by
Anupama Mohan
Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam, 1952-2014
I have known Professor Chelva Kanaganaykam since August 2004 when I joined the PhD programme in English at the University of Toronto and he became my Departmental mentor. In the five years that followed, Chelva, as he urged all his students to call him, was exemplary as a mentor, teacher, and guide, and he shaped the trajectory of my dissertation as well as the directions in which my interests within Postcolonial Studies grew.
I realized very early in my association with Chelva that he has been for many students like me a role model: not only has he been a successful academic (his long list of publications at very reputed presses makes this manifest), but he has also been an influential public intellectual representing the very best in cross-cultural exchange. At U of Toronto, Chelva taught courses in Sri Lankan literatures and South Asian Studies (I have myself taken and audited many) that provided multiple perspectives on the histories and cultural traditions of a region that has far too often made headlines in the Western world over reports of conflict and violence.
In the course of completing my dissertation, Chelva also encouraged me to make a research trip to Sri Lanka (whose literatures formed a substantial part of my dissertation), wrote letters of support for me that helped me garner the requisite funding for such a trip, and over the years, he shaped my thought and perspectives as I wrote my dissertation.
The PhD I completed at University of Toronto was a Collaborative Programme between the Department of English and the Centre for South Asian Studies whose director Chelva was from 2002 – 2006 (and in other periods as well). The Centre is somewhat special in Canada where its presence within the Munk School of Global Affairs goes a long way in making up the internationalist character of the University of Toronto.
The Directorship of CSAS is, however, a tremendously challenging job, and consistently through the five years I saw Chelva in this office, I saw him rise to the challenges of such a public position. In this office, Chelva liaised with consuls, diplomats, and bureaucrats of South Asian countries, preserving at all times, his firm commitment to the politics of rapprochement, academic and cross-cultural dialogue, and transparency and openness towards the student community for whose creative endeavours and freedom of expression he always provided institutional support and personal guidance.
How rare such support has been is demonstrated by the fact that Chelva’s home country, Sri Lanka, governed by successive Sinhala-Buddhist governments, has for the past several decades been embroiled in a civil conflict with the Tamil minority, whose diasporic presence in Toronto makes the work of the Director of CSAS at the U of Toronto an arduous and profoundly politicized job. Chelva was an exceptional leader of CSAS, balancing the sometimes belligerent politics of the Tamil diaspora in Toronto with an insistence on the need for a sustained programme of inter-ethnic dialogue, and for concerted efforts by the University to construct a “third space,” as it were, outside of the binaries of violence and retribution on the one hand, and silence and inaction on the other.
Chelva’s role in balancing the competing demands of Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms made CSAS an organization uncloven by binary visions, and helped sustain the Centre as a space wherein political and cultural identifications could be combined with intellection, academic rigour, tolerance, and collegiality.
How ably and with great personal integrity Chelva fulfilled the often contrapuntal responsibilities of his intensely public office as Director of CSAS at the University of Toronto and the comparatively specialized scholarly work of an English professor was shown by his unwavering commitment to academic and extra-academic work over the past many years. Through his critical writings, editorial work, and conferences, Chelva crafted his own version of political activism, one that often eschewed the uncomplicated stances of resistance vs. support for the more involved, and certainly the more onerous, work of making and showing cultural connections between linguistic and ethnic communities.
In doing so, he combined his academic responsibilities with a rare political courage: through his writings on and translations of Sri Lankan Tamil literature into English, he has made accessible the rich, vital, and powerful narratives of a people whom many today might know only as an embattled minority in a remote corner of the world.
In Toronto, Chelva was also involved with the Tamil Literary Garden, a wonderful annual event in which people from all walks of life interested in Tamil literature come to hear poets and intellectuals share their work. The Annual Tamil Conference held by the CSAS at the University of Toronto has also largely been the initiative of Chelva (and Dr. Cheran, among others), and has lent to the University of Toronto that truly international character that is the hallmark of the best academic institutions in the world.
Along with his academic work where he brought to notice various works in Tamil literature, Chelva was a staunch supporter of inter-ethnic dialogue and the recognition of intellectuals and activists sans ethnic boundaries: in 2005, when the University of Toronto awarded the Acharya Sushil Kumar International Peace Prize to Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, the Sinhalese founder and president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka, the CSAS and Munk Centre organized a reception and lecture wherein Chelva introduced Dr. Ariyaratne in a talk that crystallized for many of us in the audience the “third space” I spoke of earlier – of activism, sustained belief in dialogue, and of an unflinching faith in the need to speak over and above the cacophony of narrow nationalisms, ideals that Chelva, in the best tradition of a parrhesiastes, has consistently espoused through his work within and outside of academia.
It came as no surprise to all of us, then, that in 2009, the Canadian Tamil Chamber of Commerce awarded Chelva the Outstanding Professional Award in recognition of his multi-splendoured contribution to academia and the world beyond.
Chelva’s being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada this year was the just apotheosis, in many ways, of a wonderful career in the humanities, and a timely honouring of an inspirational scholar and academic. With characteristic self-deprecation, I believe, Chelva, who was elated at the news of this latest honour, is said to have chuckled at the irony of being awarded the fellowship despite being a postcolonialist!
Chelva’s untimely demise is a deep personal sorrow for me, and it will stay with me all my life, I’m afraid. At the same time, his life is an inspiration, and he will forever be a shining light and a reservoir of strength for me and for those of us who learned from him and who will remember him, always, for his integrity and unfailing love and support.
Anupama Mohan
Presidency University, Kolkata