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On Tamil Militarism - a 11 Part
Essay
Part 4: Militarism and Caste in Jaffna
Lanka Guardian, [
pp.9-10 and 14]
[prepared by
Sachi Sri Kantha, for electronic record]
1 July 1992
 Tamil
secessionism and Tamil militarism are two sides of the same coin.
Both are legacies of the attempt by the British to demilitarize
Tamil society in the 19th century. Tamil militarism arose from the
grievances of the disfranchised Tamil military castes. Tamil
secession was the result of the political ambitions of the classes
which were promoted by the British to consolidate the gains of
demartialization. Therefore it is necessary to understand the
colonial strategies which were aimed at depriving the traditional
power and status of the Tamil martial castes in Tamil society.
In those regions of India where military service was confined to
specific castes, other castes had no desire to abandon their
traditional occupations for soldiering or for violence. Since the
ability for violence was caste bound, disfranchising or removing a
region’s military caste could negate its potential for violence and
rebellion. The earliest attempt to thus demilitarize Tamil society
was made by the Portuguese in Jaffna. A brief examination of their
effort and its impact on the subsequent evolution of society in
Jaffna will help understand better the social and political
consequences of demilitarization in Tamilnadu two centuries later
under British rule.
The Maravar were the traditional soldier caste of Jaffna when the
Portuguese arrived. Once they took control, they set about
dismantling the feudal military system of the peninsula. Military
titles such as Rayer, Athirayer were banned. The traditional soldier
castes were seen as a threat to Portuguese control. In 1627
Lancarote de Seixas, Captain Major of Jaffna, put forward the idea
that the peninsula’s security lay in having none there, but
cultivators. Thus began the rise of the Vellalas in Jaffna. The
Portuguese seem to have also favoured another caste called the
Madapalli. The Vellalas were not only cultivators, but a section of
them which had developed scribal skills, provided the local
officials, interpreters and karnams (accountants). Successive
colonial powers found Vellala scribal groups useful where Brahmins
were not forthcoming. Histories of Jaffna were written and presented
to the Portuguese, which showed the Vellala and the Madapalli as the
original and dominant community of the peninsula.
The Kailaya Malai and the Vaiya Padal, the earliest works on the
colonization of Jaffna, appear to be such histories. They name the
chieftains of Tamilnadu who had brought Tamil colonists to the
peninsula with them. All of them are described as Vellalas. But
eleven of them have Kallar and Maravar caste titles. The Jaffna
Maravar were able to resume their caste occupation under the Dutch,
who met troop shortages through Jaffna’s feudal military system
which the Portuguese had attempted to dismantle. The Dutch governor
and director of Ceylon, Thomas van Rhee informed his successor
Gerrit de Heere in 1697, that in the Jaffna peninsula “the Marruas
are bound to serve the Company as Lascoryns (native soldiers) and
pay t[w]o Fanams a year without anything more”. But 93 years later,
a Dutch census (1790) of all males between the ages 16-70 in Jaffna
recorded that there were only 49 Maravar males in the peninsula, as
against 1,570 Vellala males. This was due to a widespread process in
Tamil society where military castes, finding their traditional
status gone, simply adopted the Vellala caste title and returned
themselves as peaceful Vellala cultivator, to the colonial census;
and in time became endogamous subdivisions of that caste.
In 1834, Simon Casie Chitty recorded in his Ceylon Gazetteer, that
Kallar, Maravar, Ahampadiyar and Palli (Vanniyar) were sub-divisions
of the Vellala caste. It is clear that the Tamil martial castes of
Jaffna had swelled the ranks of the Vellalas when faced with
unfavourable conditions under colonial rule, as they later did under
the British in Tamilnadu. This gave rise to the saying in the
peninsula, “Kallar, Maravar and Ahampadiyar came slowly, slowly and
became Vellalas.” But, unlike their counterparts in Tamilnad, the
Jaffna Vellalas didn’t generally change their military caste titles.
“In former days the Vellalas had the titles of Rayan, Thevan, Kizhan
and Mazhavan.”
Today, one of these military caste subdivisions of the Jaffna
Vellala community, bearing the Kallar caste title Mazhavarayar is a
dominant land owning clan in the peninsula. The Mazhavarayar clan is
also connected with the history of Thambiluvil in the Eastern
province. The Mattakkalappu Manmiyam, a work which deals with the
colonization of Batticaloa, mentions the mazhavar frequently among
the groups which peopled the Eastern province. Although the
‘vellalization’ of Jaffna’s Tamil military castes predates the same
process in south India, Vellala cultural hegemony was achieved in
the peninsula only during the early decades of the twentieth
century. The persistence of endogamous subdivision identities was
one reason for this.
The Vellalization of culture and religion in the peninsula began
with Arumuga Navalar’s attempt to convert the Jaffnese from their
folk religion which was dominated by the heroes and godlings of the
Tamil martial castes. The martial caste elements also figures in
narratives related to the founding of Valvettithurai and Myliddy –
Karaiyar caste villages on the Jaffna coast, which are key. Whereas
the Sri Lankan karava (Karaiyar) caste in general has claimed
kshatriya status – that they are descended from the Kuru dynasty – a
strong narrative is found among the Karaiyar of Myliddy which states
that three Marava chieftains who were brothers came with their
caste-men from Tamilnadu, married among the karaiyar and founded the
village. Its dominant clan, known as Thuraiyar – the others are
known as Panivar – was connected by marriage to Ramnad, the home
country of the Maravar, until recent times.
The martial arts of Maravar were popular among the Thuraiyar of
Myliddy, before their youth were introduced to modern methods of
military training in the last decade [i.e., 1980s]. A narrative
related to the founding of Valvettithurai, based on folk etymology
states that the village arose on land given to a Marava chieftain,
called Valliathevan, by the eponymous founder of the Tamil kingdom
of Jaffna. But a strong tradition was prevalent among the Karaiyar
of Valvettithurai that they had fought the Portuguese as the
soldiers of the last king of Jaffna, Sankili. This tradition, as we
shall see later, was greatly exploited by TULF propagandists to
mobilise people in that part of Jaffna. The tradition seems to be
related to the trade wars between the early colonial powers and the
Maravar kings of Ramnad.
The Portuguese, Dutch and the British tried to wrest control of the
profitable rice and chank trade between Burma, Bengal and Ceylon
which was in the hands of the Thevars (title of the Ramnad kings)
and their Muslim and Tamil tradesmen, on either side of the Palk
Strait, among whom were many Karaiyar schooner proprietors of
Valvettithurai, Point Pedro and Thondamanaru. The British found that
one Vaithianathan of Jaffna was among the few confidantes of the
Thevar, who were looking after his chank trade in Calcutta. Karaiyar
families carried on with the rice and chank trade in collaboration
with Muslims, Chetties and military caste families on the south
Indian coast from Ramnad to Tanjore, even after the British finally
wrested control of it from the Maravar kings of Ramnad.
A large number of Thandayals (traditional navigators – captains of
ocean going craft) from Valvettithurai, Point Pedro were employed in
the Thevar’s domain of sea trade. This became the basis of a vast
‘smuggling network’ between south India, Sri Lanka and southeast
Asia, after independence in1948. The powerful Vandayar family
(Maravar) of Tanjore maintained very close relations with a leading
business house of Valvettithurai until 1983. Sometimes such
connections between the coastal military castes of south Tamilnadu
and the Karaiyar of Jaffna were cemented through marriage. Although
Jaffna Tamil society was the earliest to have been de-martialized,
and was the only part of the south Indian Tamil region where
traditional Tamil military castes were completely subsumed by
Vellala identity, it has become the ground in which the most fierce
manifestation of Tamil militarism has taken root in modern times.
How was this possible? Three reasons can be identified.
(A) The pro-colonial politics of the Jaffna Vellala was not
formulated as an attitude against traditional militarisms because
the Tamil military castes having assumed the Vellala identity early,
were not present as a social threat in the peninsula to the
consolidation of colonial authority, after the Portuguese period.
Furthermore, the nature of the Vellala caste composition in Jaffna
was in itself not amenable to the scribal-agrarian conservatism of
the pure Vellala elites, which the British found useful in
Tamilnadu. The pseudo-Vellala component of Jaffna was large. A
fundamental distinction between the Vellala elite of Tamilnad and
Jaffna would illustrate the point.
Arumuga Navalar campaigned against the activities of Christian
missionaries and his efforts received support from Ponnuchami
Thevar, the chief Marava noble of Ramnad. In former days, the
Maravar had opposed the spread of Christianity, by massacaring
missionaries. On the other hand, in Tamilnad, an ideologue of
Vellala elitism – J.M.Nallasami Pillai, who like Navalar worked for
the propagation of saiva siddhanthism among the Tamils, was closely
associated with and supported by Anglican missionaries in his
efforts.
As we shall see later, while Nallasami Pillai carefully and
deliberately played down the martial component of Tamil culture and
history, attempting to establish that Tamil civilization was
constituted by the peace-loving Vellalas, his counterpart in Jaffna,
Mootootambi Pillai lamented the decline of the peninsula’s martial
heritage. He wrote in 1912, “When Sankili – the last king of Jaffna
– fought the Portuguese, most of his soldiers were warriors of
Jaffna. Even the Portuguese have praised their valour. The victory
of the Portuguese was not gained through their bravery, but through
Kaakai Vanniyan’s treachery. Wasn’t it the warrior of Jaffna who
conquered the whole of Ceylon? The people (of Jaffna) who are
descended of those warriors have lost their martial traits and
become a despicable race, having been subjugated long under the
Portuguese and the Dutch and as a result having become weak and
losing their self-identity.” Mootootambi Pillai was reflecting a
sentiment that had been expressed in the Madurai Tamil Sangam –
established by the Marava noble, Pandithurai Thevar (the son of the
noble who had earlier helped Navalar) that the decline of the Tamil
nation was caused by the deterioration of its ancient and unique
martial heritage.
(B) The closure of the avenues by which Vellala upward mobility and
conservatism under successive Sinhala governments in Sri Lanka. The
colonial powers opened these avenues to promote the class and
culture of Vellala conservatism as a bulwark and gurantee against
the turbulence of Tamil feudal militarism. The restrictions placed
on university admissions and on government jobs seriously undermined
the class and culture of Vellala conservatism and its politics of
non-violence and compromise. The other narrative that was contending
at this juncture, for Tamilian identity – Tamil militarism – began
to assert itself as the bulwark built by colonial powers against it
crumbled.
(C) Non-Vellala pockets in the peninsula where the values of Vellala
conservatism had made little impact.
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