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On Tamil Militarism - a 11 Part
Essay
Part 5: The suppression of Tamil military castes
Lanka Guardian, [pp.15-16]
[prepared by
Sachi Sri Kantha, for electronic record]
15 July 1992
 One
of the first concerns of the British as soon as they
conquered the southern parts of India was with the
ancient and ingrained “habits of predatory war” among
the Tamils. The extirpation of these “habits” and
culture was considered essential to establishing their
authority in Tamil society. The Tamil region was ceded
to the British in July 1801; a proclamation was issued
by them in December the same year, whereby the use of
arms was suppressed and the military service
traditionally rendered by the Tamil military castes was
abolished.
It was stated in the proclamation that “wherefore the
Right Honourable Edward Lord Clive…with the view of
preventing the occurrence of the fatal evils which have
attended the possession of arms by the Poligars and
Servaikaras of the southern provinces…formally announces
to the Poligars, Servaikaras and inhabitants of the
southern provinces, the positive determination of His
Lordship to suppress the use and exercise of all weapons
of offence” and that the Palayams would be turned into
Zamindari estates for the purpose of preventing the
Tamil military castes from engaging in their customary
military services. The British proclamation abolished
the Palayam system “In the confident expectation of
redeeming the people of the southern provinces from the
habits of predatory warfare”, and in the hope of
inducing them to take up “the arts of peace and
agriculture”.
The ban carrying weapons was crucial to the urgent task
of depriving the Tamil military castes of their
traditional status in the southern provinces. The woods
and fortresses of the turbulent Poligars were destroyed
and removed from all maps and official documents (They
remained so, until the time of Karunanidhi). Lushington,
one of the first British officials to be sent to the
Tamil region, had noted that the military castes by
remaining armed amidst an un-warlike population wholly
devoted to agriculture stood between the East India
Company’s coffers and the vast revenues of the land
(Caldwell: 1888, chapter 9). The demilitarization of the
Tamil region did not spare even the Kallar caste which
had rendered valuable service to the British in the
important wars of the Carnatic,by which they subjugated
the whole of south India.
The hereditary chiefs of this military caste were the
kings of Pudukottai – the Thondamans, who had sided with
the British against Hyder Ali and later his son, Tippu
Sultan. In many of the early wars, the British fought on
behalf of the Nawab of Arcot in south India, the Kallar
had made up a sizeable portion of their forces. But the
Kallar and the other Tamil military castes had to be
disfranchised to rid Tamil society of its ancient habits
and culture of predatory warfare.
What did the British mean by the Tamil habit of
predatory war? The Tamil works which contain treatises
on martial life and the conduct of war define it as
Thannuru tholil (a task undertaken on one’s own) and
Mannuru tholil (a task undertaken on behalf of the king
or commander) – Tholkappiyam, Purathinaiyiyal, [no.]60.
Unlike many other martial castes of the subcontinent,
the Kallar and the Maravar were not yeoman peasants who
dropped the plough for the sword only in times of war.
They had to seek battles even when their king or
chieftain was not at war. Most of the hero-stones found
in Tamilnadu commemorate such battles between groups of
Kallar or Maravar.
Some of the warrior gods who are worshipped to this day
in southern Tamil Nadu are Maravar, who distinguished
themselves in such battles which took place even after
the British began to abolish the culture of predatory
war. The bow-song of Eena Muthu Pandian, a Tamil
demigod, describes the martial life and heroic deeds of
that Maravar warrior who lived in British times. The
warrior’s virtue was to desire the bliss of the hero’s
heaven; it was degrading for him to seek fertile lands.
The Purananooru (an anthology of Tamil heroic poems)
derides the newly arisen kings for their interest in
rice yielding fields (verse 287). War was the sole
occupation and aim of the Tamil warrior clans. A mother
describes the Tamil martial ethos – ‘To bring forth and
rear a son is my duty; To make him a warrior is the
father’s duty’. To make spears for him, is the
blacksmith’s; to bear bright sword and do battle, to
butcher enemy’s elephants and return, that is the young
man’s duty” (verse 312).
In many seventeenth and eighteenth century British
reports the epithet “fierce and turbulent” is very often
used to describe the Tamil military classes. Their
ancient and deep-rooted cultural hegemony in Tamil
society was seen as a positive threat to the
perpetuation of colonial rule. To eradicate it, the
British adopted a dual strategy. On the one hand they
attempted to destroy the social structures which
sustained this culture; on the other, they promoted
castes which stood to gain from the suppression of the
military castes. The most important structure which gave
the Kallar and Maravar immense power in the Tamil
country-side was the system of kaval. It was abolished
in 1832. This has been the traditional means by which
the Kallar, Maravar and Ahampadiyar derived their
livelihood in times of peace when they were not employed
as soldiers.
The manual of the Tinnevely district, described the
origins of the Maravar kavalkarars thus: “As feudal
chiefs and heads of a numerous class of the population,
and one whose characteristics were eminently adapted for
the followers of a turbulent chieftain, bold active,
enterprising, cunning and capricious, this class
constituted themselves or were constituted by the
peaceful cultivators, their protectors in times of
bloodshed and rapine, when no central authority existed.
Hence arose the system of desha and stalum kaval, or the
guard of separate villages. The feudal chieftain (and
his Kallar and Maravar) received a contribution from the
area around his fort in consideration of protection
afforded against armed invastion.”
The village and district kaval system permeated many
levels of rural Tamil society and hence was hinderance
to the effective implementation of new form of
administration and revenue collection. In some instances
kaval was taken over from the military castes and was
handed over to the Shanar (Caldwell; 1888, p.224) or
anti-Kaval movements were encouraged among non-military
castes to coerce them to give up kaval, sell their lands
and leave (Madras Presidency Police Administration,
1896). Many efforts were taken to put a stop to the
kaval services of the Tamil military castes in the
countryside in the first half of th nineteenth century,
culminating in the organization of a new police system
in 1860, which recruited mostly from among castes which
were considered favourable to the British.
The Adi-Dravidas or Parayar were recruited heavily into
the Indian Army. The Nadu-Ambalakarar institution of the
Kallar by which justice was traditionally dispensed in
regions dominated by them was also abolished to make way
for the penal and judiciary system introduced by the
British. Deprived of their traditional occupations of
kaval and soldiering and in some instances of their
lands, a large section of the Tamil military castes
became, in the eyes of the colonial government, a
delinquent mass, a danger to the rural social order. A
body of administrative and ethnographic literature arose
on this perception and on the need to portray and
classify the Tamil martial castes as criminal. It also
relegated them to the margins of Tamil history and
culture. The Kallar and Maravar who had been referred to
as the military tribes of the southern provinces by
early British writers were classified as criminal tribes
towards the end of the nineteenth century.
The task of disfranchising the Tamil military castes and
destroying the structures of their traditional power in
Tamil society was strengthened by the promotion of the
Vellalas, Shanaras (Nadaras), Adi-Dravidas and the
Nattampadis, who constrasted favourably with the Maravar
and suited the aims of revenue, security and conversion.
Among these, the Vellalas acquired the most favoured
status for the following reasons:
(A) They were, according to the 1871 Madras census
report, “a peace loving, frugal, and industrious
people”. They were essential to consolidating the new
revenue and the Administrative Manual (Coimbatore) noted
that the Vellalas were “truly the backbone of the
district. It is they who by their industry and frugality
create and develop wealth, support the administration,
and find the money for imperial and district demands.”
(B) It was ascertained that “according to native ideas”,
husbandry was their only proper means of livelihood and
that they had no established traditions of kingship,
like Kallar and Maravar. The Madurai Manual noted that
Aryanayaga Mudali, the great general of the sixteenth
century was dissuaded from making himself a king on the
ground that no Vellalan ought to be a king.
(C) They were found suitable for the expanding manpower
needs of British administration. They were unsurpassed
as accountants and many of them were employed as Karnams
or village accountants.
(D) They were extremely conservative in their outlook.
The Tanjore Manual observed, “in religious observances,
they are more strict than the generaliry of of Brahmins;
they abstain from both intoxicating liquors and meat.”
It is in this milieu that the Dravidian movement took
shape as the pro-British of the de-martialized Tamil
social order.
Letter of Correspondent M.Raja Joganantham
[Colombo 6]:
Militarism and Caste
[Lanka Guardian, July 15, 1992, p.16]
With the reference to the above article in Lanka Guardian (1
July) 1992. In the article [by] the writer Mr.D.P.Sivaram, some
facts are incorrectly stated. The statement a strong narrative
is found in Myliddy is correct. The names of the chieftains are
Veera Maniccathevan, Periya Nadduthevan & Narasinhathevan. The
statement that the Marava chieftains and their castemen married
among Karaiyar of the village is also correct. But the statement
about Thuraiyar and Panivar is incorrect.
The clans known as Thuraiyar and Panivar in this village are the
descendants of the ancient families of Myliddy. The martial arts
of Marava are popular among these two clans, though the
Thuraiyar is considered as superior. Thuraiyar as well as
Panivar were connected by marriage to Ramnad, the home country
of the Maravar, for which evidence is available.
I am one of the descendants of the ancient family of the
village, and the writer of an article titled as, ‘Ancient
Villages in Jaffna’, which appeared in Eelanadu on 13.07[July]
1986.
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