Parai means drum, and the messengers would often spread news while beating the drum. In ancient Tamil literature like the Love poems, which explores human emotions in relation to landscapes, Paraiyar was the name of those who worked as messengers and drummers. She wants to raise the question: What do we do with language that is steeped in colonial history? If anything, she wants the history of the word to be known. I know my mom has no expectation that the word will be removed from the dictionary. ![]() ![]() Because Chomsky is a true revolutionary, he wrote back to my mom. Some years ago my mom sent Noam Chomsky an envelope filled with news articles and her own personal commentary about the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka after he voiced his unfamiliarity with the situation on that island-nation during a talk. ![]() The origin of the word has always troubled her, how the British had taken a caste-based practice of exclusion and incorporated it into the English language, hardening its meaning and hindering social mobility for a community. My mom wrote to Webster’s Dictionary asking them to remove the word pariah.
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