Dear Sri Sangom Sir,
I completely agree with you that anti-brahmanism has been the most potent in Tamilnadu.
In Andhra, i have not heard of atrocities on brahmins so far. There maybe comments (the kind that is there for other castes also like 'gundu chetty'), but never heard of physical atrocities.
AFAIK, the only caste violence (for varna claims) was between komatis and niyogis. And here too vaidikis supported komatis. So all sections of brahmins were not inviting animosity. Moreover the varna claims and fights were restricted to only one small place (masulipatnam). Niyogis in other places across andhra were not behaving like those of masulipatnam. So these things were not wide spread.
IMO (and this is just my personal feeling), anti-brahmanism did not take off in andhra for 2 reasons.
One, telugu culture is not divided between NB and Brahmin on unique basis (ex: in tamil there is something called 'vanakkam' but in telugu there is only one namaskaram and there is no unique word in 'pure-telugu' for namaskaram).
In TN, the tamilians can tend to be purists wrt language which can make some folks rather parochial. They believe there was some 'pure tamil culture' which was uninfluenced by brahmins. This may be hogus-pogus, but tamilains have written and spoken reams on it. On the other hand, in telugu people no such basis exists even for hypothetical ideology creation. There is no literature that points out to the existence of a 'pure telugu culture' at any point in history. Even if there was anything like that, perhaps the assimilation was full and complete.
Second reason is reg the temple land lease. Am told the landed non-brahmins used to 'own' the lands on which temples were built. So the brahmins still had to depend on the landlords.
But sir, i think the main reason is that telugu brahmins as a crowd tend to be the soft type (the alavoda pesuradhu types / ppl of limited speech). Perhaps am generalising too much, but we do not get to hear of a brahmin in the telugu regions putting down a man with the term 'sudra' derisively either in schools or elsewhere during the colonial times...but in the tamil regions, we hear that brahmins did not hesitate to use the term 'sudra' as a name-calling word...perhaps these things went into public memory...
But by any stretch, physical violence should not have come about. And this is where i think political leaders failed. In the case of EVR, he had money, popularity, political connections at his disposal. He could have certainly made it a non-violent social movement. There was no need to go cutting poonuls and garlanding idols. Methinks he lost the support of non-political NBs due to such things. Plus, i feel the public sentiment was not prepared for atheism yet at that time, and that too from a non-religious socio-political platform.
Regards.
I completely agree with you that anti-brahmanism has been the most potent in Tamilnadu.
In Andhra, i have not heard of atrocities on brahmins so far. There maybe comments (the kind that is there for other castes also like 'gundu chetty'), but never heard of physical atrocities.
AFAIK, the only caste violence (for varna claims) was between komatis and niyogis. And here too vaidikis supported komatis. So all sections of brahmins were not inviting animosity. Moreover the varna claims and fights were restricted to only one small place (masulipatnam). Niyogis in other places across andhra were not behaving like those of masulipatnam. So these things were not wide spread.
IMO (and this is just my personal feeling), anti-brahmanism did not take off in andhra for 2 reasons.
One, telugu culture is not divided between NB and Brahmin on unique basis (ex: in tamil there is something called 'vanakkam' but in telugu there is only one namaskaram and there is no unique word in 'pure-telugu' for namaskaram).
In TN, the tamilians can tend to be purists wrt language which can make some folks rather parochial. They believe there was some 'pure tamil culture' which was uninfluenced by brahmins. This may be hogus-pogus, but tamilains have written and spoken reams on it. On the other hand, in telugu people no such basis exists even for hypothetical ideology creation. There is no literature that points out to the existence of a 'pure telugu culture' at any point in history. Even if there was anything like that, perhaps the assimilation was full and complete.
Second reason is reg the temple land lease. Am told the landed non-brahmins used to 'own' the lands on which temples were built. So the brahmins still had to depend on the landlords.
But sir, i think the main reason is that telugu brahmins as a crowd tend to be the soft type (the alavoda pesuradhu types / ppl of limited speech). Perhaps am generalising too much, but we do not get to hear of a brahmin in the telugu regions putting down a man with the term 'sudra' derisively either in schools or elsewhere during the colonial times...but in the tamil regions, we hear that brahmins did not hesitate to use the term 'sudra' as a name-calling word...perhaps these things went into public memory...
But by any stretch, physical violence should not have come about. And this is where i think political leaders failed. In the case of EVR, he had money, popularity, political connections at his disposal. He could have certainly made it a non-violent social movement. There was no need to go cutting poonuls and garlanding idols. Methinks he lost the support of non-political NBs due to such things. Plus, i feel the public sentiment was not prepared for atheism yet at that time, and that too from a non-religious socio-political platform.
Regards.
