Biography | Bibliography | Achievements | On Ramanujan
Achievements :
Contributions to South Asian Studies
Ramanujan was a major figure in shaping South Asian studies. According to him, the Indian way of thinking is “context-sensitive" as opposed to "context-free." Context-sensitive is, he suggests, the more appropriate term for what others have taken for an Indian tendency toward inconsistency and hypocrisy, as well as, perhaps tolerance and mimicry. Ramanujan cites Said's Orientalism here, suggesting a European source for these stereotypes created out of a necessity to essentialize and exoticize the Eastern world. These terms, he takes from linguistics, in which they refer to different kinds of grammatical rules. In applying them to cultures or ways of thinking, Ramanujan relies primarily on a text-based analysis. He cautions that they are "overall tendencies." "Actual behavior may be more complex, though the rules they think with are a crucial factor guiding the behavior". Context-free thinking, which he attributes to Euro-American culture, gives rise to universal testaments of law, such as in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the European philosophical tradition, e.g. Hegel. Context-sensitive thinking, on the other hand, gives rise to more complicated sets of standards such as the Laws of Manu, by which appropriateness depends on various factors, especially factors of identity and personhood, such as birth, occupation, life stage, karma, dharma, etc. Ramanujan stresses that this difference in philosophical outcome is not a symptom of irrationality, but a different kind of rationale.
Sociolinguistic Theory
Ramanujan's work in sociolinguistics also speaks to the critique of Sanskritic Indology. As shown in his 1964 essay with W. Bright, Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Change, Ramanujan opposes those who would conceive a monolithic standard grammar for Indian languages. Rather, he seeks to legitimize the vast variety of linguistic dialects. Specifically, here, Ramanujan and Bright compare a Brahmin Tamil dialect with a non-Brahmin Tamil dialect. The Brahmin dialect, they found, was much more inflected with Sanskrit loan words and styles, whereas the non-Brahmin dialect tended to shift by innovation on existing phonologic and morphologic features rather than by foriegn adoption. Ramanujan and Bright do not address the political and economic implication of this differential grammatical shift. However, their point, in 1964, was only to acknowledge and legitimize linguistic innovation as it occurs in various social groups in India.
Folklore Studies
In Ramanujan’s writing about Indian folklore and classic poetry, the theme of context-sensitivity reappears. In Where Mirrors are Windows (1989) and in Three Hundred Ramayanas (1991), he discusses the "intertextual" nature of written and oral Indian literature. By this, he means that Indian stories refer to one another and sometimes to other versions of the very story being told. He says, "What is merely suggested in one poem may become central in a 'repetition' or an 'imitation' of it. Mimesis is never only mimesis, for it evokes the earlier image in order to play with it and make it mean other things". It is important for Ramanujan to note that these intertextual influences do not occur in a unidirectional pattern. He emphasizes that the oral and written traditions, the Sanskritic and local traditions are in dialogue with and mutually influence one another.
Translation Works
Ramanujan worked to make non-Sanskritic Indian literature acknowledged in the realm of South Asian studies through the translation of works in the South Indian languages Kannada and Tamil. His translation works include Interior Landscapes: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967), Speaking of Siva (1973), Hymns for the Drowning (1981), and A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. In The Interior Landscape (1967), Ramanujan covers another sense of intertextuality which lies in the symbolic evocation common in Tamil poetry. Here, he discusses the highly stylized symbol system of Tamil poetry in which different landscape features evoke emotional tones, meanings and relational qualities. Necessary to understanding any Tamil poem is knowledge of the symbolic context and tradition in which it was written.
Ramanujan’s Poetry
Ramanujan wrote poetry almost entirely in English. The poet is known for his rather atavistic poetic arguments — arguments which disrupt common expectations. Ramanujan is not a poet of easy moral expectations. Where conventional morality collapses, poetry takes off. In Ramanujan’s quirky universe, excellence in human affairs is more a product of one’s compulsions or handicaps rather than one’s innate genius. Reviewer Bruce King called Ramanujan one of the "Indo-Anglian harbingers of literary modernism". This description highlights several characteristics of Ramanujan's poetry, perhaps less common in other transcultural poetry. Characteristics of his modernist style include an almost jarring realism and hints at a kind of confessional style. Themes of hybridity and transculturation are also highlighted in his poetry.
Read Ramanujan’s Poems
