“…functions, creation, protection, destruction, grace and release. …
This high and noble system based on the Agamas or Saiva Scriptures, was corrupted by the puranic writers, whose sole object was to reconcile the Vedas and the Agamas and, in so doing, to give the palm to the former. Hence the modern Saivism … is full of the lovely creations of the puranic fancy and contains all the inconsistencies and improbabilities of the Aryan pantheism. The Tamilar [Tamilians] overborne by the political ascendency of the Aryans, accepted the system, which stained the white radiance of their philosophical faith, and popularised it, though it was quite against their grain.53
These feelings of resentment against the Brahmans, as representatives of the Aryan invasion, for their corruption of the original Dravidian religion were transmitted not only by the annual meetings of the Saiva Siddhanta Sabha but by numerous Saiva Siddhanta meetings held in the district towns of the Tamil areas. These meetings did much to popularise the new interpretation of Valmiki’s Ramayana, in which Ravana was not a weakling but a hero, and Rama, on the other hand, was immoral and dishonest. It was through these meetings that non-Brahman caste Hindus in Tamil country were made aware of the superiority of the Saiva scriptures, the Agamas, over the Sanskrit Vedas.54
A corollary of the belief that the Aryans had defiled the religion of the Dravidians was the accusation that they had also introduced the caste system into south India. One letter to New India in 1916 (May 3) expressed the options of many non-Brahmans when it said that the Dravidians “are outside the fourfold division of the Aryan Castes. their castes have each a distinct name of its own. It is true their position at present is very low and pitiable. That cannot justify anyone calling them Shudra, a term contemptible…”
53 M.S. Purnalingam Pillai, Tamil Literature, p. 254.
54 See the proceedings of the sixth session of the Saiva Siddhanta Sabha, New India, June 24, 1915; and the proceedings of the Saiva Siddhanta Mahasamajam, ibid., Mar. 18, 1918.”
Extract from p. 294 - Politics and Social Conflict in South India, The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929; sponsored by The Centre for South Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
“…Many Brahman villages existed in the Tamil country, but probably the most famous was Kallidaikurchi (sic), in Tinnevelly district, which proved to be a point of considerable friction between Brahmans and non-Brahmans in the decade following the first World War.
Another element that worked to transform long-standing caste rivalries into political conflict in the twentieth century centered on the question of whether or not the non-Brahmans could be classified as Sudras. In the traditional varna hierarchy, Sudras were the fourth and last, and hence were not dvijas or twice-born. Though the term Sudra was generally applied to numerous non-Brahman caste Hindu groups such as the Vellalas, Kammas, and Reddis, many British administrators and some missionaries found this usage as it denoted Tamil non-Brahmans both offensive and inapplicable. J.H. Nelson, the district officer in Madura, was perhaps the most outspoken on this question. In one passage in his Madura Country he says “There is no like necessity to use the term ‘Sudra.’ If known too, it is never used by ordinary natives, who speak of one another as being members of particular tribes, castes and families, as Maravnas, Kallans, Ayyangars and others; never as Sudras in opposition to Brahmans. In fact the term Sudra would appear to be used by Brahmans alone in speaking of persons of low condition.”21
21 Nelson, Madura Country, pp.12-13. See also J.D.M. Derrett, “J.H. Nelson: A Forgotten Administrator-Historian of India,” in C.H. Philips (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London, 1961), pp. 354-372.”
Extract from pp. 11 -12 - Politics and Social Conflict in South India, The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929; sponsored by The Centre for South Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
“…In a Tamil work called Veḷāḷar ṉākarikam ( “Vellala Civilization”), published in 1923, Swami Vedachalam declaimed at length against Brahmans.58 Using the Tolkappiyam and other Tamil works as his sources, he argued that the Brahmans had come to the Tamil country, established their caste system under a code of Manu, and relegated all Dravidians to positions of servility and degradation. Unlike other parts of India where there were Kshatriyas and Vaisyas, the Tamil-speaking area had been forced by the *Aryan Brahmans into a strict division of Brahman and non-Brahman, all the non-Brahman caste Hindus being classed as Sudras and kept down by means of vicious laws. Like many other writers, Swami Vedachalam identified the Vellalas with the ancient Dravidians, the heirs of a proud and great civilization. Thus the Vellalas got a myth of their origins and degradation, from which they developed a strong drive for a sense of identity and cultural self-confidence.
58 See the second edition (Tirunelveli, 1957), which is a reprint of the 1923 edition. Swami Vedachalam later changed his name to its Tamil equivalent, Maraimalaiyatikal.”
Extract from pp. 296 - Politics and Social Conflict in South India, The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929; sponsored by The Centre for South Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
* It was in this sort of atmosphere that Tamil- and perhaps other types of Brahmans used to run hotels (eating places) in many places with the general qualifying name “Arya Bhavan - [FONT="]பிராம்மணர்கள் சாப்பிடுமிடம்[/FONT] (Eating place for Brahmans)”. That doubtless was public assertion that Brahmans were Aryans, if an assertion as public as this was needed. What use will it be if we now shout at the top of our voices that Brahmans did not claim to be Aryans and that it was all the imagination of EVR and DK/DMK?
Even today the vestiges of this practice can be found in the use of the term “aariya” in the names of eating places, sweet stalls, etc., even in Chennai city itself, but these are perhaps not owned by Brahmans any longer. --sangom
“ Brahman Reactions
In the face of these challenges south Indian Brahmans made increasing attempts to illustrate the contribution of Brahmans to ancient Tamil Civilization. One of the attempts was that of M. Srinivasa Aiyangar in his Tamil Studies. In his work Srinivasa Aiyangar reviewed all the materials available for research on the Tamil past and arrived at a number of conclusions, some of which would not be accepted by scholars today. He agreed with many of his non-Brahman contemporaries that the ancient Dravidians were to be identified with the Tamil Vellalas, but he also argued against the ideas of Caldwell, Somasundaram Pillai, and Somasundara Bharati that Tamil and Tamil culture were free from Sanskrit: “THe Early Dravidians are considered by Dr. Caldwell as the framers of the best moral codes, and by the new school of non-Aryan Tamil Scholars as the inventors, independent of the slightest Aryan or other influence, of grammar, philosophy, theology, and in fact of every science and art. It is enough to remind them that the earliest grammarians of Tamil were Brahmans, their first spiritual instructors were Brahmans, and their first spiritual instructors were Brahmans, and their first teachers of philosophy were also Brahmans.”62
Another Brahman scholar, R. Swaminatha Iyer, a retired deputy collector, took up the argument from the philological point of view. Evidence showed, he wrote, that “what are known as Dravidian languages are in all their present essential features a creation of Aryan and Aryanised immigrants from the North…It also follows… that the tradition about Agastya’s immigration to the south is not a mere myth and that what is known as Dravidian civilization of the South is merely the civilization of these Aryan and Aryanised immigrants.”63 A Tamil Brahman novelist named A. Madhaviah wrote an article in New India (Aug. 10, 1916) denouncing those who called the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana and other sanskrit works “the cunning invention of a diabolical priesthood.”64 Wife-lifting, he said, like cattle-lifting, was not a vice peculiar to any race or civilization. K.S. ramaswami Sastri commented that the theory suggesting Rama’s inferiority and Ravana’s superiority, thus reversing the traditional meaning of the Ramayana, was “really going too far.”65
It is evident that many Brahmans thought the best way to defend their position in south Indian society was to join Mrs. Besant – either as members of the Home Rule movement, or as Theosophists, or at least as readers of New India. Others joined the Varnashrama Dharma movement. This movement was centred on a belief in so-called “pure” Hinduism, including a respect for, and adherence to, caste duties and to the four ashramas. In April, 1915, a group of Tamil Brahmans mainly from Srirangam and Kumbakonam formed a Varnashrama Sabha, and later that year they began to publish a journal, Varnashrama Dharma.
62 Srinivasa Aiyangar, Tamil Studies, pp. 42-43.
63 Hindu (weekly ed.), Dec. 18, 1924.
64 Madhaviah, who wrote in both English and Tamil, was one of the
first novelists to deal with Tamil Brahman Life. His works include
Muthumeenakshi: The Autobiography of a Brahmin Girl (1915), Thillai Govindan
(1916), Manimekalai (1923), and Lieut. Panju: A Modern Indian.
65 new India, July6, 1916.
Extract from pp. 298 – 300, Politics and Social Conflict in South India, The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929; sponsored by The Centre for South Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Since I could not get to view more continuous pages in googlebooks, I will post further as and when I get such opportunity.
