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On Tamil Militarism - a 11 Part
Essay
Part 10: Warrior Sons and Mothers
Lanka Guardian, [pp.17-18
and 20]
[prepared by
Sachi Sri Kantha, for electronic record]
1 November 1992
 The
Madurai Thamil Sangam was established by Pandithurai Thevar in 1901
with the assistance of his cousin Bhaskara Sethupathy, who was the
Raja of Ramnad at that time. The institution and its journal � the
Senthamil � played an important role in what could be termed the
Tamil renaissance in the first two decades of the twentieth century
among the Tamils of south India and Sri Lanka. Its importance also
lies in the fact that it created a class of Tamil pundits through a
well organized and prestigious system of examinations at a time when
strong objections were being raised against creating a Chair for
Tamil, in the University of Madras.
The pundits qualified by the Madurai Thamil Sangam in Tamil Nadu
and Sri Lanka have also been instrumental in shaping the vocabulary
of Tamil identity when Tamil nationalism began to constitute itself
as a political force on both sides of the Palk Straits. The Sangam
was conceived as a nationalist project by Pandithurai Thevar who
announced and took up the task of its formation at the Madras
sessions of the Congress in 1901. Thevar upheld the view that �the
love for one�s language is the basis of patriotism and the love for
one�s religion.� (Speech made at Tuticorin, quoted in P.S.Mani,
p.39). Thevar�s desire to establish the Sangam was also linked to
the traditional role of the Maravar and Kallar kings and chieftains
of Tamil Nadu as the patrons of Tamil poets and pundits, despite the
powerful inroads made by Sanskrit over the centuries.
Most of
the Tamil texts that impelled twentieth century renaissance were
unearthed from collections of manuscripts preserved by families of
traditional Tamil poets and scholars who had been patronised by
Tamil poligars and kings. Thevar appointed R.Raghava Aiyangar who
was the court pundit of the Sethupathys, as editor of the Sangam�s
journal �Senthamil� in 1901. His cousin, M.Raghava Aiyangar
succeeded him as editor in 1904 and served for eight years.
M.Raghava Aiyangar and his cousin belonged to a family of
Vaishnavite Brahmins who had attached themselves to the Maravar
kings of Ramnad from the eighteenth century. The family produced
many Tamil and Sanskrit scholars who were court pundits and
ministers to the Sethupathys and the nobles of their clan. M.Raghava
Aiyangar�s father was a renowned Tamil scholar in the court of
Ponnuchami Thevar, the brother of the Ramnad king Muthuramalinga
Sethupathy (1862-1873). Ponnuchamy Thevar was
Arumuga
Navalar�s patron in Tamil Nadu. Aiyangar�s father died when he
was young and was looked after by Ponnuchami Thevar�s son
Pandithurai Thevar.
Thus, Aiyangar�s life was bound with that
of the Sethupathy clan of Marava rulers. Later in his life, he wrote
a book in appreciation of Thevar and his father called, Senthamil
Valartha Thevarhal (The Thevars who nurtured Sen Thamil). Aiyangar
dedicated two of his most popular books to Bhaskara Sethupathy and
Pandithurai Thevar. His involvement with the Indian nationalist
movement was therefore closely related to the interests and
perceptions of Thevar who was bestirred by the ideas of the
revolutionaries and the Swadeshi movement. The Sethupathys had been
resentful of the fact that they were coerced by the British to hand
over the vast and profitable trade with Ceylon and Bengal. Thevar
therefore was attracted by the Swadeshi movement�s campaign to
rejuvenate local industry and commerce to undermine the hold of
British capital on India. The revolutionaries were calling for the
revival of the disfranchised kshatriya classes of India. The
Senthamil incorporated these sentiments and ideas into its projects
for Tamil renaissance.
Thevar formed the Swadeshi Steam
Navigation Company with
V.O.Chidamparam Pillai in 1907, to break the British monopoly on
the profitable Colombo-Tuticorin steamer service. Chidamparam Pillai
was closely associated with members of the revolutionary movement in
Tamil Nadu at that time. The company resolved in one of its articles
of incorporation that it would contribute one percent of its monthly
earnings to the Madurai Thamil Sangam, as long as it existed (Annual
Report of the Sangam, 1907, pp.7-8). Aiyangar also contributed to
the nationalist cause by buying a Rs.100 share in the company. The
main financial assistance to the Sangam at this juncture came from
Thondaman � the Kallar caste king of Pudukottai, who was its
permanent patron, the Zamindar of Singam Patty (Maravar) and a
Kallar caste leader called Gopalsamy Rajaliar, who had succeeded in
a campaign with Thevar�s assistance to alter his caste name from the
derogatory Kallan to a more respectable form Kallar (Annual Report
of Sangam, 1907). The Dravidian school of Tamil studies on the other
hand was keen to show its loyalty to the Raj and represented Vellala
caste interests.
It was in this context that M.Raghava
Aiyangar�s Tamil nationalist project took shape. He conceived of a
martial heritage that was unique to the Tamil country constituted by
the Chera, Chola and Pandya kingdoms in South India, and was -
according to him - far superior to the military powers of north
Indian peoples. He, an erudite Tamil scholar, skillfully melded his
politics into a compelling representation of a heroic Tamil past.
The politicisation of Aiyangar�s reading of the Tamil past
begins with the event that kindled the revolutionary movement in
1905 � the victory of Japan over Russia. Japan�s example was proof
that India�s traditional material values could prevail over British
arms. The victory was hailed by those who subscribed to the ideas of
Thilak�s militarism. Aiyangar wrote Parani poems (a form of Tamil
heroic poetry to celebrate the victory of a warrior who slays 1,000
elephants in the battle) exalting Japan�s military might in the
Sangam�s journal �Senthamil�. In 1907, when the activities of the
revolutionary movement and the Swadeshi movement were gathering
momentum, he wrote an editorial essay on �Warrior Mothers� (Veerath
Thaimar). The ideological agenda for what has been described as the
�Mother politics� of militant Tamil nationalism was set forth in
this essay. He wrote,
�Although there may be other reasons for the
victory of the Japanese over the Russians, more numerous and
belonging to a larger country, the main reason is the martial
training given [to] them by their parents from childhood�the
valour and patriotisms of Japanese mothers can be seen in the
volumes called �The Russo-Japanese War�. These things may appear
strange in our times but if we examine our history we will find
such warrior mothers and their valorous children numerous�In
ancient Tamil texts like
Purananooru, the martial theme predominates. It should be
noted how the mothers of that era created great warriors.�
The essay is based on
heroic
poetry of the Moothinmullai category found in the Purananooru
and the Purath-thirattu. Moothinmullai is a category in the poetics
of codified Tamil martial culture in which the culmination [of] a
woman�s motherhood is portrayed as the heroic martyrdom of her
warrior son in battle. The mothers urge their sons to die valiantly
in war. Aiyangar contrasts a Moothinmullai poem in which the
warrior�s mother says her womb is the lair of the Tiger, who could
be found only in battle fields, with another poem of the category in
which a mother whose son has failed to attain martyrdom in battle,
exclaims in anguish that she would cut under her womb that give
birth to a coward.
Aiyangar notes that the earliest Tamil
grammar � the
Tholkappiyam � defines and names the poetic theme of the mother
who comits suicide on hearing her son�s lack of valour in the battle
field. (�These mothers belonged to Maravar clans�, he says. The
Maravar are matrilineal.) He says that the warriors brought forth by
these mothers made Tamil Nadu glorious in the Sangam era, in which
�one does not hear of north Indian kings invading Tamil Nadu, but
only the victories of Tamil kings who fought the northerners. This
was so because of the greatness of Tamil martial might.� He
concludes that the decline of the Tamils was the results of the
decline of what he calls Thamil Veeram (Tamil martial prowess).
Subramanya Bharathi saw immense political value in the essay for
propagating the ideas of the revolutionary movement�s militarism
among the Tamils. He serialized the essay in his paper �India�, and
urged his readers to popularise it among their friends, relatives
and �women at their homes�. The essay was used by Bharathy as an
instrument for rekindling the martial ethos among the Tamils to
achieve national liberation through armed insurrection. Bharathy and
V.O.Chidamparam Pillai wrote to Aiyangar, saluting the
nationalist spirit inspired [by] his essays.
The politics of
the Thamil Sangam was muted next year, when the Swadesh Steam
Navigation company was crushed following riots against the British
at Tuticorin and Tinnevely. V.O.Chidamparam Pillai and the
revolutionary leader Subramaniya Siva were arrested and imprisoned.
The publisher of Bharathy�s paper �India� was also arrested on
sedition charges. Bharathy became an exile in the French colony of
Pondicherry.
Nevertheless, Aiyangar developed the theme of a
Tamil martial tradition that was superior to the north, into one of
the most persistent and characterising narratives of militant Tamil
nationalism � the Seran Senguttuvan legend of the epic
Silapathigaram. His belief that the decline of the Tamil martial
tradition caused the decline of the Tamil nation has been echoed in
every Tamil nationalist project since his time. Raghava Aiyangar
lamented the decline of martial values in Tamil society, for he saw
himself essentially as a loyal Brahmin of one of the oldest ruling
Maravar clans of Tamil Nadu. His Tamil nationalist project was
rooted in that self-perception.
Notes
(1) Recent gender-oriented critique of the LTTE
fails to take note of the fact that the Moothinmullai Mother is
a leitmotif in the structuring and representation of the Tamil
nationalist project. Hence in the BBC documentary on the Tigers
� Suicide Killers � the Black Tiger Miller�s mother is presented
to the TV crew as a woman who feels proud of her son�s heroic
martyrdom in the suicide attack on the Nelliady, Sri Lankan army
camp in 1987. The LTTE here is reproducing a fundamental
structure of representing Tamilian identity. C.S.Lakshmi has
examined the role of the concept of the heroic mother in the
militant Dravidian movement and its strategy of mobilising
women. She, however, fails to take note of the politics of
Aiyangar and Bharathy and the impact of the Russo-Japanese war
on them in the genesis of this concept. C.S.Lakshmi; Mother,
Mother-community and Mother-politics in Tamil Nadu. Economic and
Political Weekly, October 1990.
(2) [For] the role of the Sethupathys and Marava chieftains in
the promotion of Tamil literature, see Sangath Thamilum
Pitkalath Thamilum, U.V.Saminatha Aiyer, 1949, Kabir Press,
Madras.
(3) Senthamil Valartha Thevarhal, M.Raghava Aiyangar; 1948,
D.G.Gopalapillai Co., Tiruchi.
(4) Aiyangar was held in great esteem by the Tamil elite of
Colombo and Jaffna.
Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan invited him to lecture in Jaffna.
One V.J.Thambi Pillai translated his �Velir Varalaru� and
published it in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society of Ceylon.
K.Srikanthan gave an award to his work �Tholkappiya Araichi�.
One of the earliest modern historians of Jaffna, A.Mootoothambi
Pillai, who was a contributor to the Sangam�s journal Senthamil
reflected Aiyangar�s thesis in his Jaffna history, when he
lamented the decline of Jaffna�s martial values which according
to him had flourished under the ruler Sankili. Mootoothambi
Pillai, 1912, �History of Jaffna�.
(5) �Siranjeevi�; 1981. �Sethupathikal Varalaaru� (History of
Sethupathys), Jeevan Press, Madras.
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