Culture Wars in Tamil Nadu A New Beginning?

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

It is still too early to say whether the few swallows fluttering against the dead morbid skies of Dravidianist parties marks the beginning of a New Spring. Neverhteless the fact that the master narrative of Dravidianism is being challenged on its own turf by ther likes of Maridas and Kishore K Swamy. The dravidianist master narrative was founded on three pillars all of which remained essentially unchallenged which led to dravidianism becoming the dominant hegemonic ideology of the Tamil society. Though there have been bitter personal and political battled between thr three factions of dravidianist political formations--DK, AIADMK and the DMK--there was no challenge at the level of ideology. All three were quite content arguing with each other within the margins set by the dominant ideology.

In the mid nineteeth century, a Protestant cleric called Rober Cauldwell propouded the racial theory of Dravidian exclusivism based on his study of the Tamil Language. In his bookComparative  Grammar of Dravidian Languages he argued that (a) Tamil and Snaskrit do not share any common heitage and Tamil language arose independent of Sanskrit (b) from this he went on to identify the Tamil speaking population as Dravidian and (c) Tamil Race with its exclusive culture is opposed to other Cultures/World Views/Social and Political Formations. To execute this exclusive ideology based on a contrived misreading of History politcal actors like E V Ramasamy Naikkar and his group launched a vicious violent and ferocious campaign against Brahmins who were identified as (a) Aryans therefore not Dravidian (b) Sankritic Culture which they allegedy upheld was ant Tamil therfore anti Dravidian and (c) their Religion is uncivilized and barbaric. Ramasamy's deranged rhetoric did not end with these three propositions. But they form the cornerstone of Dravidianism and that has been the ruling ideology of Tamil Nadu for nearly a century and with the DMK coming to power in 1967 was in a position to translate them into policy and the Brahmins and the SC Population bore the brunt of this sort of political fascism.

The 67% Reservation in medical, engeneering and other professional courses, including jobs essentially excluded the Brahmins from employment in Tamil Nadu and they migrated to the North leaving the field open for depradation. The few who were left, like the Kasturi Group which runs the Hindu m,ade their peace with Dravidianism and were quite content to lend the weight of their Newspaper for the propogation ofthe Dravidian ideology. Any dissent from the dominant ideas was branded "castetist" "fascist" and more recently "anti subaltern". There was no space fo dissent from the dominant ideology. History was distorted to subserve this end. The SangamAge was valorized as a "pristine age" before the fall brought about by the advent of Hindu religion. The fact that many Vedic deities are mentioned is conveniently ignored. The role of Sanskrit in shaping the culture and civilization of Tamil Society is often ignore. The fact that medieval dynasties like the Cholas and the Pandyas issued their inscriptions  in bothe Tamil and Sanskrit is suppressed and only the meykritis of the Cholas were regarded as historical evidence ignoring the large volume of Sanskrit Inscriptions. Medieval Inscriptions were written in Grantha, the true script of the Tamil Language. The Temple and its ramifications around the historical space of Tamil region was quite falsely and in a way tragically misrepresented as "sinful" "irrational" "savage" a line of thught derived from the early sixteenth century Europeans who visited India and were quite shocked at the open and exuberant dispaly of sensuality in Temples. E V Ramasamy Naikkar in fact advocated a sort of iconoclasm against the Vaishnava tradition and is best seen in positioning a statue of this man in his iconic squatting posture with beard and upper cloth smack outside the Great Srirangam Temple. Tamil language and script was mutilated by the removal of what they thought were varga letters or symbols
from the writing system altogether and today that mutilation is celebrated as liberation. The Tamil Printing Presses were forced to aboandon the grantha letters and a strange script without the intermediate vowels was thrust down in the name of Pure Tamil.

The Brahmins bore the brunt of the fascist attack just as the Jews bore the brunt of the attack in the German incarnation of fascism, the Nazi Party. And as long as the target of attck was the Brahmin community, tgheir values, their religion and culture the domiant backward castes which formed the backbone of the dravidianist movement did not stir. Of late the attack has shifted to a general attack on the indigenous faith and its culture by a group that calls itself Karpagu Kootam. A few months back a vulgar "poet" Vairamuthu made some obscne comments on the Vaishnava Saint, Andal who was revered even by Krishnadevaraya who composed the Amuktamalyada in her honour, the Giver of Worn Garlands. The son of the dead Patriarch of the dravidianist polical faction, DMK, one misnamed, Ayyadurai aks Stalin, made some nasty remarks about Hindu wedding rituals and when the beloved God of the Tamil region Skanda/ Muruga/Subramania was attcked the worm turned. Now the culture war was on.

The Tamil Media has been a handmaid of the dravidianist parites and there are credible accounts that news broadcast is based on ideology and money. The narrative was exclusively one sided: the dravidianist side and no other voice was heard. Against this hegemony of Sun TV, Jaya TV, Vijay TV,Makkal TV etc each an arm of a particular dravidianist faction, two youn men Maridass and Kishore Swamy have emerged as credible voices of dissent. Using Social Media Platform like UTube and Twitter they have raised certain vital issues that hit at the very root of the dravidianist ideologies. First, while they attck Hind faith in general and Vaishnava faith in particular, do the dravidianist have the courage to call out the Semetic religions. The answer is No. They have questioned the legitimacy of E V Ramasamy Naikkar being given the honour of being a "Socretes" that is "teacher" and "philosopher". The land scams of his followers stand exposed. They have enen questioned whether Ayyadurai aka Stalin, the son of Karunanidhi was ever a MISA detainee. It has been an article of faith that this misnamed man was in jail as a political prisoner during the Emergency. The challenge is to prove that he was in prison for political and not crimianl reasons. And the response of the DMK has been pathetic. When Dr Subramaniam Swamy raised the 2G Scam, Karubnanidhi tried in vain to turb it into a brahmin vs high caste non brahmin issue and he failed and his daughter spent 11 months in jail and the case is still going on.

This time around the attck is happening where it hurts. And the attackeras are from within the tradition and hence we must take this counter narrative that is slowly being crafted seriously.

Tamil A Biography by David Shulman

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Tamil A Biography

The book under review is an account of the Tamil language situated in its historical and linguistic context. It is one of the unfortunate intellectual legacies of the colonial era that many of the discredited theories pertaining to racial origin, evolution of language, scriptal literacy, religion are all wrapped up in the dense fog of ideology that it is today impossible to deal with some of these issues dispassionately. It takes a peace activist from Israel, the well known Indologist and historian, David Shulman to write about these and other issues with integrity and deep commitment to scholarship.


I have not come across a book that captures the complexity of Tamil literary and political history as eloquently and with scholastic depth as the present book. It is quite obvious that the present breed of Tamil "intellectuals" will rail against the account given by Shulman as he completely destroys the self serving myth, perpetuated over two centuries that Tamil has an origin independent of Sanskrit. Until Cauldwell made "Dravidian" into both a linguistic and racial characteristic, the term Dravida was used in Tamil literary works only as a geographical expression.




The nineteenth century which saw the crystallization of racially charged theories, bequeathed to India a toxic legacy in the form of the Aryan/Dravidian Dichotomy, the Aryan Invasion Myth, the conflict between the oldest Tamil language and the upstart Sanskrit language. All these theories, though discredited have traction due to the purchase of identity politics in India. Hence, it is essential to read Shulman very carefully as he has argued effectively that throughout the medieval period, the Age of the Cholas, Sanskrit enjoyed a privileged status in the royal court and that status was neither resented nor did it lead to the sort of shadow boxing we find in the last century when the "Pure Tamil " movement sought to expurgate Sanskrit from the Tamil language altogether.

David Shulman, unlike Asko Parpola and others is a recognized authority on Sanskrit Language and Literature and knows nearly 24 languages including Telugu, Kanada and a host of European and Asian Languages. His own early foray into Tamil history when he wrote Tamil Temple Myths marked him as one who uses literary texts in new and novel ways. The tallapuramam of medieval Tamil region were studies against the general background of history and iconography in this work which was followed by King and Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry a path breaking work on the textual construction of South Indian kingship. More recently, Whitney Cox has added to the thin corpus of historical investigation in his Politics, Kingship and Poetry in Medieval South India (Cambridge University Press, 2016). This line of investigation, a new historicist perspective that melds the fluid poetry of medieval Tamil compositions to the firm foundation of historiography.

Tamil A Biography demolishes three fundamental myths of the dominant political ideology prevalent in Tamil Nadu today and pervades the entire gamut of academic studies on early Tamil Language and Literature. As he says, "In modern South India Tamil has become a major criterion for collective identity, often seen now as forged in opposition to Sanskrit and an invasive north Indian culture and ideology". Shulman goes on to show that the Chola royal court was bilingual with Sanskrit enjoying the same status as Tamil and there is no sign of any conflict, real or imagined during the four centuries of Chola rule. The advent of the anti brahmin movent meant that the South Indian brahmins were represented as agents of the alien culture and that was used as a justification for excluding them form public and cultural life altogether. The scholarship of David Shulman goes a long way in correcting the distortions of the past. His discussion of the enduring presence of the Agasthya Myth, a north Indian therefore a putative Aryan as the founder of Tamil Grammar is both convincing and sound.

The date of the so called Cankam literary works and the presence of the enigmatic Kalabrahs are two vexed issues in early Tamil literary history. Following Tieken, Shulman also argues for a late date for the Cankam works, There is little evidence to show that the puram and akam varieties of poems were contemporaneous with the Roman presence in South India and the graffiti marks found on pot shrds from sites like Arikamedu, Porunthal, Kodumanal and other places do not help in tading the Cankam literary works. There seems to be a close association between Bhakti literature and the redacted bardic poetry of early Tamil region. His disdussion of the Sangam tradition based on the Velvikkudi Copper plate Inscription is interesting.

The work under review is a classic and will remain a reliable introduction to Tamil language and literary history.