D V. Geetha of solace. He deliberately chose the Buddha as his key historical and spiritual figure for the same reasons that Dr Ambedkar was to do so many years later. In both instances, the image of the Buddha represented a counter-hegemonic gesture. 5. For a detailed study of Tamil history and historiography see Sivathamby 1988. Varalaru, Madras, 1988. 6. Benedict Anderson argues that an awareness of a disjunctive present causes one to 'remember' 137 the past, for that is what 'being embedded in secular, serial time" and history requires. However, this notion of continuity has to accommodate itself to the fact of 'rupture'; hence, the imperative to remember/forget (Anderson, 1991: 187-206). 7. M.M. Bakhtin characterizes double-voiced discourse as that which reveals the 'direct intention of the character who is speaking and the refracted intention of the author' (Bakhtin 1981: 324). He is, of course, primarily concerned with instances of such a discourse as they appear in the novel and novelistic constructions. But more generally, he considers double-voiced discourse as exemplifying language or discourse that is 'internally dialogised (324).' Double-voicedness, argues Bakhtin, is 'prefigured in language itself ... in language as a social phenomenon that is becoming in history, socially stratified and weathered in the process of becoming' (326). 8. Bakhtin notes in a footnote (1981: 343) that 'Often the authoritative word is in fact a word spoken by another in a foreign language (for example), the phenomenon of foreign-language religious texts in most cultures.' REFERENCES Anaimuthu, Ve. (ed.), 1974, Periyar Ee. Ve. Ra.: Sinthanaigal, Madras. Anderson, Benedict, 1991, Imagined Communities, London. Bakhtin, M.M., 1981, The Dialogic Imagination, Austin, Texas. Sivathamby, K., 1988, TamizhU Ilakkiya Varalaru, Madras. Sutharalingam, R., 1974, Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India 1852-1891, Tucson, Arizona. Numbers 25-26