கால்டுவெல் குறிப்புகளில் மறவர் ஜாதி
On Tamil Militarism ; an 11 part essay by D.P.Sivaram written in 1992 Part 6: Bishop Caldwell and the Tamil Dravidians by D.P. Sivaram
[courtesy: Lanka Guardian, August 1, 1992, pp.11-12 and 24; prepared by Sachi Sri Kantha, for the electronic record]
ராபர்ட் கால்டுவெல் "திராவிட தந்தை" என அறியப்படுகின்றார்.அவர் மறவர் பாளையக்காரர்களின் பூமி என அழைக்கபடும் திருநெல்வேலியில் வாழ்ந்தவர்.அவர் தமிழக போர்க்குலங்கள் முதலாக திராவிட மொழிகளை பற்றி நிறைய ஆரய்ந்துள்ளார். அதில் சம்ஸ்கிருத மொழியை தவிர மற்றவையெல்லாம் ஒரே மூலமான திராவிடத்தை கொண்டவை.
Robert Caldwell (1819-1891) was the father of the Dravidian movement. He was the Bishop of Tinnevely – the heartland of the Maravar Poligars – during the times when the British were engaged in suppressing the Tamil military castes in the Tamil region. His monumental work, The Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, which was published in 1856, laid the theoretical foundation of the political, academic and cultural movement that came to dominate Tamilian life in the twentieth century. The work argues that all south Indian languages (and a few others elsewhere in the subcontinent, like Brahui) belong to a distinct family of tongues called the Dravidian languages. This challenged the widely held view of the time that most of India’s cultivated languages were derived from Sanskrit.
It followed therefore that the culture and civilization of the Dravidian peoples of south India were intrinsically unique. The role of these ideas in the inception of the Dravidian movement has been examined in detail elsewhere (Irshick; 1969, Hardgrave; 1965, Sivathamby:1978). These studies have been in terms of the cultural and political contradictions between the newly arisen non-Brahmin elites and the Brahmins who had achieved a pre-eminent place under colonial rule in the Madras Presidency.
The intention of this study however is to show that the fundamental tenets of the nascent phase of the Dravidian ideology were essentially linked to the political and cultural legacies of the British attempt to demilitarize Tamil society. The writings of Bishop Caldwell presuppose a teleological project which was not uncommon to what were conceived as great intellectual undertakings in that era of empire building. The assumptions of the project formed the basis of his Dravidian theory. They were,
அவரது காலத்தில் ஆங்கிலேய அரசு தமிழர்களுக்கு மத்தியில் போர்கலைகளின் பயிற்ச்சியை முதலில் தடை செய்தது
[Demiltraised act]. (a) That the British empire was destined to finally bring order amongst Tamils, a large portion of whom had been more prone to the habit of war than to the arts of peace from the dawn of history in south India,
அவரது குறிப்புகளில் ஆங்கிலேயர் மறவர் சமூகத்துக்கு முற்றிலும் எதிரானவராகவும் அடக்கு முறையை தினிப்பவராகவும் திகழ்ந்தனர்.கால்டுவெல்லின் குறிப்புகளில் மறவரே உண்மையான தமிழ்மக்கள் என கூறுகின்றார். ஆனால் வெள்ளாளரை திராவிடர் என கூறுகிறார். (b) That this order would be the one in which the imminent protestant ethos of the Dravidian civilization would reach its full expressional ethos which the English administrator saw as the virtue of those classes which "contrasted favourably with the Maravar", and whom the Bishop considered the legitimate Tamilians,
(c) That the rediscovery of Dravidian linguistic and cultural uniqueness would help consolidate the position of the ‘lower classes’ among the Tamils who had played an important role in the military expansion of British rule in the subcontinent – the Tamil Christian soldiers who were the Empire’s alternative to the traditional Tamil military castes.
In the concluding remarks of his ‘A History of Tinnevely’(1888), Caldwell says, "A mixed government…came thus to an end and was succeeded by a government purely English, at unity with itself, and as just as it was powerful. The results of this change have been most important and valuable. Professor Wilson…places in a striking light the course things would have taken if the English Government had not been enabled to interpose its authority. It may be concluded," he says, "that had not a wise and powerful policy interfered to enforce the habits of social life, the fine districts to the south of Kaveri…would have reverted to the state in which tradition describes them long anterior to Christianity, and would have once more have become a suitable domicile for the goblins of Ravana."
அவரது வரையரை திருநேல்வேலியின் நடைமுறை காரணிகளிலும் பழையா பாண்டிய நாட்டின் கன் தனது ஆய்வை மேற்கொண்டார்.
The first reflection that arises in one’s mind on reading the foregoing sketch of the history of this district is, that war seems to have been the normal condition of Tinnevely, as of the rest of the old Pandya country…from the beginning of man’s abode in these regions till A.D. 1801 (the year in which the Tamil country was ceded to the British). Caldwell also notes that, "Of the beneficial changes that have taken place since then, the most remarkable is that which we see in the Poligars themselves." He claims with satisfaction that many among the regions martial classes were taking to agriculture; and of the Maravar, he says "the change wrought amongst the poorer class of the Maravas is not perhaps quite so complete…though once the terror of the country they are now amenable to law and reason…" Tamil society was thus ‘unity with itself’ and was realising its destiny under the British Empire. He asserts that "Race after race of rulers have risen up in this country, has been tried and found wanting, and has passed away." But that the Tamils "accept our government readily and willingly as the best government they have ever had and the best they are likely to have in this age of the world." அவர் மறவர்களை "இறுதி மன்னர் இனம்" என குறிப்பிடுகின்றார். Under the "paternal government" of the English, Tamils were becoming a peaceful and industrious nation. The last "race of rulers" which had risen up and passed away in the Tamil country were the turbulent Maravar. English rule was the only one that was not found wanting because its principles and protestant ethos were in consonance with what Caldwell assumed were the ‘true’ religious and moral ideas of the Dravidian race.
Although as a historian, he was well aware of the hegemony of the Maravar’s martial culture in Tamil society, its exclusion from what he desired to portray as the true Dravidian civilization was central to the imperial and religious interests of Caldwell’s teleologial project. The English, in suppressing the martial castes, were restoring the soverignty of Tamil society’s "legitimate rulers" – the peasantry and lower classes. In Caldwell’s view, the Tamil military castes had to seek "the safer and more reputable occupation of husbandmen" (Caldwell: 1888, p.229). However, he was deeply suspicious of their peace. Commenting on the Poligar wars, he wrote, "The population of the sequestered Pollams (Palayams) seemed to be delighted with the opportunity afforded them of trying their strength with the English once more, being thoroughly discontented, no doubt, with the peaceful life now required of them" (p.197). And he condemned a suggestion ventured by the author of the Tinnevely Manual, Mr.Stuart that the Palayam system of the Tamil military castes was histocially inevitable as the fiefdoms of medieval Europe – "It is so seldom that one hears a good word about Poligars that I quote these remarks of Mr.Stuart with pleasure…I fear, however, that the misdeeds of the Poligars were more systematic and audacious than those of the feudal nobles of Europe in the Middle Ages." (p.59)
மறவர் தனது வன்முறையை சானார் இனத்துக்கு எதிராக பிரயோகித்தனர் அவர்கள் மீது கட்டவிழ்த்து விடப்பட்டுள்ள இரத்தக்களரி வன்முறை பயந்து ஏராளமான சாணார்கள் (கிருத்துவ)பிராட்டஸ்டன்ட் மதத்தை தழுவினர்.
மறவரின் போர் வன்மையும்,பிராமனர்களின் சம்ஸ்கிருத கலச்சாரமும் வளர்ந்து வரும் கிருத்துவ மதமாக்களுக்கு எதிராக இருந்தது. ஆங்கில அரசும், கிருத்துவ சர்ச்சுகளும் மறவர்களுக்கு எதிரான "இராணுவ மறுப்பு கொள்கையை" புகுத்த முற்பட்டனர். மறவரின் வீரமிக்க பழக்கம் மற்றும் பிராமணர்களின் சமஸ்கிருத கலாச்சாரம் சமூக ஒழுங்கு இவை 'உண்மையான' திராவிடர்கள் தார்மீக கொள்கைகளை புறம்பானவை'. எனவே மறவர்கள் திராவிடர்கள் அல்ல அவர்கள். அவர்கள் தமிழினத்தை சார்ந்தனர்.
Apart from concerns shared with the British Government, the Bishop’s hostile attitude towards the Maravar arose from the bloody violence they unleashed on the Shanar, large numbers of whom were embracing the Protestant faith. For him, if the idolatory and the Sanskritic culture of the articulate Brahmins was a spiritual threat to the propagation of the Gospel, the violence and misdeeds of the Maravar against the faithful was a dire physical threat. In his scheme of Tamilian history, the culture and ethos of the classes through whom the British government and the Anglican Church sought to consolidate the gains of Tamil society’s demilitarization were seen by Caldwell as the true characteristics of the Tamils. The martial habits of the Maravar and the Sanskritic culture of the Brahmins were alien to the social order and moral ideals of the ‘true’ Dravidians.
These views were shared by many English missionaries of the 19th century who worked among the Tamils. Missionaries and administrators found evidence for this in many religious and didactic Tamil texts. Henry Martyn Scudder published a book in 1865, in which he "used Tamil texts and poems to support the missionary position that even in ancient Tamil texts many Christian ideas were present." (Irshick; 1976, p.15). This belief led to the introduction of what were thought to be Tamil works, with little or no extraneous influence in institutions of higher education run by missionaries. The college curriculum created a market for the publication of such works. This in turn gave an impetus to the rediscovery of many ancient Tamil works (U.V.Saminatha Iyer; En Sarithiram, p.714)., which paradoxically led to the publication of Purananooru and the Purapporul Venba Malai, texts that portrayed the ancient Tamils as a fierce martial race and lay the foundation of modern Tamil militarism. Thus Caldwell’s teleology assumed that Tamil revivalism would help consolidate the protestant ethic and the allegiance to English rule among the non-military castes in Tamil society, by giving expression to the moral and religious ideas which he assumed were imminent in their ancient Dravidian culture and language.
மதுரை மானுவலில் மறவர்கள் அதிகமாக வாழ்ந்தனர். சாணாரை பற்றி குறிப்பிட்ட அவர்.அவர்கள் கிருத்துவராக வளர்ந்ததால் அவர்கள் கல்வி அறிவால் முன்னேற்றம் அடைந்தனர்.
The administrative manual of the Madurai district commended a section of this class of Tamils thus, "They…contrast favourably with the Maravars, being very orderly, frugal, and industrious". Other section, the Shanar it was stated, "have risen enormously in the social scale by their eagerness for education, by their large adoption of Christianity, and by their thrifty habits. Many of them have forced themselves ahead of the Maravars by sheer force of character." (Thurston: 1906, p.373). It was to these ‘loyal’ classes of Tamils that Caldwell referred to when he wrote in the introduction to his Grammar that
"All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee plantations are Tamilians; the majority of the money-making classes even in Colombo are Tamilians; and it seems not unlikely that [?]ere long the Tamilians will have excluded the Singhalese from almost every profitable employment in their own Island. The majority of the Klings or Hindus, who are found in Pegu, Penang, Singapore and other places in further East, are Tamilians; a large portion of the Coolies who have emigrated in such numbers to the Mauritius and to the West Indian colonies are Tamilians; in short wherever money is to be made, wherever a more apathetic or a more aristocratic people is waiting to be pushed aside, thither swarm the Tamilians, the Greeks or Scotch of the East, the least superstitious and the most enterprising and persevering race of Hindus." (Caldwell: 1856, p.7).
Caldwell’s Dravidian theory thus gave rise to a vocabulary in which the word Tamil came to connote the non-Brahmin, non-martial aspects of Tamil culture. Bishop Robert Caldwell in laying the foundation of the Dravidian movement also endeavoured and partially succeeded in dispersing the impression that the Tamils who, only a few years before his time were thought of as being "prone to the habit of war", were a peace loving and industrious nation. The intellectual endeavours of the learned missionary made the British Empire cherish an ulterior hope that the ‘Dravidian’ Tamils would remain the faithful among the faithless, the bedrock of the Raj for a long time to come – the events of the great mutiny and the rise of the Dravidian movement proved them correct.
Note I am thankful to Mr.Joganathan of Wellawatte for drawing my attention to the fact that the Panivar clan of Myliddy is also connected to Ramnad. My information, however, was based on (a) Place Name Studies – Kankesanthurai Circuit, by Dr. E. Balasunderam of the Jaffna University, 1988, pp.5-6. The book was published for the Mani Vizha of S. Appadurai of Myliddy. (b) An interview with Mr. Ratnalingam of Myliddy, politburo member of a Tamil militant group who I believe is a relative of Mr. Joganathan. The foot-notes could not appear due to an unavoidable circumstance.
On Tamil Militarism ; an 11 part essay by D.P.Sivaram written in 1992 Part 6: Bishop Caldwell and the Tamil Dravidians by D.P. Sivaram
[courtesy: Lanka Guardian, August 1, 1992, pp.11-12 and 24; prepared by Sachi Sri Kantha, for the electronic record]
ராபர்ட் கால்டுவெல் "திராவிட தந்தை" என அறியப்படுகின்றார்.அவர் மறவர் பாளையக்காரர்களின் பூமி என அழைக்கபடும் திருநெல்வேலியில் வாழ்ந்தவர்.அவர் தமிழக போர்க்குலங்கள் முதலாக திராவிட மொழிகளை பற்றி நிறைய ஆரய்ந்துள்ளார். அதில் சம்ஸ்கிருத மொழியை தவிர மற்றவையெல்லாம் ஒரே மூலமான திராவிடத்தை கொண்டவை.
Robert Caldwell (1819-1891) was the father of the Dravidian movement. He was the Bishop of Tinnevely – the heartland of the Maravar Poligars – during the times when the British were engaged in suppressing the Tamil military castes in the Tamil region. His monumental work, The Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, which was published in 1856, laid the theoretical foundation of the political, academic and cultural movement that came to dominate Tamilian life in the twentieth century. The work argues that all south Indian languages (and a few others elsewhere in the subcontinent, like Brahui) belong to a distinct family of tongues called the Dravidian languages. This challenged the widely held view of the time that most of India’s cultivated languages were derived from Sanskrit.
It followed therefore that the culture and civilization of the Dravidian peoples of south India were intrinsically unique. The role of these ideas in the inception of the Dravidian movement has been examined in detail elsewhere (Irshick; 1969, Hardgrave; 1965, Sivathamby:1978). These studies have been in terms of the cultural and political contradictions between the newly arisen non-Brahmin elites and the Brahmins who had achieved a pre-eminent place under colonial rule in the Madras Presidency.
The intention of this study however is to show that the fundamental tenets of the nascent phase of the Dravidian ideology were essentially linked to the political and cultural legacies of the British attempt to demilitarize Tamil society. The writings of Bishop Caldwell presuppose a teleological project which was not uncommon to what were conceived as great intellectual undertakings in that era of empire building. The assumptions of the project formed the basis of his Dravidian theory. They were,
அவரது காலத்தில் ஆங்கிலேய அரசு தமிழர்களுக்கு மத்தியில் போர்கலைகளின் பயிற்ச்சியை முதலில் தடை செய்தது
[Demiltraised act]. (a) That the British empire was destined to finally bring order amongst Tamils, a large portion of whom had been more prone to the habit of war than to the arts of peace from the dawn of history in south India,
அவரது குறிப்புகளில் ஆங்கிலேயர் மறவர் சமூகத்துக்கு முற்றிலும் எதிரானவராகவும் அடக்கு முறையை தினிப்பவராகவும் திகழ்ந்தனர்.கால்டுவெல்லின் குறிப்புகளில் மறவரே உண்மையான தமிழ்மக்கள் என கூறுகின்றார். ஆனால் வெள்ளாளரை திராவிடர் என கூறுகிறார். (b) That this order would be the one in which the imminent protestant ethos of the Dravidian civilization would reach its full expressional ethos which the English administrator saw as the virtue of those classes which "contrasted favourably with the Maravar", and whom the Bishop considered the legitimate Tamilians,
(c) That the rediscovery of Dravidian linguistic and cultural uniqueness would help consolidate the position of the ‘lower classes’ among the Tamils who had played an important role in the military expansion of British rule in the subcontinent – the Tamil Christian soldiers who were the Empire’s alternative to the traditional Tamil military castes.
In the concluding remarks of his ‘A History of Tinnevely’(1888), Caldwell says, "A mixed government…came thus to an end and was succeeded by a government purely English, at unity with itself, and as just as it was powerful. The results of this change have been most important and valuable. Professor Wilson…places in a striking light the course things would have taken if the English Government had not been enabled to interpose its authority. It may be concluded," he says, "that had not a wise and powerful policy interfered to enforce the habits of social life, the fine districts to the south of Kaveri…would have reverted to the state in which tradition describes them long anterior to Christianity, and would have once more have become a suitable domicile for the goblins of Ravana."
அவரது வரையரை திருநேல்வேலியின் நடைமுறை காரணிகளிலும் பழையா பாண்டிய நாட்டின் கன் தனது ஆய்வை மேற்கொண்டார்.
The first reflection that arises in one’s mind on reading the foregoing sketch of the history of this district is, that war seems to have been the normal condition of Tinnevely, as of the rest of the old Pandya country…from the beginning of man’s abode in these regions till A.D. 1801 (the year in which the Tamil country was ceded to the British). Caldwell also notes that, "Of the beneficial changes that have taken place since then, the most remarkable is that which we see in the Poligars themselves." He claims with satisfaction that many among the regions martial classes were taking to agriculture; and of the Maravar, he says "the change wrought amongst the poorer class of the Maravas is not perhaps quite so complete…though once the terror of the country they are now amenable to law and reason…" Tamil society was thus ‘unity with itself’ and was realising its destiny under the British Empire. He asserts that "Race after race of rulers have risen up in this country, has been tried and found wanting, and has passed away." But that the Tamils "accept our government readily and willingly as the best government they have ever had and the best they are likely to have in this age of the world." அவர் மறவர்களை "இறுதி மன்னர் இனம்" என குறிப்பிடுகின்றார். Under the "paternal government" of the English, Tamils were becoming a peaceful and industrious nation. The last "race of rulers" which had risen up and passed away in the Tamil country were the turbulent Maravar. English rule was the only one that was not found wanting because its principles and protestant ethos were in consonance with what Caldwell assumed were the ‘true’ religious and moral ideas of the Dravidian race.
Although as a historian, he was well aware of the hegemony of the Maravar’s martial culture in Tamil society, its exclusion from what he desired to portray as the true Dravidian civilization was central to the imperial and religious interests of Caldwell’s teleologial project. The English, in suppressing the martial castes, were restoring the soverignty of Tamil society’s "legitimate rulers" – the peasantry and lower classes. In Caldwell’s view, the Tamil military castes had to seek "the safer and more reputable occupation of husbandmen" (Caldwell: 1888, p.229). However, he was deeply suspicious of their peace. Commenting on the Poligar wars, he wrote, "The population of the sequestered Pollams (Palayams) seemed to be delighted with the opportunity afforded them of trying their strength with the English once more, being thoroughly discontented, no doubt, with the peaceful life now required of them" (p.197). And he condemned a suggestion ventured by the author of the Tinnevely Manual, Mr.Stuart that the Palayam system of the Tamil military castes was histocially inevitable as the fiefdoms of medieval Europe – "It is so seldom that one hears a good word about Poligars that I quote these remarks of Mr.Stuart with pleasure…I fear, however, that the misdeeds of the Poligars were more systematic and audacious than those of the feudal nobles of Europe in the Middle Ages." (p.59)
மறவர் தனது வன்முறையை சானார் இனத்துக்கு எதிராக பிரயோகித்தனர் அவர்கள் மீது கட்டவிழ்த்து விடப்பட்டுள்ள இரத்தக்களரி வன்முறை பயந்து ஏராளமான சாணார்கள் (கிருத்துவ)பிராட்டஸ்டன்ட் மதத்தை தழுவினர்.
மறவரின் போர் வன்மையும்,பிராமனர்களின் சம்ஸ்கிருத கலச்சாரமும் வளர்ந்து வரும் கிருத்துவ மதமாக்களுக்கு எதிராக இருந்தது. ஆங்கில அரசும், கிருத்துவ சர்ச்சுகளும் மறவர்களுக்கு எதிரான "இராணுவ மறுப்பு கொள்கையை" புகுத்த முற்பட்டனர். மறவரின் வீரமிக்க பழக்கம் மற்றும் பிராமணர்களின் சமஸ்கிருத கலாச்சாரம் சமூக ஒழுங்கு இவை 'உண்மையான' திராவிடர்கள் தார்மீக கொள்கைகளை புறம்பானவை'. எனவே மறவர்கள் திராவிடர்கள் அல்ல அவர்கள். அவர்கள் தமிழினத்தை சார்ந்தனர்.
Apart from concerns shared with the British Government, the Bishop’s hostile attitude towards the Maravar arose from the bloody violence they unleashed on the Shanar, large numbers of whom were embracing the Protestant faith. For him, if the idolatory and the Sanskritic culture of the articulate Brahmins was a spiritual threat to the propagation of the Gospel, the violence and misdeeds of the Maravar against the faithful was a dire physical threat. In his scheme of Tamilian history, the culture and ethos of the classes through whom the British government and the Anglican Church sought to consolidate the gains of Tamil society’s demilitarization were seen by Caldwell as the true characteristics of the Tamils. The martial habits of the Maravar and the Sanskritic culture of the Brahmins were alien to the social order and moral ideals of the ‘true’ Dravidians.
These views were shared by many English missionaries of the 19th century who worked among the Tamils. Missionaries and administrators found evidence for this in many religious and didactic Tamil texts. Henry Martyn Scudder published a book in 1865, in which he "used Tamil texts and poems to support the missionary position that even in ancient Tamil texts many Christian ideas were present." (Irshick; 1976, p.15). This belief led to the introduction of what were thought to be Tamil works, with little or no extraneous influence in institutions of higher education run by missionaries. The college curriculum created a market for the publication of such works. This in turn gave an impetus to the rediscovery of many ancient Tamil works (U.V.Saminatha Iyer; En Sarithiram, p.714)., which paradoxically led to the publication of Purananooru and the Purapporul Venba Malai, texts that portrayed the ancient Tamils as a fierce martial race and lay the foundation of modern Tamil militarism. Thus Caldwell’s teleology assumed that Tamil revivalism would help consolidate the protestant ethic and the allegiance to English rule among the non-military castes in Tamil society, by giving expression to the moral and religious ideas which he assumed were imminent in their ancient Dravidian culture and language.
மதுரை மானுவலில் மறவர்கள் அதிகமாக வாழ்ந்தனர். சாணாரை பற்றி குறிப்பிட்ட அவர்.அவர்கள் கிருத்துவராக வளர்ந்ததால் அவர்கள் கல்வி அறிவால் முன்னேற்றம் அடைந்தனர்.
The administrative manual of the Madurai district commended a section of this class of Tamils thus, "They…contrast favourably with the Maravars, being very orderly, frugal, and industrious". Other section, the Shanar it was stated, "have risen enormously in the social scale by their eagerness for education, by their large adoption of Christianity, and by their thrifty habits. Many of them have forced themselves ahead of the Maravars by sheer force of character." (Thurston: 1906, p.373). It was to these ‘loyal’ classes of Tamils that Caldwell referred to when he wrote in the introduction to his Grammar that
"All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee plantations are Tamilians; the majority of the money-making classes even in Colombo are Tamilians; and it seems not unlikely that [?]ere long the Tamilians will have excluded the Singhalese from almost every profitable employment in their own Island. The majority of the Klings or Hindus, who are found in Pegu, Penang, Singapore and other places in further East, are Tamilians; a large portion of the Coolies who have emigrated in such numbers to the Mauritius and to the West Indian colonies are Tamilians; in short wherever money is to be made, wherever a more apathetic or a more aristocratic people is waiting to be pushed aside, thither swarm the Tamilians, the Greeks or Scotch of the East, the least superstitious and the most enterprising and persevering race of Hindus." (Caldwell: 1856, p.7).
Caldwell’s Dravidian theory thus gave rise to a vocabulary in which the word Tamil came to connote the non-Brahmin, non-martial aspects of Tamil culture. Bishop Robert Caldwell in laying the foundation of the Dravidian movement also endeavoured and partially succeeded in dispersing the impression that the Tamils who, only a few years before his time were thought of as being "prone to the habit of war", were a peace loving and industrious nation. The intellectual endeavours of the learned missionary made the British Empire cherish an ulterior hope that the ‘Dravidian’ Tamils would remain the faithful among the faithless, the bedrock of the Raj for a long time to come – the events of the great mutiny and the rise of the Dravidian movement proved them correct.
Note I am thankful to Mr.Joganathan of Wellawatte for drawing my attention to the fact that the Panivar clan of Myliddy is also connected to Ramnad. My information, however, was based on (a) Place Name Studies – Kankesanthurai Circuit, by Dr. E. Balasunderam of the Jaffna University, 1988, pp.5-6. The book was published for the Mani Vizha of S. Appadurai of Myliddy. (b) An interview with Mr. Ratnalingam of Myliddy, politburo member of a Tamil militant group who I believe is a relative of Mr. Joganathan. The foot-notes could not appear due to an unavoidable circumstance.
Ilankai Tamil SangamAssociation of Tamils of Sri Lanka in the USA | |
On Tamil Militarism ; an 11 part essay by D.P.Sivaram written in 1992Part 8: The Twin Narratives of Tamil Nationalism
by D.P. Sivaram
[courtesy: Lanka Guardian, September 1, 1992, pp.10-12; prepared by Sachi Sri Kantha, for the electronic record]
At the turn of the Twentieth century Tamil nationalism was articulated in terms of two different interpretations of Tamilian identity, propagated by two distinct movements which were politically opposed to each other. The one was the Dravidian school; the other was the Indian revolutionary movement. The former was closely associated with English missionaries and unequivocally supported British rule; the latter strongly opposed the Raj and preached violence as the chief means of national emancipation from foreign domination.
 Bishop Caldwell
The discourse that may be identified today as Tamil nationalism is constituted at its basis by these two interpretations – or more appropriately ‘founding’ narratives – which contended with each other to offer authentic readings of the Tamilian past and present, of what ‘really’ constituted Tamilian identity. The Dravidian school gave political and academic form to linguistic ethno-nationalism; the revolutionary movement turned traditional Tamil militarism into a liberation ideology, which evolved into militarist ethno-nationalism. The militarist reading has also characterised Tamil ethno-nationalism in the twentieth century not merely because it was "constructed and deployed to advance the interests and claims of the collectivity, banded and mobilized as a pressure group" but also because, as this study intends to show, it appealed to, and arose out of the structures of experience produced and reproduced through folk culture and religion in rural Tamilnadu.
This is how, as we shall see later, MGR became Madurai Veeran, the warrior god of a numerous scheduled caste in Periyar district in Tamilnadu. Jeyalalitha contested from an electorate there in the last election [i.e., 1991 general election]. However, it is essential to understand the politics behind the claims and silences of the early Dravidian school of Tamil revivalism and ‘historiography’ for examining the rise of modern Tamil militarism.
Caldwell and his followers who wrote and spoke about Tamil culture and history endeavoured to show that Tamils were essentially a peaceful people who had achieved a high level of civilization independent of and prior to the arrival of the ‘Aryans’ in the Indian subcontinent. This was the unique Dravidian civilization. The theory of Dravidian linguistic and hence cultural independence also contained in it the idea that the Tamils were originally a class of peaceful farmers. The politics of Caldwell’s teleology compelled him [to] introduce this idea into his writings. (It was seen earlier that it arose from the attitude he shared with the English rulers towards the Maravar.) The views of Bishop Caldwell were found to be extremely useful by the newly arisen Vellala elite which was contending for higher status in the Varna hierarchy of caste. Therefore the ‘histories’ which were written by the Dravidian school of Tamil studies at the turn of the [20th] century were underpinned by,
The interests of both were intertwined. Their express political interest was to show that Tamil culture in essence was pre-Aryan-Brahmin and non-martial. The first non-Brahmin Tamils to take up the Dravidian theory to examine theTamil past belonged to the Vellala elite and were supported and encouraged by Protestant missionaries (and sometimes by English administrators). The writings of Professor Sunderam Pillai of the Trivandrum University on Tamil history and culture inspired many of his castemen who had been seething at being classified as Sudras by the Brahmins, and worse, by the British caste census and courts of law as well.
 Prof. Sunderam Pillai
Thus, the historical works of the early Dravidian school were produced as "social charters directed toward the census, where the decennial designation of caste status became a major focus for contests over rank between 1870 and 1930. The first Dravidian history of the Tamils, ‘The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago’, was written by V.Kanakasabhai Pillai, a Vellala from Jaffna who was a civil servant in Madras. Edgar Thurston thought it appropriate to quote the following excerpt from that work, in the section dealing with the Vellala caste in his ‘Castes and Tribes of South India’.
"Among the pure Tamils, the class most honoured was the Arivar or Sages. Next in rank to the Arivar were Ulavar or farmers. The Arivar were ascetics, but of men living in society the farmers occupied the highest position. They formed the nobility, or the landed aristocracy, of the country. They were also calledVellalar, the lords of the flood or karalar, lords of the clouds…The Chera, Chola and Pandyan kings and most of the petty chiefs of Tamilakam, belonged to the tribe of Vellalas." (Thurston, 1906: p.367-368)
The efforts of the early Dravidian school of Tamil ‘historiography’ culminated in the work of Maraimalai Atikal – the founder of the Pure Tamil movement which became a powerful force in the anti-Hindi struggles from 1928 onwards. He published a book called, ‘Vellalar Nakareekam’ – The Civilisation of the Vellalas – in 1923. The book was a lecture he had given at the Jaffna town hall on January 1, 1922 on the ‘Civilization of the Tamils’ A contribution of Rs.200 was made in Jaffna towards the publication of the lecture, as a book. The Jaffna Vellala of that time saw his interests as being bound with that of his castemen in South India, who were attempting to rid themselves of the Sudra status assigned to them in the Varna hierarchy of caste by Brahmins.
 Prof. V. Kanagasabai Pillai
However, Maraimalai Atikal had decided to publish it as a book in order to refute a claim in the caste journal of the Nattukottai Chetti community, that the Chetties did not marry among the Vellalas because they (the Vellalas) were Sudras. In the English preface to the work, Maraimalai Atikal says that his book
"is written in scrupulously pure Tamil style, setting forth at the same time views of a revolutionary character in the sphere of social religious and historical ideas of the Tamil people…In the first place attention is directed to Vellalas, the civilized agricultural class of the Tamils, and to their origin, and organization…it is shown that at a time when all the people except those who lived all along the equatorial regions were leading the life of hunters or nomads, these Vellalas attained perfection in the art of agriculture…and by means of navigation occupied the whole of India. When the Aryan hordes came from the north-west of Punjab and poured forth into the interior, it was the ten Vellala kings then ruling in the north that stopped their advance."
Maraimalai Atikal goes on to claim that the eighteen Tamil castes were created by the Vellalas for their service; that they (the Vellalas) were vegetarians fo the highest moral codes;that Saivism and the Saiva Siddhantha philosophy nurtured by the Vellalas for more than 3,500 years were the pre-Aryan religious heritage of the Tamils; that the classification of Vellalas as Sudras was the result of an insidious Aryan-Brahmin conspiracy. Maraimalai Atikal was also defending fellow Vellala Dravidian scholars and their claims against attacks and veiled criticisms of Brahmin Tamil academics, M.Srinivasa Aiyangar, a respected Brahmin Tamil scholar who had worked as an assistant to the superintendent of census for the Madras Presidency.
Mr.Stuart, had made a devastating attacking on the claims of the Dravidian school of Tamil historiography, which derived its authority from the ‘scientific’ philological works of Bishop Caldwell. He debunked the theory of the Caldwell-Vellala school that Tamil culture was constituted by the high moral virtues of an ancient race of peaceful cultivators, on the basis of what he had studied of the religion and culture of the Tamil country-side, as an officer of the census, and on the basis of ‘pure’ Tamil works that had been rediscovered towards the latter part of the 19th century.
 Maraimalai Atikal
Srinivasa Aiyangar noted in his ‘Tamil Studies’, "Within the last fifteen years a new school of Tamil scholars has come into being, consisting mainly of admirers and castemen of the late lamented professorand antiquary, Mr.Sunderam Pillai of Trivandrum." Aiyangar argued that contrary to the claims of the new school, the Tamils were a fierce race of martial predators. He wrote,
"Again some of the Tamil districts abound with peculiar tomb stones called ‘Virakkals’ (hero stones). They were usually set upon graves of warriors that were slain in battle…The names of the deceased soldiers and their exploits are found inscribed on the stones which were decorated with garlands of peacock feathers or some kind of red flowers. Usually small canopies were put up over them. We give below a specimen of such an epitaph. A careful study of the Purapporul Venba Malai will doubtless convince the reader that the ancient Tamils were, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians, a ferocious race of hunters and soldiers armed with bows and lances making war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging and pillaging. Like them the Tamils believed in evil spirits, astrology, omens and sorcery. They cared little for death. The following quotations from the above work will bear testimony to the characteristics of that virile race. (1) Garlanded with the entrails of the enemies they danced with lances held in their hands topside down. (2) They set fire to the fertile villages of their enemies, and (3) plundered their country and demolished their houses. (4) The devil’s cook distributed the food boiled with the flesh of the slain, on the hearth of the crowned heads of fallen kings. With these compare same passages from the Assyrian stories of campaigns: ‘I had some of them flapped in my presence and had the walls hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crown…All his villages I destroyed, desolated, burnt; I made the country desert.’ And yet the early Dravidian are considered by Dr.Caldwell as the farmers of the best moral codes, and by the new school of non-Aryan Tamil scholars…"
Aiyangar even claims, "We have said that the Vellalas were pure Dravidians and that they were a military and dominant tribe. If so one could naturally ask, ‘How could the ancestors of peaceful cultivators be a war-like race?" He argues that the etymology of the root Vel is connected to war and weapons, that it was not uncommon for cultivating castes to have been martial tribes in former days as in the case of the Nayar, the Pillai, the Bants, etc. He also cites an official census of the Tamil population in the Madras Presidency, which shows that Tamil castes with a claim to traditional marital status constituted twenty six percent of the total number of Tamils in the Presidency. (Srinivasa Aiyangar; 1915, pp.40-58)
 Kasi Anandan, 1970s
Aiyangar’s attack on the Dravidian theory of Caldwell and the Vellala propagandists had political undertones. Learned Brahmins of the day were acutely aware of the political interests that lay behind the claims of the early Dravidian school. Vellala Tamil revivalism and its idea of Dravidian uniqueness were closely related to the pro-British and collaborationist poltical organization that was formed in 1916, by the non-Brahmin elites of the Madras Presidency – the South Indian Liberal Federation. Its proponents were, therefore careful not to emphasise the narratives of the martial reputation of the Tamils that were embodied in the ancient ‘high’ Tamil texts or in the folk culture of rural Tamilnadu. (Tamil revivalism had been promoted by Protestant missionaries and British officials in the latter half of the 19th century, only in as much as it was seen to facilitate the social, economic and religious aims of demilitarizing Tamil society and diminishing the influence of Brahmins in it.)
This was done not only out of a desire to promote Vellala caste culture, as Tamil national culture, but also in conscious deference to the concern of the Raj about the ‘seditious’ views of Tamil cultural revival that were being prsopagated by the ‘terrorists’ and their sympathisers which were aimed at stirring the "ancient martial passions" of the Tamils in general and the military castes in particular, by appealing to martial values inscribed in the caste traditions of the Maravar and linking them to a glorious past that had been sustained by, what according to them, was the unique and powerful Tamil martial tradition. The political life of Purananooru, the foundation text of Tamil militarism had been initiated by two Brahmins who were sympathisers of the Indian revolutionary movement at this juncture. (The one was the great Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi; the other was the great Tamil scholar M.Raghava Aiyangar, the court pundit of the Marava kings of Ramnad.)
These concerns, had compelled the Raj to take lines of action aimed at the terrorists and the military castes. One, it carefully sifted through the Tamil revivalist propaganda of the suspected sympathisers of the terrorist movement, to charge them with sedition. Two, it introduced the Criminal Tribes Act of 1911, with the express objective of throughly obtaining knowledge of, supervising and disciplining the Kallar and Maravar who were classified as dacoits and thugs under this act. The political mobilization of the Tamil military castes began as reaction against this act. The political leadership of this mobilization was inspired by the militarism of the terrorists. Modern Tamil militarism as a political force emerged from this conjuncture.
As we shall see later, Karunanidhi, Thondaman, Kasi Anandan and Prabhakaran are all, in varying degrees, products of the notions of Tamilian identity which arose from this conjuncture. Students of Tamil ethno-nationalism’s current phase will find that the martial narratives of Tamilian past and present are at work in two extremes of the Tamil political spectrum. Last month, an audio cassette was released in Jaffna by the LTTE and a commemoration volume was released in Singapore in Thondaman’s honour. Both are politically conscious efforts to root two personalities and their nationalist projects, to what has been portrayed as the most powerful manifestation of the Tamil martial tradition – the Chola Empire.
The LTTE cassette evokes a glorious past associated with Prabhakaran’s only nom de guerre, Karikalan – the founder of the Chola Empire. The commemoration volume, on the other hand seeks to emphasise the ‘continuity’ of a martial caste tradition between the leader of the CWC and the great general of the Chola Empire, Karunakara Thondaman. Thus the examination of Tamil militarism in this study is an exploration of the answer to the question – why does Tamil ethno-nationalism express itself thus and how does it sustain power to appeal to pan-Tamilian sentiments?
*****
Letter of Correspondent R.B.Diulweva [Dehiwela] and Sivaram’s response:
Martial Tamils
[Lanka Guardian, September 1, 1992, p.24]
I read with wry amusement, and increasing bewilderment, Sivaram’s curious assemblage of ‘facts’ about Tamil ‘military’ castes. The recluse in the Vanni, and his acolytes in the diaspora, should be grateful to the L[anka] G[uardian] for providing a platform for this skewed rewriting of history.
Some random reflections on Sivaram’s thesis. Does he seriously believe that the buccaneering Portuguese had the time to indulge in sociological analysis of Tamil militarism (a la CIA) and strategically decide to erase/Vellalise the ‘military’ castes? This also applies to the Dutch and the Brits. Sivaram’s overall picture is of a truly fantastic war sodden people imbibing blood thirstiness with their mothers’ milk. Weren’t the vast mass of Tamils peaceable farmers, fishermen, craftmen? Or was their sole function to service these magnificent bravos? And whom did these ‘military’ castes fight during the eras of peace when Tamil civilization, in its truest sense, flourished?
Another fact for Sivaram. One of his ‘military’ castes the Maravar has made a contribution to the Sinhala language. To this day, a ‘marava-raya’ is synonymous with ‘thug’. This is, probably, all that these ‘warriors’ were!.
D.P.Sivaram states:
I suggest that Mr.Diulweva go on reading before he finally decides whether it is skewed history or not. He should also study Prof.K.Kailasapathy’s Tamil Heroic Poetry, which describes an earlier phase of the culture that I have tried to analyse. He might find the overall picture there even more gruesome.
I understand Mr.Diulweva’s concerns given the current situation of the country, and hence his wish to think that the vast mass of Tamils were peaceable farmers. His wish and concern have had precedents in the British era. As for the sociological analysis of the buccaneering Portuguese, it was based on Prof.Tikiri Abeyasinghe’s ‘Jaffna under the Portuguese’ (discussed there in detail). I deal with the Maravar in as much as they were a political fact in the rise of Tamil nationalism. A write up in the Sunday Times of 23.8[Aug].[19]92 by its Madras correspondent refers to the political influence of one Mr.Natarajan who he says "belongs to the powerful Thevar (the caste title of the Maravar) community in southern Tamilnadu." Mr.Diulweva will find, if he takes a closer look at the politics of Tamilnadu, still an important political fact.
*****
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Posted May 24, 2005
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