SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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History of Religions, Faculty of Theology; Uppsala University:

Postal adress: Box 511, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Visiting address: Engelska parken, Humanistiskt centrum, Thunbergsvägen 3 B
Web page: http://www.teol.uu.se/

Contact persons:
• Professor Peter Schalk, chair prof of History of Religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Personal web page.
• Associate Professor Eva Hellman, phone: +46 (0)18 471 26 94.

South Asia related research at the department

• Eva Hellman is especially focused on Modern Hinduism, and its relation to Politics as well as Gender. She has done research on Political Hinduism, as well as Hindu Godesses and Women (in 1998 she published a book in Swedish on this issue: ”Hinduiska gudinnor och kvinnor” (Bokförlaget Nya Doxa).
Currently she is however mainly devoted to teaching South Asian religions at her own department, as well as on the Master's Programme in South Asian Studies at Uppsala University. She has earlier been teaching South Asian Religions at Högskolan Dalarna, Campus Falun.
Dr. Hellman (photo to the right) has been involvede in a research project titled Gender and religious activism in South Asia: A study of Christian, Hindu and Muslim women’s organisations. The project is carried ourt in collaboration with Dr Sidsel Hansson, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), Lund University. It aims at examining the role of religion in a selection of women’s organisations in South Asia. All organisations work for the empowerment of women in the local context. The role of religion in constructions of ideal womanhood, as a mobilizing strategy and as informing the political agenda of the groups are main themes to be exploited. The different studies of the project explore the problems in a Muslim, a Hindu and a Christian context. Shared methods and theoretical perspectives facilitate a comparative discussion of the findings and the formation of general conclusions.
The project was given a planning grant from SASNET in the Spring 2001, and a grant for conttinued networking in the Fall 2001. See the full list of planning grants distributed by SASNET.

• Peter Schalk’s main fields of research are ritual transmission of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, the religions of Fu Nan as state ideologies, the history of Buddhism among Tamils in Tamilakam and Ilam, Hinduism in western exile, and the religious expressions of social-economical conflicts in present South Asia. He has been engaged in Tamil Studies since the 1970s, and started his field work in Sri Lanka in 1970. He witnessed the founding of Yalppanam University in 1974, and has been closely connected to the exchange programme between Uppsala University and the University of Yalppanam (Jaffna) in Sri Lanka. This exchange programme was introduced in 1979 after the two VC’s of the two universities signed an agreement of exchange. Due to the civil war the intensity decreased in the late 1990s, but it was again resumed after the ceasefire agreement in 2001. Several researchers and also the chief librarian of Yalppanam University have visited Uppsala since that.

The present research interests of Prof. Peter Schalk are:
• Buddhism among Tamils in Tamilakam and Ilam,
• European Images of South Asians
• Religious Expressions of Martial Conflicts in South Asia, and
• Traditional Buddhism and Hinduism in Lanka
In recent years Peter Schalk has worked on the following South Asia related research projects:

– A comparative study of religious expressions in intra- and inter-state (martial) conflicts in South Asia and Southeast Asia, an interdisciplinary research project within the fields of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Development Studies, History and Comparative Religion (i e History of Religions). The overall aim of this project is to focus on the general socio-economic and political conditions leading to (martial) conflicts in South Asia and Southeast Asia in relation to religious values, value systems and ideologies, including their transformation and re-transformation in the course of the conflict and reconciliation.

– Friend or foe? European xenologies of South Asians. European colonial xenologies focused a very specific, fundamental and burning problem: How to cope with cultural diversity, including religions, and all its threatening implications? European arguments go deeper than to contingent impressions of liking or disliking another culture. They refer ultimately to a positively or negatively evaluating conceptualization of cultural diversity per se. Schalk proposes a seemingly very limited project to begin with, a project that focuses Swedish relations to colonial Dutch Ceylon in the 17th and 18th centuries. The language competence needed for this small area alone, colonial Ceylon, is Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Sinhala and Tamil. Many sources used for this study, are in Portuguese, Dutch, and German. Already at the initial stage of this project, other European countries than Sweden are involved in this study.

– Memory, Ritual and Armed Resistance. Research project about how members of the LTTE through commemorative rituals are recruited and mobilised to commit suicidal acts. In November 2004 Schalk received SEK 478 000 SEK for this project as a two-years grant (2005–06) from the Swedish Research Council. More information (in Swedish only).

In January 2004 Schalk published a book called ”God as Remover of Obstacles. A Study of Caiva Soteriology among Ilam Tamil Refugees in Stockholm, Sweden” (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia Religionum 23. Uppsala: AUU, 2004). It is distributed through the University Library Uppsala.
An International seminar on ”Precept and Practice in Asian Buddhism” was held at Uppsala University 1–6 September 2004. Participants from China, UK, Sweden and above all Germany were attending. The seminar was organised by Arbeitskreis für asiatische Religionsgeschichte, Akar (Prof. Max Deeg, Dr. Oliver Freiberger and Dr. Christoph Kleine, in co-operation with Uppsala University (Prof. Peter Schalk). The papers presented will be published next year in Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
In August 2004 Peter Schalk received a SASNET Planning grant for an educational project with Jaffna (Yalppanam) University, called ”Introduction of Modern Research Methods and Theories within the field of humanities in the University of Yalppanam.” Dr. Schalk was, as mentioned above, connected to the University of Jaffna (Yalppanam) from 1970, and involved in students and teachers exchange. Due to the civil war in Sri Lanka Jaffna has however been cut off from the outside World for many years, and this is especially the case regarding studies in humanities. The planning grant was used by Schalk to spend time at Jaffna University during the Winter 2004/05, to give courses and lead seminars on all levels that initiate a change of the prevalent weaknesses. He also prepared the ground for Swedish students to go to Jaffna for language courses in Tamil and for studies in Shivaism.
The contacts at Yalppanam University has mainly been with the Dept. of Hindu Civilization; Dept. of Islamic and Christian Studies; the Tamil Department (including epigraphical Tamil); and the Dept. of History and Archaeology.

In December 2007, Prof. Schalk published a monograph titled ”Die Lehre der Befreiungstiger Tamililams von der Selbstvernichtung durch göttliche Askese: Vorlage der Quelle ÜBERLEGUNGEN DES ANFÜHRERS” about the nationalism/patriotism of Veluppillai Pirapakaran, leader of the LTTE, based on the collection of his sayings known as talaivarin cintanaikal 'Reflections of the Leader', and some of his speeches. The introduction is in German. It focuses on the concept of tiyakam 'abandonment (of life)', sometimes rendered as martyrdom or heroic death. Then follows the Tamil text but transliterated. Finally follow Schalk’s complete translations of this text into German, English, and Swedish. A translation into Sinhala is added, produced by Anonymous. The readers of Sinhala can now for the first time study the authentic words of Veluppillai Pirapakaran in their mother tongue. The work, financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), has done in co-operation with professor Alvapillai Veluppillai. The manuscript was closed in September 2007. The work is published as e-book only and can be downloaded free of charge from the database at Uppsala University chapter by chapter. There are six. Please go to http://publications.uu.se/abstract.xsql?dbid=8404.
Alvapillai Veluppillai is Professor Emeritus in Tamil from the University of Yalppanam, Sri Lanka. During the period 1990-2000 he was connected to Uppsala University as a researcher on Tamil literature and religion, and he received an Honorary Doctorate there in 1995. He is now living in America.

In July 2010, Prof. Peter Schalk convenes a panel on ”Confrontations in Sri Lankan politics. Origins and present developments” at the 21st European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, to be held in Bonn, Germany. The panel focuses on the radical changes observed in Sri Lanka during the last year, with more than hundred thousand refugees being caught in the armed struggle of the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE. The LTTE suffered a military defeat but at the same time a resilient Tamil Diaspora in Canada, Australia and the EU demonstrated the LTTE's defiance. Scholars are invited to elaborate on and explain the radical changes and its consequences for the economic development and for the possibilities of reconciliation for peace. More information about the panel.

In the Fall 2005 Dr Pushparatnam visited Uppsala University for six months. He is a professional archaeologist specialising on the Tamil area in South India and Ilam (Lanka), holding a senior lecturer’s post at Yalppanam University. His coming to Uppsala was part of the exchange programme between Uppsala and Yalppnam that started in 1989. In Uppsala, he is worked together also with the Dept. of Archaeology, where a team of young archaeologists from the island already works. The task of Dr Pushparatnam has been to document the earliest religious artefacts found by him during two decades of excavations in the Tamil area of Ilam. His work will be a contribution to our knowledge about the earliest forms of Tamil Caivam (Sivaism) and Tamil Pauttam (Buddhism) in Ilam.

• Amirtalinkam Cellaiya (Amirthalingam Selliah) defended his doctoral dissertation on ”Murukak katavul valipatu. A Study of the Worship of God Murukan in Malaiyakam on Ilam and in Tamilakam”, on 8 December 2003. He was supervised by Prof. Schalk. The faculty opponent was Professor S Pathmanathan from Peradeniya University, Sri Lanka. The thesis highlights the act of worship of Murukak katavul, as it is continuously practiced and developed as Tamil heritage in Sri Lanka, in a historical context of the European colonial plantation economic system on on one hand, and, in the context of traditional Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism, as well as Christianity, Islam, and, not least, the religion of Veddas – that is, the prevalence of a common myth of Murukan and Valli tradition among the earliest inhabitants of Ilankai – on the other. More information.