Chetties and Bharatha
are ‘ethnic groups’ in 2001 census questionnaire
Northeastern Herald, 11 October 2002
To the best of my knowledge and belief, except for a
reference made in one of the Sunday editions of the Tamil paper
Thinakkural during the enumeration weeks of Census 2001, the
director, Census and Statistics has run away with a major national
exercise with very questionable categorisations.
In the questionnaire given to the enumerators for taking the count
of the people, he has given the following breakdown for the ethnic
groupings in the country - Sinhalese, Sri Lanka Tamil, Indian Tamil,
Sri Lanka Moor, Burgher, Malay, Sri Lankan Chetty, Bharatha and
other.I am not referring here to the taking away of the colonialist
categorization, which divided the Sinhalese into Kandyan and Low
Country (had it been removed half a century ago it have would saved
a lot of embarrassment for the Low Country elite in Colombo at the
time) nor am I referring to the omission of the category of ‘Indian
Muslim’ which constituted a substantial number earlier.
There has been a continuous history of inner tensions between the
Sri Lankan Moors and the Indian Muslims. I do not know what the
director, census and statistics thinks about how the Indian Muslims
were absorbed into the general Sri Lankan population. Here, I am
also not quarrelling with the nomenclature (though I should really
be doing so) ‘Indian Tamil’, the legally accepted term is ‘Tamil of
Indian Origin’). It is morally and politically wrong to continue to
call this group Indian Tamil after granting them full citizenship in
this country.
What I want to really raise here is the two new categories called
‘Sri Lanka Chetty’ and ‘Bhratha.’
Let us take the category ‘Sri Lanka Chetty’ first.Chetty in Tamil is
a caste name derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Sreshtin.’ Chetty is
not a Sinhala caste. It is one of the most influential castes in
Tamil Nadu. In fact there are a number of Chetty subcastes there.
In Sri Lanka, the Chetties are a homogenous caste group. There has
been Chetty group in Jaffna, which over the years intermixed with
the Vellalas so much so that there is sub-caste among them known as
Chetty Vellalas. (One of Arumuga Navalar’s sisters was married to a
Chetty Vellala. Among the Mukkuvas of Batticaloa too there is a
matri-clan called Chetty Kudi. (In Tamil the word Kudi means clan).
Generally speaking the Chettiyars seem to have come from Tamil Nadu
and were engaged in commercial and financing activities in Sri
Lanka. Evidently at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese, the
coastal trade was largely in their hands. Most of them converted to
Catholicism unlike the castemen in Tamil Nadu or Jaffna. Most of
them continued to be Catholics even under Dutch and British rule; a
few Chetty families like the Ondaatje’s became part of the Dutch
Reformed Church. (The presence of a branch of the Ondaatje family in
Batticaloa is to this day testified to by the place name Ondaatje
Madam)
The Tamilness of this coastal Chetties was not in doubt till the
middle of the 19th century when Simon Casie Chitty was nominated a
member of the Legislative Council. More important is the fact that
Casie Chetty was the first literary historian of Tamil in English
(The Tamil Plutarch. 1857) He was also the author of the ‘Castes
among Tamils of Ceylon.’
Perhaps the word Chetty in its westernised form became Chitty thus
becoming the family name for many illustrious citizens of this
country. Over the years their exclusiveness led them to be called
the Colombo Chetties and their influence within the Colombo
Municipality is retained by the road name ‘New Chetty Street.’ It
also must be added here that Puttalam was the chief centre of the
Colombo Chetties and there was a substantial population of Tamils
until recently. Now of course they have dwindled in numbers and have
become an insignificant minority.
Now the question is whom does the director, Census and Statistics,
refer to as the Sri Lankan Chetties? Is this a polite way of giving
an all-island status to the Colombo Chetties? Does the director,
Census and Statistics, expect the few extant Chetty families in
Jaffna also to fill in his questionnaire as Sri Lankan Chetties? I
am sure the Chitties would be aghast!
Is it right on the part of the director, Census and Statistics, to
introduce such caste categories as ethnic groups of Sri Lanka? The
worst is yet to come.The Bharathas too are now classified by him as
an ‘ethnos’- a group having distinguishable ethnic
characteristics.There are two important Bharatha groups in Sri
Lanka. One is the group of sea-faring families residing from around
Chilaw down to Colombo. There is evidence that there had been
Bharatha settlements up to Kalutara in the Colonial period.
Besides these indigenised littoral connected Bharathas, there also a
handful of Bharathas in the Colombo Municipality who settled during
the British rule, especially to work in the Colombo harbour. In fact
the area opposite St. Anthony’s Church in Kotahena, there was a
heavy concentration of Bharathas who had been maintaining close
family relations with their caste group in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu.
The word Parathar and its variant Parathavar have been in usage in
Tamil from the earliest period. The most ancient of Tamil
literature, the Sangam anthology refers to them as a people from the
maritime regions (Neithal). They are depicted as traders and
fishermen in the Sangam classics.It is possible that as fishermen
they were also interested in pearl diving which should explain their
presence upto the northwestern shores of Sri Lanka, some place names
of which like Silavathurai and Silapham are reminiscent of
Muthusalapham which in Tamil means pearl oyster beds.
In the late medieval, pre-western period, the pearl fishery was
controlled by Muslim traders. The Muslims employed the Parathavar
mainly as their Pearl divers. Scholars like A. Sivasubramanian have
shown how the Parathavar who were exploited by their Muslim masters
converted enmasse to Catholicism in the 16th century. It is quite
possible that the large number of them who came to settle on the
northwestern coast were already Catholic.
The fact that these Bharathas continued to practice their religion
and speak their mother tongue is testified to by the number Tamil
schools in the predominantly Catholic places of the Bharathas.
From the late 20’s there has been a slow process of Sinhalisation
among them led by the Catholic Church itself. By the sixties and
seventies the place of Tamil among the Catholics of the western and
northwestern coast was severely dented. Only the Hindu coastal
peoples in places such as Muneeswaram and Udappu retained their
Tamilness amid this process of Sinhalaisation.
This has been a touchy, sensitive point – how are the Bharathas to
be described in terms of the demography of this country, Tamils or
Sinhalese? Those Bharathas who had to choose Sinhala as their medium
of education on the western and northwestern coast became
increasingly embarrassed to identify themselves as Tamils. Behind
this language switch lies the interesting history of how the Roman
Catholic Church was chiefly instrumental in promoting the
Sinhalisation of the Tamil speaking Bharathas of the western and
northwestern coast.
Without going any further into this history of the alienation of the
Bharathas from the Tamils, let us return to the question of
categorising Bharathas as an ethnic group of Sri Lanka.
Forgetting for a moment their inerasable Tamil origins, let us pose
the pertinent question why are the Barathas fighting shy of calling
themselves Sinhalese?It is unfair by the Sinhala language to call it
their mother tongue and yet desist referring to themselves as
Sinhalese.
The director of Census and Statistics has evidently stepped in (with
all respect to him) where the angels fear to tread. The political
point should be made clear here. We should try to find out that in
the overall census whose numerical strength is affected by these two
newly introduced categories? My problem is not so much with the
categorisation itself because there have been many cultural
‘switchings’ in Sri Lanka in recent Sri Lankan history. For example,
the process by which Kataragama lost its Hindu identity.
The question is who ordered this categorisation in the census? And
on what historical authority?Extending this logic, how would the
Sinhalese feel if tomorrow the Karawas or the Salagamas persuade the
powers that be that they should be categorised as a separate ethnic
group? To me, at the age of seventy, this administrative intrusion
into the socio-political ……………..We have to take this as yet another
one in the long list of bureaucratic invasions into minority rights.
What is interesting here is that Tamil MPs who should keep
themselves informed of developments like this one are blissfully
ignorant.
Whether it is a case of making Bharathas a separate ethnic group or
adding Haguranketha to the Nuwara Eliya district to increase Sinhala
strength there, Tamil Parliamentarians are tight lipped for after
all if you want to be in the good books of a minister or a
government these are not things to speak of. “Oh Lord Forgive them
for they do not know what they do”. |
