colloquium show-casing the Malaysian artists Latiff Mohidin, Khalil Ibrahim Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam and Chang Fee Ming and the photos of Sultan Ismail, Yee I-Lann, and Fufa. The artworks we are displaying have been loaned to us by Valentine Willy Fine Art , Artseni Gallery, Petronas Gallery and UM’s own Museum of Asian Art. We plan to showcase documentaries on the diasporic Cape Malay and the development of Taarab music with its links to the dhow as metaphor. We will feature fusion dance from Bali and a discourse on dance and movement from the Philippines.

The conceptualisation of the Indian Ocean is an exciting and modern undertaking
as cultures, trade and histories are re-imagined as existing and interacting on the rim of and across oceans and bodies of water. The Indian Ocean was the route of transmission of not only trade but more importantly language, culture and beliefs. We hope to both counter and affirm the conceptualization of the Black Atlantic by reorienting theoretical approaches to the Indian Ocean World within the framework of English Literature, Cultural Studies, Art, Dance, History, Politics and Economics. This is an interdisciplinary event hosted by the English Dept at UM. While our basic training is in English Literature, we have, like many English Departments in the West, adopted the stance that everything is text. Hence the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of our interests, publications and conferences as we read literature, culture, plastic arts, music and theatre as text. Our panelists come together from widely divergent backgrounds to join us as we examine the development of trade and culture in the region closely.

Conference Dates: 8am - 6pm, August 11&12^th, 2007

Art Exhibition Dates: 3 – 20th Aug

Venue: Museum of Asian Art, University of Malaya

Entry Charge: Rm 10 donation to UM

Refreshments will be available at the museum canteen

Enquiries : Puravin 012-236-3704 / Dr Shanti 012-302-1015

University Malaya Dept of English 03-7967-5505 / 03-7967-5543

Official website: http://english.um.edu.my/seap/index.htm

PROGRAMME FOR INDIAN OCEAN WORLD

- An international conference organized by the Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – University of Malaya, August 11-12, 2007

SATURDAY AUG 11^TH

Opening Ceremony

8-8.15 Arrival of guests, Gamelan welcome

8.15-8.20 Welcome by Vice Chancellor

8.20-8.40 Dance Recital Varsha Shambavi

8.40-9.20 Keynote Address

Stephen Muecke : Fabulation : flying carpets and artful politics

in the Indian Ocean

9.20-9.40 Tea Break

9.40-11.10 Session I : Human Geography

Convenor : Lakshmi Subramanian

Panelists : Singaravelu : Tamil commercial and cultural relations with

Southeast Asia in the period prior to 1500AD

Shanthini Pillai : Colonial Visions, Postcolonial Revisions: Images of the Indian Coolie of Malaya

Sunil Amrith : From Creole Society to Plural Society : Tamils and

Others in the Bay of Bengal

11.10-11.20 Discussion

11.20-1.10 Session II : Beach and Outback

Convenor : Stephen Muecke

Panelists : Ashraf Jamal : Amphibian Worlds

Tom Sykes : The Occidental Tourists

Haripriya Rangan : The Indian Ocean and the making of Outback

Australia : an ecocultural odyssey

1.10-1.20 Discussion

1.20-2 .30 Lunch Break

2.30-3.30 Session III : Economics and the Human Factor

Convenor : Matthew Santamaria

Panelists : Sivachandralingam : Laissez Faire : A Western Concept?

Heather Goodall : Shared hopes – new worlds: Indian seamen, Australian

unionists & Indonesian independence, 1945 -1949

3.30-3.40 Discussion

3.40-4 Tea Break

4-5.30 Session IV: Performing Cultures

Convenor : Lim Chee Seng

Panelists : Ghulam Sarwar Yousof : South Asian Literary Sources and the

Development of Repertoire in Traditional

Southeast Asian Theatre

Matthew Santamaria : Tracing Movement : Breaking barriers,

rediscovering links and unleashing imagination

in Dance research across the Indian Ocean World

Susan Philip: Kuo Pao Kun’s Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and the

Myth of Modern Singapore.

5.30-5.40 Discussion

5.40-6.30 Session V : Book Launch / Round table Discussion

Stephen Muecke

Devleena Ghosh

Lakshmi Subramaniam

SUNDAY 12^TH AUGUST

9-9.40 Keynote Address

Lakshmi Subramanian : Outside the Nation: Communities, Commerce and

Circulation in the Indian Ocean in historical perspective.

9.40-11.10 Session I : Ideas and Beliefs

Convenor: Devleena Ghosh

Panelists: Mark Frost : “That great ocean of idealism” : The Tagore circle and

the idea of Asia, 1900-1920

Ding Choo Ming : The reworking of stories from the Mahabharata

and Ramayana on the other side of the Indian Ocean

Farish Noor/Dietrich Reetz : Mapping the Islamist Universe : Overlapping

networks of South and Southeast Asian Activists

11.10-11.20 Discussion

11.20-11.40 Tea Break

11.40-1.10 Session II : The Imperial Gaze and its Discontents

Convenor: Sunil Amrith

Panelists: Victor Pogadaev: Russian travellers in the Indian Ocean 15-19^th C

Rochelle Pinto: Travelling Science – Anthropometry and Colonialism in the

Indian Ocean Travellers in the Indian Ocean:

Devleena Ghosh: Oceanic lives: Seafarers stories from Bombay and Goa

1.10-1.20 Discussion

1.20-2.30 Lunch

2.30-2.50 Session III: Ocean Under the Skin

Rehane Abrahams

2.50-3.50 Session IV : Home and Drift

Convenor: Ashraf Jamal

Panelists: Carol Leon: Mapping Home on the Indian Ocean Rim: Transgressing

Textual and Spatial Boundaries in Michael Ondaatje’s

“Running in the Family”

John Mateer : The Holy Spirit of Elsewhere – an Indian Ocean Poetic

3.50-4 Discussion

4-4.50 Session V : Documentary Screening : Taarab, an Ocean of Melodies

Bridget Thompson / Abdulkadir Ahmed Said

PANEL OF PRESENTERS:

AUSTRALIA

Professor Stephen Muecke BA (Monash), M ès L (Paris), PhD (UWA), FAHA. Director, Transforming Cultures Centre, Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor, Writing and Cultural Studies, University of Technology, Sydney. He has published many books and articles on cultural theory and is currently collaborating with Devleena Ghosh and Michael Pearson on a cultural history of the Indian Ocean. His recent publications include Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy (University of NSW Press, 2004) and Intra-Asian Cultural Traffic eds Koichi Iwabuchi and Mandy Thomas (Hong Kong University Press, 2004). http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/

Professor Heather Goodall BA Hons, PhD (Syd), Grad Dip Adult Education (ITATE/UTS). Professor of History& Social Inquiry, University of Technology, Sydney

Senior Researcher, Centre for Transforming Cultures, http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au

Parklands, Culture & Communities: the Georges River Project:

http://www.georgesriverparks.org.au/

http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/goldandsilver/

AUSTRALIA / INDIA

Dr Devleena Ghosh PhD (Sydney), MA (Jadavpur University, Calcutta), BA (Hons) (University of Delhi). Senior Lecturer Social Inquiry, University of Technology, Sydney. Her most recent publications are “’Harem women seem the happiest to me’: novel women, fictions of domesticity and national development in India” in Women, Activism and Social Change ed Maja Mikula (Routledge 2005) and “Re-Crossing a Different Water: Colonialism, Indigenism and Indo-Fijian Migration” in Globalisation, Regionalisationa and Social Change in the Pacific Rim eds K.Barclay, W. Peake (Guadalajara, Mexico: University of Guadalajara Press, 2005) She is currently collaborationg with Stephen Muecke and Michael Pearson on a cultural history of the Indian Ocean.. www.uts.edu.au

Dr Haripriya Rangan B.Architecture, M.Dip Urban and Regional Planning, MA Architecture and Urban Planning, PhD Urban Planning. Senior Lecturer School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne.

http://arts.monash.edu/ges/who/priya.html

INDIA

Dr Lakshmi Subramanian PhD. Professor of History, Dept of History and Culture Jamia Millia Islamic University, New Delhi. She is a specialist in the economic history of 18^th century India and is the author of Indigenous Credit and Imperial Expansion, Bombay, Surat and the West Coast (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996) and Medieval Seafarers (Delhi: Roli Books, 1999). She is currently engaged in research on culture and nationalism with emphasis on Indian classical music.

Dr Rochelle Pinto, Ph.D., SOAS, U.K. Associate Fellow Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore.

UNITED KINGDOM

Dr Sunil Amrith PhD. Lecturer School of History, Classics and Archaelogy, Birkbeck College, University of London..He is currently working on a long history of Tamil migration to Southeast Asia, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. His earlier work was on the history of public health in south Asia, which was published in 2006 as Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930-65 (Palgrave/MacMillan).

Dr Sharad Chari BA, MA, PhD in Geography (University of California at Berkeley), Lecturer in Human Geography, London School of Economics, and Honorary research Fellow in Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

Tom Sykes was born in Portsmouth, UK in 1979 and graduated from the University of East Anglia in 2001. He has published a number of short stories in magazines and anthologies such as the international project Small Voices, Big Confessions (2006). He co-compiled and edited a book about hitchhiking No Such Thing As A Free Ride? (2005) for Cassell Illustrated. It was serialized in the London Times and named the Observer’s Travel Book of the Month. His novella The Blank Space is due to be published by Pendragon Press in 2008 and a North American-oriented hitchhiking book is due out later this year.

GERMANY

Dr Farish A. Noor BA (Sussex), MA (Sussex), MA (London), PhD (Essex). Academic Researcher, Centre for Modern Orient Studies, Berlin. Field of research: The reform of Islamic education in Malaysia and Indonesia: the Struggle for Modernisation, Contestation of Power and Politicisation of Knowledge in Malaysia and Indonesia. Regional specialisation: South East Asia. CV / Homepage

Dr Dietrich Reetz, Visiting Professor of South Asian Studies and Civilisation, Humboldt-University Berlin. Research Fellow, Centre for Modern Orient Studies, Berlin. Field of research: Muslims in Europe, Islamic groups from south Asia in the European diaspora. Regional specialisation: South Asia, Europe. CV / Homepage

AUSTRALIA / SOUTH AFRICA

John Mateer BA (WAustralia), MA (WAustralia) is a South African-born Australian poet is a poet, art-critic and the author . Widely published in South Africa, Indonesia and japan, he was granted a fellowship to travel to Indonesia, and later published a non-fiction travelogue entitled Semar's Cave: an Indonesian Journal. His forthcoming book is a poetry collection Southern Barbarians, about vestiges of the Portugese colonial empire.

INDONESIA / SOUTH AFRICA

Rehane Abrahams is a performance artist and writer from Cape Town now living in Bali. Recipient of the FNB Vita Award for Best Actress in 2001. Co-founder of The Mothertongue Project, a collective of women artistss, she has written and performed a number of plays that have appeared in South Africa, San Francisco and London. She has also appeared in numerous television shows on SABC. She was classified Cape Malay by the apartheid government, a label she still uses in her writing.

SOUTH AFRICA

Dr Meg Samuelson PhD (University of Cape Town). Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Bridget Thompson co-producer and director, Tomas Films

Abdulkader Ahmed Said co-producer, Tomas Films

PHILIPPINES

Dr Matthew Santamaria PhD Political Science. Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the Asian Centre, University of Philippines with research interest in Cultural Studies and Dance, Matthew is a professional dancer and choreographer and works with professional dance and theatre companies in the Philippines..

MALAYSIA

Varsha Shambavi (Dennis) is a professional classical Indian Dancer who has worked extensively with Dr Chandrabhanu in Melbourne. Varsha is an exponent of Bharat-natyam, Kuchipudi and Odissi dance. She will perform the “Tarangam”, in the Kuchipudi style, on a brass plate.

UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

Dr Ashraf Jamal BA(Hons) (Sussex), MA(New Brunswick, Canada), PhD (University of KwaZulu Natal). Senior Lecturer Dept of English,University of Stellenbosch, Visiting Scholar University of Malaya. Playwright and theatre director, a novelist, and cultural analyst Ashraf is a fervent advocate of comparative study. He is author of Love Themes for the Wilderness, Shades and The Predicament of Culture in South Africa and co-author of Art in South Africa: the Future Present. He is currently researching the Indian Ocean world and is working on a new book on the littoral world.

Professor Lim Chee Seng B.A. (Hons) Malaya, M.A. (Malaya), MPhil (Oxford) Pofessor and Chair, Dept of English, University of Malaya is a scholar of reknown regionally and internationally. Widely published, Professor Lim is an authority on Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature and Poetry, literature on screen and ASEAN literatures.

Dr Carol Leon B.A. (Hons), (Malaya), M.A. (Malaya), Ph.D. Australian National University, Associate Professor, Dept of English, University of Malaya

Dr Susan Philip B.A. (Hons), (Malaya), M.A. (Malaya), Ph.D. (Australian National University), Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of Malaya Dr. Susan Philip’s research is currently focused on the English-language theatres of Malaysia and Singapore. She is particularly interested in issues of identity construction. She has had articles published in Asian Theatre Journal, Australasian Drama Studies, World Literature Written in English, Southeast Asian Review of English (SARE) and Tirai Panggung. She is currently working with two research partners on a book project dealing with construction of identity in Malaysia and Singapore in the context of language, prose, poetry and theatre.

Professor Dr Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof Professor of Asian Theatre at the Cultural Centre, University of Malaya. A leading scholar of Southeast Asian Theatre and Malay Traditional Performing Arts. Responsible for setting up the first academic programme in Performing Arts in Malaysia at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang in 1970, he is writer with published works in poetry, drama, short stories. His Dictionary of Traditional Southeast Asian Theatre (Oxford, 1994) is generally regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject. His latest publications include Reflections on Asian European Epics, and Performing Arts, (vol 8 of The Encyclopedia of Malaysia), both of which he edited, as well as Panggung Inu, a collection of papers on traditional Malay theatre. His literary works include Halfway Road, Penang, a play, Perfumed Memories, a collection of poetry, and Mirror of a Hundred Hues: A Miscellany.

Dr. Victor A. Pogadaev is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics, University of Malaya. He graduated from Institute of Oriental Languages, Moscow Lomonosov State University in 1970, PhD in 1976. Formerly Senior Lecturer in Malay Studies at the Institute of Asian and African Studies and the consultant-editor of the "Encyclopaedia Asiatica" at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Science. His interest is in the sphere of culture, translation and lexicography. He has more than 150 publications including several Malay and Indonesian dictionaries. Member of Nusantara Society, Russian Orientalists’ Association, Journalist Union of Russia, Russian Geographic Society.

Dr S.Sivachandralingam B.A. (Hons), (University of Malaya), M.A. (University of Malaya), Ph.D. (University of Malaya). Lecturer, Department of History, University of Malaya

Emeritus Professor S. Singaravelu, Department of Indian Studies, University of Malaya. BA (Madras), BA (Malaya), MA (Malaya, PhD (Malaya), LLB (London). Former Head (1969-1984) and Professor (1980-1994) of Indian Studies, University of Malaya, and a former Advocate and Solicitor (1995-1998) of the High Court of Malaya. the author of two monographs, entitled SOCIAL LIFE OF THE TAMILS, THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (Kuala Lumpur: Department of Indian Studies, University of Malaya, 1966) and THE RAMAYANA TRADITION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 2004). He has also published more than sixty research articles dealing with various aspects of Indian Culture and Indian cultural relations with Southeast Asia.

UNIVERSITY KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA

Professor Ding Choo Ming Institute of the Malay World and Civilization (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Pincipal Research Fellow at the ATMA (Insitut Alam & Tamadun Melayu) or Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has extensive publications on information retrieval in the Malay world studies and Malay literature in Riau in journals. Chief editor of SARI, journal from ATMA, since 1999. Recent publications include Raja Aisyah Sulaiman: Pengarang Ulung Wanita Melayu (Bangi: Penerbit UKM, 1999), Kajian Manuskrip Melayu: Masalah, Kritikan dan Cadangan (Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Melayu, 2002) Chinese Studies of the Malay World: a Comprehensive Approach, co-edited with Ooi Kee Beng (Singapore: Eastern University Press, 2002). Continent, Coast and Ocean: Dynamics of Regionalism in East Asia Edited by Ooi Kee Beng and Ding Choo Ming (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, forthcoming 2007 Pantun Baba Peranakan: Mutiara Gemilang Kebudayaan Alam Melayu. Bangi: Penerbit UKM (forthcoming 2007)

Dr Shanthini Pillai is a senior lecturer at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Malaysia. She holds a Phd in Literary Studies from the National University of Singapore. Her main teaching areas are Literary Theory and Literatures from postcolonial societies. Shanthini has been largely interested in research in the field of Diaspora, Subalternity and Resistance with a specific focus on Postcoloniality and the possibilities and problematics of identity formation as a result of migration. She has published widely on this subject and her articles have appeared in a selection of international journals and books on post-colonialism and diaspora. She is a recipient of the Australia-Malaysia Institute Fellowships for the year 2007.

SINGAPORE

Dr Mark Ravinder Frost, Research Affiliate, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACTS

Sunil Amrith (Birkbeck College, University of London)

From Creole Society to Plural Society: Tamils and Others in the Bay of Bengal

The paper argues that the conjunctural overlapping of the cultural world of Islam, with an expanding British (and Dutch) imperialism, and mass labour migration from India and China, created a distinctively Asian cosmopolitanism. This cosmopolitanism centred on the port cities of Southeast Asia, but was genuinely ‘Asian’ in the sense that it rested on a synthesis of practices, languages, even gods, drawn from west Asia to southern China. In turn, the cosmopolitan practices forged in Southeast Asia reverberated through diasporic and trading networks, embodied in persons and in things, reshaping tastes and beliefs in distant locales.

At the heart of this Asian cosmopolitanism, I argue, was the myriad of creole communities forged from the inter-marriage of foreign traders and merchants with local women. Drawing on my current research on the Jawi Peranakan of the Malay Peninsula—born of Tamil Muslim men’s marriages to local women—I examine the ways in which the creole communities made the foreign intimate, establishing roots in local society whilst retaining expansive connections with other places.

Rather than positing an abrupt break between this age of creolization and the influx of a mass of ‘unassimilable’ mass of working class south Indian migrants—young, single and male—after 1870, I argue that the public cultures forged by creole communities continued to shape the spaces of social interaction in the cities of Southeast Asia. From sites of public consumption and worship to ways of speaking, the interactions between old creoles and newcomers, and between groups of newcomers (Tamil, Chinese, Javanese) shaped the new societies that came into being in this period of rapid capitalist expansion. There is an important distinction to be made here between cosmopolitanism and universalism—the cosmopolitanism I describe at no point attempted to erase or transcend difference, rather it can be seen as a process of constant translation, of making the strange familiar, and moving between incommensurable life-worlds. It was quintessentially an oral rather than a literate (or literary) cosmopolitanism, built upon improvisation, and constantly evolving lingua francas. It was also overwhelmingly working class.

Governing and disciplining this unruly cosmopolitanism became a pressing concern of colonial states from the late-nineteenth century. The thrust of this racialised governmentality was to cut open creole and hybrid communities, to enforce boundaries so as to make populations legible and governable. Nascent nationalist movements in Southeast Asia made this process their own. Yet practices of cosmopolitanism remained deeply inscribed in the patterns of everyday life in post-colonial Southeast Asia. Cosmopolitan narratives continued to enrich the imagination of alternative pasts, and alternative futures, through the age of Bandung and beyond.

Ding Choo Ming (Institute of Malay World and Civilization, The National University of Malaysia)

The Reworking of Indian Epics on the Other Side of the Indian Ocean

For centuries, Indo-Malay authors, including craftsmen and artists, have created hikayat and other works of art of unsurpassed beauty and aesthetic value. All these works of art have to be understood through a tradition uniquely theirs. The key to understanding it lies in rediscovering and deciphering the codes. This would require knowledge of a specific semiotics, linguistics and philology. These codes are hidden in the hikayat, waiting to be unlocked and reactivated. Many Indo-Malay hikayat from the Hindu period might have been written to be chanted to a non-literate audience and not to be experienced visually as they are now. The process of adapting oral composition and wayang performance into manuscript tradition needs to be understood as literary creativity in its own rights. This concept of creation is in dire need of being reinterpreted and reappraised in the present context. Authors and scribes charged with transforming the oral and wayang tales had their creative freedom to recreate and reinterpret. The writing and rewriting of hikayat were never an accurate transcription or a mechanical process, though they were trained to follow the schema and convention. All the authors and scribes had to work within the authorship of Malay traditional literature that is uniquely theirs. This style of composition is so buried in antiquity that we knew very little about. What is important is the cultural inheritance and its spirit and tradition. It is this spirit, tradition and culture that authors in the Indo-Malay world imbibe when they created a work. The wisdom concerning their meaning, significance and place in the history of Malay literature was determined by a hitherto underexplored theory of reworking or rewriting oral and wayang tradition is explored in this paper.

Mark Ravinder Frost (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore)

‘That great ocean of idealism’: The Tagore circle and the idea of Asia, 1900 – 1920

By 1900, Calcutta was one of the intellectual centres of the British Empire, a focal point for cultural revival, nationalistic sentiment and revolutionary politics. Yet, the city’s role as a communications centre, within a maritime network of steamer routes and submarine telegraph cables, meant it had also come into closer contact with other port-cities dotted around the Indian Ocean rim. Simultaneous to the march of Bengali and Indian nationalism led by Calcutta literati in the early twentieth century had been their discovery of the rest of Asia – through books, periodicals and (increasingly) personal pilgrimages.

Within Calcutta, from 1900, the Tagore family residence in the suburb of Jorasanko became an especially important meeting point for local literati, Western orientalists and visitors from the broader Indian Ocean world preoccupied with the discovery of Asia. Through repeated intellectual contact, these individuals all came to share common notions about pan-Asian civilizational unity – the notion that, as the Japanese art critic Okakura Kakuzo put it, ‘Asia is one’. This paper will explore the ideas of the key personalities who made up the Tagore circle during this period, and will examine the impact of their thinking on a wider discourse of pan-Asian unity which circulated across British Asia at the time. Such a discourse, it will be argued, was stimulated by Asians themselves, as much as by Europeans, through their realization of Asia’s maritime past, and through their contemporary appreciation of the increasingly integrated world they lived in.

In particular, this paper will address certain key questions: what was the relationship between the Tagore circle’s ideas about Asian unity and the prevailing European Orientalist scholarship of the time? What was the response of Tagore and other pan-Asianists to the rise of radical, more inward looking nationalist movements after World War One? And finally, what was the impact of the Tagore circle’s ideas about Asia’s civilizational unity on a wider pan-Asian ecumene, and even on present-day efforts to define and understand Asia?

Devleena Ghosh (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Oceanic lives: Seafarers stories from Bombay and Goa

This paper emerges out of the Indian Ocean project at the University of Technology, Sydney (Stephen Muecke, Michael Pearson and Devleena Ghosh). Our project attempts an important corrective to a tendency in academic and popular media to abstract markets from human motive and agency. It emphasises the fact that the powerful markets established in the Indian Ocean during the last five hundred years were not natural or inevitable, but socially constructed and embedded. This paper will discuss the imbrication of trade and culture and the ebbs and flows of the global economy as essential processes of human history, made by people with cultures, not just by capital. It will examine some current narratives of? seafarers from Goa which highlight the ways in which their lives and livelihoods have adapted to the new economies of shipping.?

Heather Goodall (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Shared hopes – new worlds: Indian seamen, Australian unionists & Indonesian independence, 1945 - 1949

There can be no new world while there are any people who are slaves of

others….

These are the words of Mohamed T. Hussain, speaking in January 1946 on

behalf of striking Indian seamen to welcome Australian and Indonesian activists and unionists to a banquet prepared by the Indians in solidarity with those who had assisted them. Hussain described himself and his fellow Indians as: ‘seamen without a ship’, with no resources but their warm welcome, and then went on to say:

Those who have controlled our country for so many years, think that because we are Indians we must be slaves…There can be no new world while there are any people who are slaves of others…The winning of freedom in Indonesia will surely be followed by the freedom of India. For that reason we must do everything possible to see that the Dutch are driven out of Indonesia”

This paper explores the role of working people's perceptions of relationships across the Indian Ocean as developed through seafaring into the mid 20th century. Indian seafarers in Australia played a key role which has seldom been acknowledged in establishing and maintaining the boycott of Dutch shipping in Australian waters during the struggle for

Indonesian Independence in 1945-46. Their activism was of major importance

in the boycott's success over the initial nine months when it held effectively. The records of their union in Australia allow a direct glimpse of these seafarers' views on Independence movements in Indonesia, India and the region in this crucial period of the most intense independence struggles in India, Indonesia and Malaysia and of a period of major reorientation within Australia. Beyond the emerging structure of new nationalisms, however, these archives offer an insight into a series of intersecting transnational relationships across the eastern Indian Ocean which transcended and challenged the emerging national boundaries which later rigidified with Independence and the Cold War.

Ashraf Jamal (University of Malaya / University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Amphibian Worlds

This paper reflects on the importance of the work of maritime historian, M.N. Pearson, for those interested in the cultural significance of the Indian Ocean. Two of Pearson’s key terms are examined: the littoral and the amphibian. If the first directly refers to cultures along the Indian Ocean rim, the second has a more evocative charge. The littoral, says Pearson, is a frontier zone which cannot be separated or enclosed; rather it “finds its meaning in its permeability.” And “if the littoral is permeable, then our description must be amphibious, moving easily between land and sea.” Taken up as a vital conceptual trope, Pearson’s terms, I argue, allow for a more flexible and open-ended reading of cultural practices, local and foreign, at work along this most historically charged contact zone: the Indian Ocean. Given the tendency of area studies to isolate one region from the next, and, so doing, to divert connections, this more interregional and transnational approach allows one to better affirm Pearson’s view that “we can go around the shores of an ocean, or a sea, or indeed the whole world, and identify societies that have more in common with other littoral societies than they do with their inland neighbours.” It is this translocal and transnational orientation, with its eye directed both to land and sea, which determines this paper. Alex Garland’s novel The Beach is examined in relation to Pearson’s chosen orientation.

Carol Leon (University of Malaya)

Mapping Home on the Indian Ocean Rim: Transgressing Textual and Spatial Boundaries in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family

Maps have been an integral part of the human story, even longer than the written word. The process of mapmaking or cartography rests on the notion that the world is measurable and it is possible to make valid representations of this reality. It is this aspect of cartography which explains why maps are important tools to visualize space. But just as maps describe the world and guide actions, they are also used to claim territory and it is this latter function which is often interrogated by postcolonial and postmodern theorists who believe that the borders and boundaries of maps are weapons of subjugation and control.

This paper looks at the way one writer, Michael Ondaatje, tries to find identity within the space of Sri Lanka, i.e. to locate self within the map of his island homeland, in his book Running in the Family. The ancient island of Sri Lanka has been, to quote Ondaatje, “subject to the theories of sextant” since the coming of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Its strategic position in the Indian Ocean as a naval link between West Asia and Southeast Asia meant that much trade and communication took place along its shores. Ondaatje himself is a product of this transnational exchange. He is cognizant of this past and these dynamic relationships and evokes his island home as a double-visioned place, encompassed by the colonizers and by its natives, in other words envisioned from both sides of the ocean.

The mapping motif is pivotal to Ondaatje’s Running in the Family and is revealing of the ways in which Ondaatje creates a sense of place for himself in Sri Lanka. It also points to how we could conceive the littoral communities of the Indian Ocean and capture past and present histories. In the end, Ondaatje discovers that it is the very space of Sri Lanka, likened to a jewel adrift on the Indian Ocean, which defies categorization and renders arbitrary borders permeable.

Rian Malan (South Africa)

Documentary: The Silver Fez

John Mateer (Perth, Australia)

The holy spirit of elsewhere - an Indian Ocean Poetic

Stephen Muecke (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Fabulation: flying carpets and artful politics in the Indian Ocean

Gilles Deleuze conjures a moment of fabulation in which cultural forces regroup and start to generate their own stories. This reassemblage of forces is a way of explaining the new Indian Ocean world, an ancient world reconstituted, a world of 'artful politics', a world of new subjectivities. This paper will visibly and verbally express these ancient and modern cultures in their oceanic feeling, which I would like to be 'fabulous', literally, just as old traders were 'captured' by the lure of wealth, of things...Mick Taussig writes how he

'... became aware of how much I wanted to write from within instead of

standing outside pointing... It is more like having the reality

depicted turn back on the writing, rather than on the writer, and ask

for a fair shake. "What have you learned?" the reality asks of the

writing. "What remains as an excess that can't be assimilated and what

are you going to do with the gift that I bestow, I who am such strange

stuff?" '

I will argue it is this cultural excess (the 'more than representational') that makes orientalist desire turn back on itself and capture once again the western libido, now inevitably asking itself, with some trepidation as it sees the fabulous 'rise' of the

East, 'what have I learned'?

Farish A. Noor / Dietrich Reetz (Centre for Modern Orient Studies, Berlin, Germany)

Mapping the Islamist Universe: Overlapping networks of South and Southeast Asian Activists

This paper shall discuss the impact of new Islamist networks of South and Southeast Asian origin on and across the contemporary Muslim world. In the present increasingly-globalised world it is not only the economic and political realities that become intertwined, but also cultural, social and religious modes of interaction. The understanding and functions of religious movements likewise have to undergo radical change. At the same time our own assessment of these changes has to proceed with caution, for the roots of these developments go down rather deep in history and are not only the product of recent shifts in the global economy and politics. The focus of this paper will be on three constantly developing Islamist network-systems that have grown in prominence and importance from the late 19^th century onwards, and are increasingly evident today: (1) The Deobandi network, which began as an fundamentalist revivalist movement of Indian origin but which has evolved into a myriad of different streams – both conservative and progressive – and which also enjoys the benefit of a transnational network; (2) The Tablighi Jama’at movement, which also originated in India and which has now spread across the world and emerged as the biggest Muslim missionary movement in the history of Islam; and (3) the relatively new but rapidly expanding network of international Islamic universities, colleges and modern educational institutes – many of which happen to be state-funded – which provide both new avenues for social mobility as well as laying down very real horizontal structures of transnational contacts and networking across the Muslim world.

Susan Philip (University of Malaya)

Kuo Pao Kun’s Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and the Myth of Modern Singapore.

This paper will attempt to look at Kuo Pao Kun’s play Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral as a re-examination of Singapore’s position within the Indian Ocean world; the play critically examines what Singapore has become, and proffers an alternative, almost utopian vision to offset the dystopia of a “dour and puritanical modernity” (Wee 85) which is evinced in the form of a monocular focus on material comfort. By juxtaposing the historical figure of Admiral Zheng He with a group of modern-day Singaporean yuppies, it looks at Singapore’s position in the past on the great Oceanic trade route, and how that position has been translated into the present. The play takes a critical stance towards what has become of Singapore as it seeks to consolidate its prime position in the global world of trade and finance; Singapore is presented as soulless and focused almost entirely on material gain. The play then tries to present another, more spiritual and joyful view of what Singapore might have been. Interestingly, however, that vision is still grounded in an ingrained perception of Singapore as a trading centre. That identity, it would appear, has become too deeply entrenched to be easily shaken off. My reading of the play in conjunction with historical references to Zheng He and the Indian Ocean world reveals a complex and nuanced vision of contemporary Singapore as a nation wholly predicated on its relationship to the sea and its associated trade routes.

Shanthini Pillai (National University of Malaysia)

Colonial Visions, Postcolonial Revisions: Images of the Indian Coolie of Malaya

This paper discusses the representations of the Indian diaspora of Malaysia according to two spectrums, colonial and postcolonial. It begins by tracing their presence within the terrain of colonial narratives to uncover, not only the ways in which they were subordinated to colonial ideological discourses but also, and more significantly, the suppressed story of coolie resistance that lies under the weight of such masks of conquest. It then moves on to show how postcolonial revisioning is able to reconstruct the Indian immigrants of Malaya as choreographers of the diasporic identity that they have left as the most significant legacy for contemporary Malaysian Indians. The main objective of this paper is to reveal the history of the configuration of Malaysian Indian identity and the ways in which the subaltern spaces hewn in colonial grounds can be reclaimed and reterritorialised in the postcolonial present.

Rochelle Pinto (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India).

A Traveling Science - anthropometry and colonialism in the Indian Ocean

This paper is an attempt to situate texts on anthropometry and race written by doctors of Goan origin, within the early twentieth century discourse around race, anthropometry and anthropology. The paper suggests that these works are important for an understanding of the colonial transformation of disciplines and the discourse on race within the sphere of Portuguese colonialism. Against intellectual maps that centre knowledge production in the metropole and its diffusion in the colonies, this emphasizes both the discontinuity in race discourse as well as the significant role played by colonial elites in constructing it. It indicates that political relations in the Indian Ocean area allowed Goans and wider Indian presence on the East coast of Africa to actively participate in the construction of race, through their access to academic disciplines, their employment in various government offices, and through trade.

Victor A. Pogadaev (University of Malaya)

Russian travelers in the Indian Ocean (15-19 centuries)

Russia had never any colonial territory in the region of Indian Ocean. So the main interest of any Russian venture including traveling here was dictated either by the interest to promote trade relations or to pursue mere scientific objectives. True to say due to the fact that the region was controlled by European countries which established trade monopoly here, the trade between Russian and this region was conducted not directly but through the European metropolises.

One of the first Russian travelers to the region was a merchant Afanasy Nikitin who visited India (?-1472) 25 years before Vasco da Gama “opened” India for Europe. His notes published under the title The Journey Beyond Three Seas is a document of great interest.

The first Russian expedition to explore this region and circumnavigate the Earth took place later (in 1803–1806) and was headed by a naval officer I. F. Krusenstern (1770-1846). He prepared and published in 1823-1826 “The Atlas of the Southern Sea” in which described the sailing routes along the Eastern cost of Sumatra and Sunda Strait.

During his voyage around the world (1852-1855), the Russian writer Goncharov (1812-1891) visited Java and devoted his best narration about it in his travelogue, a chronicle of the trip, The Frigate Pallada (The Frigate Pallas) published in 1858.

The famous Russian scholar and traveler Miklukho-Maklai (1846 - 1888) made his field research in the Malacca Peninsula and Java in the 1870’s. Many Russian scientists were working in Bogor Botanical Garden in Indonesia. Their accounts gave enthusiastic description of the nature and picturesque sceneries of this region. But they also paid attention to the social and cultural phenomena. M. I. Venyukov (1832-1901), a well-known geographer and traveler, for instance, gave analysis of the British colonial rule, while I. F. Krusenstern ordered to copy “Malay Annals” and brought it back to Russia.

The narratives of Russian scientists and travelers are of great value and are considerable contribution to our knowledge about Indian Ocean in the past.

Dietrich Reetz / Farish Noor (Centre for Modern Orient Studies, Berlin, Germany)

Mapping the Islamist Universe: Overlapping networks of South and Southeast Asian Activists

Rehane Abrahams (Bali, Indonesia / South Africa)

Ocean beneath the Skin

The video is made of fragments found and given to me by others. The point of departure, two different sets of correspondence between South Africa and Indonesia. The first is Upas letter from the article given to me by a Makassarese friend, horrified at the plight of this C18 Bugis Slave in the Cape, South Africa. Here is a description: “This article presents a case study of Bugis slaves at the Cape Colony in 1760, focusing particularly on the issue of literacy among the Bugis. Central to the study is a letter written in Bugis script by one slave, Upas, to another asking for medical assistance, which was used as evidence in criminal proceedings against the addressee, known by his slave name, September. The Bugis of South Sulawesi were prominent in the slave trade of the era, both as slavers and as slaves - about a quarter of all slaves in Batavia were of Bugis descent. Many ended up in the VOC colony at Cape of Good Hope, where they developed a reputation for being particularly dangerous slaves. The case study presented here deals with a robbery and triple murder of VOC employee and his family by a group of runaway slaves which included September. The perpetrators were eventually captured - after another Bugis slave had informed the authorities of their whereabouts - tried, and sentenced. Most of the gang members received the death penalty; September was broken on the rack. A central piece of 'evidence' was the aforementioned letter from Upas to September, which is part of the VOC criminal records and was first published in the 1930s - upside down, as the author in question did not know anything about the Bugis script. The authors argue that a combination of factors - ambiguities inherent to the Bugis script, mistranslations (a VOC translator/interpreter was used, who appears to have spoken many languages but none of them well) and differences of perspective on the functions of writing led the court to accept the notion that the letter proved the existence of a conspiracy among Bugis slaves. Upas' letter appears to be the only surviving letter written by a slave at the Cape. Its existence has been taken by some as evidence of 'a wide range of literate slave cultures at the Cape'. In fact, most instances of writing by slaves involved so-called 'azimat', amulets on which magic spells or short religious texts were written. To the Dutch, however, the fact that Bugis slaves were writing notes at all merely confirmed their fears of a dangerous and unpredictable people. The medium was thus more important than the actual contents of the message.” Association Archipel, France.

The second set of documents, I received from Ebrahim Manuel in South Africa. The Manuel family are descended from Indonesian Slaves and have had in their possession handed down through the generations, a set of books handwritten in Arabic; which they assumed to be religious texts. Through dream messages and visions in meditation, Mr Manuel was convinced to take a book to Sumbawa, where he found not only an exact handwritten copy of his book, but also proof that the Manuel’s were connected to the Royal Family of Sumbawa. Later translated, the books were found to be genealogies and accounts of the arrival in South Africa.

Mr Manuel also gave me a set of drawings and photographs that reflect his feelings about slavery.

These form the basis for an investigation of tracks, routes, spoors, songlines, paths and how the destiny held in the palm of your hand is exercised through the soles of your feet. And of how stories are maps within which we come to find ourselves. In the course of my musings, this fragment was given to me:

I am the woman of the great expanse of the water
I am the woman of the expanse of the divine sea
the woman of the flowing water
a woman who examines and searches
a woman with hands and measure
a woman mistress of measure

***
I am a woman of letters, it says
I am a book woman, it says
nobody can close my book, it says
nobody can take my book away from me, it says
my book encountered beneath the water, it says
my book of prayers
***
I am a woman wise in words beneath the water, it says
I am a woman wise in words beneath the sea, it says

You my Mother who are in the House of Heaven," sings María Sabina in 1956, "You my Father who are in the House of Heaven/ There do I go/ And there do I go arriving/ There do I go showing my book/ There do I go showing my tongue and my mouth/ There do I go signalling the tracks of the palms of my hands."

. Words are markings, tracks on a page that we follow like the hunter follows spoor.

Maria Sabina, a Mazatec shaman goes from the idea of writing, embodied in the book to that of vocal speech to that of tracks. The imprint of feet in the mud is the first writing of intentional existence. The predestiny of the lines of the palm is a sung song that still can change. Where do we go? What do we do? Where are we from? These crisscrossing signs, intermarrying currents carry stories that are tracks, are clues, are maps, are skin, footprints, cadences of song, drum patterns… also a heartbeat, an intimation of place embedded in genes so deeply it makes tectonic shifts on the oceanbed. Then I mix this all up with digital technology. For me electronic culture is all about tracks and samples and fragments. It is the language of remixes, reiterations, loops, fractal assemblage of scrap. And the past is the scrap we kept or the scraps we scrabble for to make sense of now and sure, for many descendants of diaspora returning to a source place (imaginary/originary) is a deeply transformative experience.

And this is why I chose Solonese music for the basis of the soundtrack. It marks a connection with Indonesia/ancestors through the visceral intensity of my experience of Solonese music (both traditional and classical) when I first arrived in Indonesia. My body as an organ of perception was altered and sensitised through the experience of Gamelan. The Kamanak, the instruments that marks the four beat, a brass banana shape with a slit in it, is supposed to represent both the man and woman.

Additional sounds are remixes of the original Gendhing by Aloysius Suwardi and recycled sounds from the soundtrack for a previous performance ‘Anatomy of Clouds’, inspired by cloud formations above KL Airport. This electronic mix of found and resampled water sounds was created by DJ Team Sada, Simon Lomax and I.

The Dance is based on Classical Solonese Dance and Japanesese Butoh. My dance, ‘Ocean beneath the Skin’ is homage to Min Tanaka’s Ankoku Butoh Dance of the same title. The original work was choreographed by Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Ankoku Butoh. It was the last work that Hijikata choreographed before his death and it marks Min Tanaka’s birth as an Ankoku Butoh Dancer. ‘An’ means darkness and ‘Koku’ means black. Butoh means foot stamp or dance. Ankoku Butoh is the Dance of Utter Darkness. The title is very fitting for the subject matter and I hope to birth myself (again) as a Butoh Dancer.

Haripriya Rangan (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)

The Indian Ocean and the Making of Outback Australia: an Ecocultural Odyssey

The Outback has played a powerful role as both material and symbolic

landscape in the imagination of Australia and Australian identity. The

historical evolution of the imagery of inland Australia as 'outback',

from 'dead heart' to 'red heart', has been shaped by geographic sensibilities and perspectives that are predominantly European and based in urban centres firmly anchored to the southern and eastern coastlines. In this paper, we focus on the exchanges and movements of two ecological travellers across the Indian Ocean -- prickly acacias and camels -- to explore new ways of interpreting the making of the Outback landscape and rethinking Australian identity through the interlinked cultures and ecologies of the Indian Ocean world.

Lloyd Ross (South Africa)

The Silver Fez

Abdulkader Ahmed Said (South Africa)

Taarab, an Ocean of Melodies / Our language, our music, our city

Meg Samuelson (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Making Home on the Indian Ocean Rim? Re-Locations in South African Literatures

This paper intends to explore the ambiguous renderings of an African home on the Indian Ocean Rim, and to unravel the textual processes by which home is both located on the African continent, and in the South African nation specifically, and, simultaneously, set adrift in the Indian Ocean. The analysis will refer to a range of fictional, semi-fictional and autobiographical narratives including The Slave Book by Rayda Jacobs, Song of the Atman by Ronnie Govender, The Wedding by Imraan Coovadia and All Under Heaven by Darryl Accone, as it explores multiple locations that extend from Cape Town to Durban, on the one hand, and across the Indonesian archipelago, the Indian sub-continent and China, on the other hand.

The aim of the paper is two-fold. Firstly, it intends to foreground the neglected – yet currently emergent – research area of Indian Ocean studies in South African (long eclipsed by the more dominant Atlantic focus of research) and to consider the ways in which the Indian Ocean paradigm enriches and complicates current conceptions of (post)colonial relations that have largely been informed by the Atlantic paradigm. Secondly, it will explore articulates and complications of questions of belonging and location on the African continent in eras of new nation building, in which processes of routing and re-rooting mesh with larger nation-building ones. With reference both to the strategies employed by characters and authors in the selected narratives and to Thabo Mbeki’s signature “I am an African” speech, the paper will engage with the vexed question of ‘who is an African,’ and with the meanings and complications that dispersed genealogical roots and trans-Oceanic routes bestow on the constitution of an identity that is simultaneously ‘at home’ and ‘in the world.’

Matthew Santamaria (Asian Centre, University of Philippines)

Tracing Movement: Breaking Barriers, Re-Discovering Links and Unleashing Imagination in Dance Research Across the Indian Ocean World

In this paper, I present my studies in dance as an anti-discourses to the European notion of global discovery. As expressions that integrate, among others, meaningful movement, costume and property, music, theatre architecture, and epic poetry, many of the dance traditions in the Indian Ocean World connects cultures within the region and beyond via a complex emporium that links artifacts exhibiting qualities of same-ness, similarity, and in many cases, shared origins. I privilege these not exclusively ancient connections through a series of inter-relational examinations that include the following: a) the Indian mudra across cultures from the sub-continent to maritime Southeast Asia, b) the Ramayana epic from Pulo Agama Niog to the La Mama Theatre of New York, and c) the sacred Sanhyang dances of Bali, Indonesia and the Sanhiyang of Cavite, Philippines. By privileging connections that go back into the past beyond colonial imaginings and indeed sometimes beyond recorded memories, I cast doubt on the viability of Western discovery discourses and colonial agency and recast perspectives in “shared pasts” as a stable foundation in viewing “shared possibilities” in the future.

S. Singaravelu (University of Malaya)

Tamil Commercial and Cultural Relations with Southeast Asia in the period prior to 1500 A.D.

The origins of maritime Tamil commercial and cultural relations with Southeast Asia may be traced back to prehistoric voyages of Tamil seamen. Archaeological finds discovered in such sites as Kuala Selinseng in the Malay peninsula, Sempaga on the island of Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Indonesian archipelago, and Oc-Eo on the west coast of Vietnam, indicate that they were among the several sites belonging to the Neolithic age which had been frequented by Tamil sailors since the prehistoric times (Coedès, 1968: 19-20). Ancient Tamil voyagers to the island of Sumatra are known to have referred to the highest (3805 metres, or 12,483 feet high) volcanic mountain in the western central part of the island (about 130 km, or 80 miles south of Padang) by the Tamil word KURINCI which signifies ‘mountain and mountainous environment’ (Tamil Lexicon, Vol.2, part1, 1926: 1048), and that mountain is to this day known as Gunung Korinci or Kerinci in Malay language among the inhabitants of Sumatra. The same mountain was also noted by Pliny the Elder of the first century A.D. as having the unique characteristic of casting its shadow alternatively towards the north and south during the six months of each year by virtue of its location on the equinoctial line. Pliny’s knowledge was based apparently on the information provided by the ancient Tamil mariners (Filliozat, 1974: 119-130)…

There is literary evidence to show that Tamil commercial relations with the western world as well as Southeast Asia were intensified at the beginning of the Christian era (Warmington, 1928:180-318; Subrahmanian, 1966: 235-244). Tamil literature refers to the exchange of Roman gold for pepper and the import of the produce of Kaalakam (Kataha, or Kedah) at Tamil seaports (Nilakanta Sastri, 1958: 134-136). There is also mention of the goddess Manimekhalaa rescuing the ship-wrecked merchants (Lévi, 1930: 597-614); and numerous images of Diipankara Buddha (belonging to the Amaraavatii-school of Buddhist art of the period between the second and the fourth centuries A.D., that were carried by merchants as symbol of protection during voyages across the seas), have been discovered in various parts of Southeast Asia (Dupont, 1959: 631-636)…

[It should be noted, however, that the role of the Tamil merchants in Southeast Asia was not the result of any kind of political domination on the part of the rulers of the ancient Tamil kingdoms, such as those of the Pallavas, Paandiyas or Cholas. On the contrary, cordial relations between the Tamil and Southeast Asian kingdoms were maintained. Even the eleventh century maritime expedition of the Chola ruler Raajendra I (1012-1044 A.D.) to the various parts of the Srivijayan empire ( apparently for the purpose of protecting the legitimate interests of the Tamil merchants vis-à-vis the Srivijayan policy of commercial ‘monopoly’) did not lead to any political consequences whatsoever (Nilakanta Sastri, 1949: 79-82; Coedès, 1968: 141-143; Wolters, 1967: 250-251).]…

It would also seem that the role of the Tamil merchants was not confined to their commercial expertise. The Hindu temples which they established in Southeast Asia apparently attracted the attention of the rulers of the Southeast Asian kingdoms; and the priestly scholars who officiated at such temples would have provided them with some information about the most popular Hindu cults such as that of Lord Shiva. It is also known that some of the learned Hindu priests and scholars were brought over from India at the request of Southeast Asian rulers, and it was in those circumstances that several aspects of Hindu cults were adopted by the Southeast Asian rulers as the spiritual basis of kingship and statehood in their kingdoms in order to augment their power and prestige (Coedes, 1968: 117-118 and 212)…

According to the fifth century Chinese dynastic annals entitled Nan-Ch’I Shu, an emissary of Funan to the Chinese royal court informed the Chinese ruler that the king of Funan adored God Mahesvara (Shiva) who manifested Himself on the sacred mountain known as Mayentiram (Wheatley, 1974: 97-98 and 105-107). The significance of this information is that the name Mayentiram, which was recorded in the Chinese annals as the name of the sacred cosmic mountain, is a Tamil expression for the Sanskrit expression of Mahendra(-mountain) and that the concept of the cosmic mountain of Mayentiram being the sacred abode of Lord Shiva as Mahesvara or Mahadeva has been specifically a Tamil tradition. Furthermore, the Tamil tradition referring to Lord Shiva manifesting Himself as the divine Hunter on the Mayentiram-mountain was also reflected in the expression Vyaadhapura (‘City of the Hunter’), by which name the capital of Funan was known (Coedès, 1968: 36; Wheatley, 1974: 106)…

The nature of Tamil commercial and cultural relations with Southeast Asia in the period prior to 1500 A.D., may be summed up by stating that (a) the Tamil merchants had played a constructive role towards establishing a strong economic foundation of several kingdoms in Southeast Asia, and (b) the Tamil Shaivaite and Vaishnavaite cults formed the basis of the national religious and political ideology for the purpose of unifying diverse segments of the population in the kingdoms that had adopted the cults.

Sivachandralingam (University of Malaya)

Laissez Faire: A Western Concept?

It is widely assumed that laissez-faire had its origins in the European context, and that the ideology was adopted by the countries of the East through colonisation. This might not be completely true, for a distinctive brand of the same ideology had been prevalent in the Malay Archipelago long before the advent of the Western colonizers. In fact five trading zones, namely the Bay of Bengal, Straits of Malacca, east coast of Malaya, the sea of Southern Vietnam, the Sulu Sea and the Java Sea, are known to have practiced laissez faire economy as far back as in the 15^th century.

This paper will trace the emergence of laissez faire ideas, as embodied for example in free ports and trading zones, prior to the arrival of western powers. It also shows how the western powers used the existing free trade network to promote colonial economy in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. That western powers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were able to develop trade without territorial ambitions was due in no small measure to the existence of the laissez faire policy, and the accommodative nature of the local rulers, in this part of the world.

Lakshmi Subramanian (Jamia Millia Islamic University, New Delhi, India)

Outside the Nation: Communities, Commerce and Circulation in the Indian Ocean in historical perspective.

This paper is an attempt to look at the dynamics of identity formation among trading communities whose social profile was predicated upon both cultural and commercial practices within the Indian Ocean. The ocean functioned as a transnational zone of interaction with connections extending far across discrete civilisational units from which migrant merchant communities were drawn. The temporal dimensions of the interactions were important, for the intervention of western political domination altered the nature of commercial and cultural flows bringing new variables into the picture. At the same time, the assertion of nationalist aspirations and its accompanying cultural dynamics inflected the processes of identity formation and aspirations that underwent new modes of transformation. Documenting these processes as an empirical exercise, reading discourses emerging from within the nation and the diaspora and how these discursive sites served nationalist and trans-nationalist imaginings forms some of the concerns of this paper.

While some of my empirical work is drawn from communities based in and operating from southern India, I hope to make some general formulations that attempt a broader conversation with certain thematic issues pertaining to the notion of an Indian Ocean subject and its negotiations with competing nationalisms constituted by several diverse social practices. Among the communities that I have chosen for my investigation are the Muslim trading communities from the Coromandel – known as the Marakkayars, of whom the Chulias formed one sub-section and who dominated the external or overseas trade of southern India in the eighteenth and early quarter of the nineteenth century. The second case study looks at the Chettiars, or more specifically the Nagarathars or Nattukottai Chettiars, a Hindu mercantile group whose presence in Southeast Asia was integrally connected with the colonial trading structure and whose ties with southern India were mediated through cultural practices, community networks of marriage and kin and also through consumption markers. Just how these became constitutive of complex and cross-cultural identities will form the focus of this paper. The temporal frame is important especially as it encompasses two defining moments in the history of the Indian Ocean; one that saw the working of cross-cultural transactions across the Indian Ocean at a time when the world of pre-modern global trade fostered a particular form of cosmopolitanism predicated upon religious and social networks that trade generated and the other which was a direct off shoot of colonialism that introduced new elements coming in the wake of capitalism, bourgeois modernity and nation state aspirations

This paper is an attempt to look at the dynamics of identity formation among trading communities whose social profile was predicated upon both cultural and commercial practices within the Indian Ocean. The ocean functioned as a transnational zone of interaction with connections extending far across discrete civilisational units from which migrant merchant communities were drawn. The temporal dimensions of the interactions were important, for the intervention of western political domination altered the nature of commercial and cultural flows bringing new variables into the picture. At the same time, the assertion of nationalist aspirations and its accompanying cultural dynamics inflected the processes of identity formation and aspirations that underwent new modes of transformation. Documenting these processes as an empirical exercise, especially in engaging with the more recent debates on Diaspora models and regimes of circulation, and how these served as sites of nationalist and trans-nationalist imaginings forms some of the concerns of this paper.

Tom Sykes (United Kingdom)

The Occidental Tourists

I will present a creative-critical piece ostensibly on the topic of Westerners who come to the Indian Ocean area, the transformations they undergo (ideological, ontological, etc.) and the contrasts between the simulacra or leisure bubbles they find themselves inside and the social realities of the countries they visit.

Westerners upon arrival for the first time in this region often find their perceptual ‘reducing valves’, to quote Henri Bergson, blown open. Their sensoria is flooded with new colours, new smells, new customs, new ideas. The effects on the occidental tourist can vary enormously, but there will always be an effect.

Many seek out an idealized, clichéd beach experience conforming to a curiously Western definition of relaxation. This can range from the middle-aged salaryman’s desire to lie prone all day doing nothing as the antithesis of his alienated, stressed-out working life back home to the self-indulgent hedonism of ‘gap year’ pre-students.

Of course the occidental tourist can go the other way and hurl himself into jungles and up mountains as a break from his privileged background. He talks about – and I loathe this phrase – ‘going off the beaten track’ in order to see – and I loathe this phrase even more – ‘the real Malaysia’ or ‘the real Thailand’, as if all that is real about Malaysia is a tiny patch of rainforest and the rest of the country doesn’t deserve the right to exist, to be called ‘real’.

The first section of my piece uses the device of a first-person narrator to reflect upon the above archetypes. I employ theatrical metaphors to try to make sense of them. I have created a whole repertory – a heartthrob starring as a sun-bleached rich kid who went out ‘to find himself’but in fact lost himself in the locale, living and acting like the locals no matter how patronising he might appear. I draw on my own experiences in Vietnam where the modish pursuit was to live with and observe the ethnic minority people in Sa Pa. I wondered how I would feel if a group of foreigners invaded my apartment back in England to watch me play on my computer and eat my roast dinner and comment on how terribly twee, primitive and close to nature I was. There is a craggy character actor playing the ubiquitous 30-60 year old solo male traveller whose odd innuendos hint at sex tourism and/or some past trauma from which he is geographically and psychologically fleeing.

But both the idealized beach and the ‘going wild’ approach are two sides of the same fantastical coin. Neither corresponds very closely with the lived experience of local people in Indian Ocean countries. Even those tour operators who offer ‘a taste of authentic indigenous culture’ destroy that very authenticity by making an intervention into it. There are charlatan tribes in northern Thailand who, for tourist coin, pretend to live ascetic lives even though Rolex watches can be glimpsed under their cuffs. In the next section of my piece I have created a fictional travel agent who organises trips to war zones, natural disaster areas and poverty hotspots for those who have tired of the leisure bubbles and want the danger of old-fashioned exploration.

The reality of day-to-day living in most Indian Ocean countries is deemed too traumatic for the tourist palate, so leisure bubbles are consciously built far away from the slums and ghettos. Taking a more overtly political tack, I explore a grimly ironic correlation between Western tourists enjoying the Indian Ocean’s leisure space and Western governments condemning much of the Indian Ocean to poverty through neocon economic policies. There is a fallacy amongst both occidental tourists and those working in the upper echelons of the tourist industry that all money spent in leisure bubbles magically ‘trickles down’ to improve the lot of the very poorest, when in actual fact the strictures of the IMF and World Bank rarely allow this to happen, instead decreeing that spending on welfare, education and accommodation be slashed. The final section of my piece has the narrator from the first section go for a swim off his utopian beach and get washed up on a dystopian beach that is figurative of the socio-political problems of the region.

Bridget Thompson (South Africa)

Taarab, an Ocean of Melodies / Our language, our music, our city

Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof (University of Malaya)

South Asian Literary Sources and the Development of Repertoire in Traditional Southeast Asian Theatre

Southeast Asia is home to an extensive variety of performing arts genres, including the traditional theatre, which, have been shaped over the past two millennia by diverse elements, indigenous as well as foreign. Among external influences, those arriving from South Asia have been particularly significant. These include, on the one hand, the well- known pair of Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, Buddhist and Islamic literary materials, as well as, more recent non-religious literary works which arrived through the Parsee theatre.

Apart from examining the mosaic of literary influences, this paper will provide a glimpse into the kinds of transformations that came about to the source materials through adaptations in keeping with local worldviews and particular objectives of performances.