Abstract

R. Cheran speaks on his trajectory as a Tamil poet, journalist, and intellectual, during the years of conflict in Sri Lanka and on his
current work as a playwright, activist, and collaborator in the development of Tamil diaspora studies with Chelva Kanaganayakam in
Toronto, Canada. This interview provides a glimpse of the histories of dislocation, censorship, and exile that framed Tamil political,
cultural, and intellectual life throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Precariously positioned as an artist and scholar who eschewed the non-democratic, militant positions of successive Sri Lankan
governments and Tamil militant organizations, Cheran interrogates evolving notions of Tamil nationalism as articulated in the post-
war context and looks to the future of the idea of the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka and around the world. This interview is a transcript of
the public interview held at Trans(sub)continental Imaginations: Three Centuries of South Asian Literary English, a symposium in
memory of Chelva Kanaganayakam, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 25 March 2015.