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Tamil Characters
AR Venkatachalapathy in conversation with Chandan Gowda
Speakers
India’s rich and diverse culture and history is fabled. Yet the details of this diversity is little known even in adjacent regions. In a recent book, Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture, historian and bilingual writer AR Venkatachalapathy paints a ringside view of modern Tamil Nadu through vivid yet critical portraits of some of the major political and cultural personalities.
The conversation between Chalapathy and the other bilingual scholar Chandan Gowda aims to provide a lively discussion about what makes modern Tamil Nadu what it is. Why does the sport of jallikattu trigger so much attention? Why are Tamil politicians so colourful? Why does the language issue excite so much passion?
Speakers
AR Venkatachalapathy
AR Venkatachalapathy did his PhD in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the winner of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (History, 2007). Chalapathy has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu in both English and Tamil. His publications in English include Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture; Who Owns That Song?: The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright; The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamil Nadu; In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History; and (ed.) Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry.
Chandan Gowda
Chandan Gowda teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Besides academic publications, he has translated Kannada fiction and non-fiction into English, including U.R. Ananthamurthy’s novella, Bara. He has compiled and edited The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Readerand Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan. A Life in the World, a book of autobiographical interviews he did with U.R. Ananthamurthy will be published next month. At present, he is completing a book on the cultural politics of development in the old Mysore state and co-translating and editing a book of short stories by the Kannada writer K.P. Purnachandra Tejasvi. He is also a regular columnist with Bangalore Mirror and Deccan Herald.
