Tamil Heroic Poetry: A Comparative Study -
K.Kailasapathy "...what is of interest to us
here is that the bulk of the heroic poetry which
has come down to us, portrays the emergence of the
three principal kingdoms from among innumerable
tribal organisations and village communities. This
epoch in a nation's history is violent but
brilliant, short-lived but glorious, convulsive but
opulent. As elsewhere, the politics of the Tamil
Heroic Age were marked by the ascendancy of an
"energetic military caste, which torn by
internecine conflicts of succession and inheritance
breaks loose from its tribal bonds into a career of
violent, self-assertive individualism... (the)
composite nature of the Tamil heroic poems, and
their cherished recital by schools of bards - of
which we have some evidence - in due course lead to
what we may call a "national consciousness ", an
idea of pan-Tamilian culture, which in fact
became a political concept in historical times. In
this sense, one is naturally reminded of the
gradual evolution of a Greek national consciousness
arising out of the recitation of the Iliad and the
Odyssey at the Panathenaea..."
"...Tamil
nationalism in South India and Sri Lanka can
be described in terms of two sets of ideas
and beliefs. The one, the purity and
uniqueness of Tamil language and culture; the other, Tamil
traditions which exalt military virtues and
ideals.."
The nationalism of the movement for Tamil
language rights and regional autonomy in Sri
Lanka was articulated in the same vocabulary
after 1956.
The LTTE's nationalism is also expressed
in terms of these two sets of ideas and beliefs.
But militarism - the spirit which exalts military
virtues and ideals - has been the dominant and
characterizing component of the LTTE's Tamil
nationalism from its inception. The stated aim of
the Tigers is to build a modern military
structure.(1)
The ideology of militarism plays an important
role in their effort to create an efficient and
advanced military organization. Therefore, in
addition to standard modern methods of
discipline, organization and training the LTTE
inculcates the belief among its cadres - and
propagates the idea among Tamils - that it is
part of an ancient and powerful martial
tradition, to develop and sustain a motivated and
fierce fighting force.
The Tiger symbol is considered the most
important manifestation of this tradition.
"Prabhakaran had a reason for selecting the
Tigers as the national insignia of Thamilzh
Eelam. The Tiger insignia is an image rooted in
Dravidian civilization. It is a symbol that
illustrates the martial history (Veera
varalaru) and national upheaval of the Tamils.
Our national flag is the symbol of the
independent state of Thamizh Eelam to be
created, rooted in the martial traditions
(Veera marapuhal) of the Tamils."(2)
How is the LTTE able to thus define its
militarism as being rooted in "Dravidian
civilization� and Tamil
traditions whereas the Sri Lankan Tamils have
usually projected their cultural ethos as one
which made them a community devoted to education,
government employment, commerce and
agriculture.
Tamil politicians and intellectuals have in
fact claimed that Tamil militancy arose from a
perceived threat to these avenues of social
advancement. The LTTE's militarist definition of
Tamilian identity is possible because Tamil
militarism is an unexamined but important feature
of Tamil culture and nationalism.
This study therefore intends to examine Tamil
politics in South India and Sri Lanka by
addressing to questions,
(a) What is Tamil militarism?
(b) What were the social and political
conditions of its genesis and diffusion in
South India and Sri Lanka?
The Dravidian movement has been studied
primarily in terms of the Brahmin - non
Brahmin contradiction, in terms of the
pro-British regional politics of non-Brahmin
elites of South India,(3) the Pure Tamil and Self
Respect movements, linguistic nationalism and
secessionism.(4)
But the other important component of Tamil
nationalism - its militarism has not figured in
studies of the Dravidian movement.(5) This is partly
attributable to the influence of a
historiographic tradition that has shaped
concepts of Tamil culture and society in
Dravidian studies. It arose from a strong
political compulsion in the nascent and early
phases of the Dravidian ideology to portray the
Tamil people and their culture as peaceful and
unwarlike.
Maraimalai Atikal, the father
of the Pure Tamil movement wrote in English
that,
"as we come to the study the life of the
ancient Tamils from their most ancient literary
work, I mean the Tolkappiyam, the age of which on
the best internal evidence goes back to 1,500
B.C., we see them already settled into a highly
civilized community for the most part peaceful,
but for a few infrequent feuds between one
Tamil King and another. It is to this
continuity of a peaceful and highly civilized
life enjoyed by the Tamils that we owe the
existence of the Tamil language still in its
pristine purity, vigour and glory."(6)
Maraimalai Atikal's views are representative
of the early Dravidian movement. We can see that,
the nascent Dravidian school of Tamil studies -
the concepts and beliefs of which have influenced
the study of the Tamil nationalism is no small
measure - is marked by its patent inclination to
present the history of the Tamil people as the
"continuity of a peaceful and highly civilized
life."
If this was the view of the founders of the
Dravidian movement, then where can one locate the
'origins' of Tamil militarism? Although South
India in general and Tamils in particular have an
insignificant place in the modern Indian army -
the Madras regiment being the only unit of the
southern region - the origins of Tamil militarism
is closely related to the question of military
and society in India.
The preponderance of north Indian peoples in
the Indian army has lead to the study Indian
militarism mainly as part of the evolution of
society and politics in the northern parts of the
subcontinent. The rise of the martial castes and
classes of north India in the development of
Indian army has been skillfully analysed
elsewhere.(7)
That ethnic, religious and caste groups which
consider military service as their hereditary or
natural occupation make better fighters in a
modern army, is an idea that has played an
important role in the formation of the Indian and
Pakistani militaries.
This idea - the martial races theory, which
dominated British recruitment policy toward the
latter part of the 19th century, is another
orientalist discourse that has shaped modern
perceptions of India's people's, the martial
north and the non-martial south. Thus in a book
published under the official auspices of the
government of India, recounting the martial
traditions of the Indian army,(8) there is not one
tradition connected with a South Indian caste or
class.(9) The
'martial races' of independent India' military -
the Sikhs, Rajputs, Jats, Gorkhas, Marathas,
Punjabis, Dogras, Garhwalis, Mahars and
Kuomanisare all north Indian castes and classes.
Yet we find that in the early history of the
Indian army, South Indian groups such as Tamils
and Telugus had distinguished themselves in the
crucial wars which subjugated India to British
rule.(10)
There are two phases in the decline of the
South in the Indian army and the shift in
recruitment towards the 'martial races' of the
north in general and the north western parts of
the subcontinent in particular; - what Stephen
Cohen calls the Punjabization of the Indian
military.(11).
In the first phase the reorganization of the
army after the mutiny of 1857 on the basis of
recommendations made by the Peel Commission in 1859 and
the Eden Commission in 1879
defined service and recruitment on a territorial
basis to suit the policy of divide et impera.
Drastic reductions were made in the Bengal army.
Brahmins and upper caste Hindus were dropped in
large numbers. Active Service for Sepoys was
limited to their home Presidencies. And as there
was no major internal security problems in the
Bombay and Madras Presidencies, they became
military backwaters. This was followed by claims
that the fighting qualities of the classes in
these regions had deteriorated. Reductions were
recommended and made in the Bombay and Madras
armies.
In the second phase the great threat of the
Russian empire on the north western frontier of
the Raj in 1885, followed by the Burma war of 1887-1889 created
a massive need for manpower "belonging to races
whose martial qualities were well
authenticated."(12) As a result the territorial
basis of recruitment for divide and rule was
given up and castes and classes mostly from
India's northwest where the bulk of the fighting
was done, were extensively recruited. Special
social and economic privileges were extended to
these peoples to ensure a reservoir of martial
manpower. "To preserve their loyalty, conserve
their martial spirit and enhance their prestige,
the colonial state attempted to make time stand
still on the northern plains".(13)
Thus began the rise and dominance of the
Rajputs, Sikhs, Jats, Punjabi Muslims and Gorkhas
in the Indian army. The ideology of this process
- the martial races theory - is
another orientalist discourse with its 19th
century 'scientific' paraphrenalia that has
contributed in no small measure to the evolution
of modern perceptions of India's peoples and
regions. It sought to establish why some Indian
peoples (those who were being extensively
recruited) were martial and while others (those
who had been dropped in large numbers) were
not.
Thus, towards the latter part of
the 19th century, there were large, disgruntled
groups with a military past in the Bengal, Bombay
and Madras Presidencies. They felt that the vast
field of opportunities opened by the expanding
Indian army was being unfairly denied to them.
This grievance was further exacerbated by views
of the British military leadership which
relegated them to a non-martial status as races
that were not fit to bear arms; in whom fighting
qualities had declined.
The reaction of these groups was marked by a
compulsion to emphasise the martial credentials
of their cultures. Opposition to British rule
which emerged among classes affected by the shift
in recruitment toward the 'martial races' of
North western India took shape into an ideology
that asserted a national spirit which exalted
military virtues and ideals as the cure for the
ills of Indian society under the British yoke.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak who emerged as a spokesman
for the disfranchised military groups became the
ideologue of this nationalist Indian militarism.
Stephen Cohen has attempted to define Indian
militarism in terms of Indian attitudes towards
the British-Indian military structure and
recruitment.
"There are two fundamentally different sets
of Indian attitudes towards the British-Indian
military structure, both of which may
legitimately be labelled Indian militarism:
modern militarism and traditional
militarism…emerged in Bengal and western
India and spread to other regions. Modern
militarism stressed the value of the military
as a national universal solvent; as an
expression of the national will and demanded
equalitarian recruitment. 'Traditional
militarism' resulted from regional traditions
and the recruiting practices of the British. It
was confined to those castes and classes which
exercised the use of arms as matter of birth
right and was unevenly distributed throughout
India…"(14)
At the turn of the [20th] century there were
two groups in the Tamil region which had a
decidedly militarist and anti-British outlook.
(a) the adherents of modern Indian militarism -
the terrorists - and their sympathizers. (b) the
disfranchised traditional military castes.
The dispersion of modern Indian
militarism's basic tenet - that the revival of
India's 'heroic age' and its war-like traditions
and valus was necessary for national emancipation
- invested the heroic past and martial cultures
of the disenfranchised traditional Tamil military
castes with a nationalist significance and
cogence. Modern Tamil militarism - the political
idea that military virtues and ideals 'rooted in
Tamil martial traditions' is essential for
national resurgence and emancipation - was
enunciated at this specific conjuncture in the
school of Tamil renaissance established by
Pandithurai Thevar - a noble belonging to the
sethupathy clan of the dominant traditional Tamil
military caste - the Maravar.
Tamil militarism then, is the effect of
inter-related modern and traditional components;
the former as nationalist renaissance ideology,
the latter as caste culture. Traditional Tamil
militarism in the Tamil region as elsewhere in
India was confined to a group of castes which
considered "the use of arms as matter of birth
and right". The Maravar were, according to the
Madras Presidency census report for 1891 "a
fierce and turbulent race famous for their
military prowess" and were "chiefly found in
Madura and Tinnevely where they occupy the tracts
bordering in the coast from Cape Comorin to the
northern limits of the Ramnad
Zemindari."(15) The Dutch found them to be the
traditional soldier caste of Jaffna and availed
themselves of their caste services as such
(16) - one of
the earliest instances of a colonial power making
use of a specific military caste in South
Asia.
Cohen notes two categories of traditional
Indian military castes with different grievances
at the turn of the 19th century. (a) "members of
classes which were no longer recruited or
recruited in small numbers", (b) "those classes
which constituted the army but sought even
greater status as commissioned
officers."(17)
The Maravar and their grievances, however
belong to a third category. They were a people
whom the British attempted to totally
demilitarize by depriving them of their
traditional status in Tamil society through
social, economic and penal measures.
This was in direct contrast to the social and
economic privileging of such castes and classes
in the north, during the same period. They were
not only disfranchised but were turned into and
classified as a delinquent mass - the subject of
a disciplinary and penal discourse - relegated to
the fringes of the new social pact which was
being established in the Tamil South of the
Madras Presidency. The obliteration of their
traditions and memory was considered essential to
complete the process of demilitarization and
pacification of the Tamil region. The martial
races theory of recruitment and the subsequent
martialization of the north further erased their
martial legacy and that of the Tamil South from
the military ethnography of the subcontinent.
David Washbrook argues that "the subvention
and protection of the north Indian dominant caste
communities, and the martialization of their
culture, were but two of the many ways in which
south Asia paid the price of liberal Britain's
prosperity and progress."(18) On the other hand the strategy
of emasculating and destroying the hegemony of
Tamil military caste communities and the
demartialization of Tamil culture were two
important ways in which the Tamil South paid the
price of India's development as a nation.
The legacy of these strategies in the north
and south of the subcontinent, embodied in the
structure of the modern Indian army, is central
to the emergence of modern Tamil militarism. The
gains of this demartialization were consolidated
by favouring and encouraging non-military castes
in Tamil society which "contrasted favourably
with the Maravar".(19)
The more important of these were the Vellalas,
Nadars and Adi Dravidas. The culture and values
of the "peace loving" (Madras census, 1871)
Vellalas who had "no other calling than the
cultivation of the soil" eminently suited the
aims of demartialization and suppression of the
traditional military castes. In this the British
were following local precedents which had been
based on the principle that the best way to
ensure control and security was to "have none
there but cultivators" (21). Thus, under active British
patronage the Vellala caste established its
dominance, and its culture became representative
and hegemonic in Tamil society. The Nadars and
Adi Dravidas were considered amenable to
conversion. A large section of them had become
Anglicans. The recruitment base of the Indian
army in the Madras Presidency was constituted
strongly in favour of these groups. The Dravidian
ideology emerged as the cultural and academic
basis for their pro-British politics, led by the
newly arisen Vellala elite.
The nascent Dravidian movement was clearly
underpinned by the concerns of British
administrators and Anglican missionaries
(22) in
consolidating the social, economic and religious
gains of demartialization. This is why the early
Dravidian school of Tamil studies and
historiography had a strong political compulsion
to reject, ignore or play down the dominant role
of the traditional military castes in Tamil
history and culture, and to assert that Tamil
civilization was Vellala civilization.
(Maraimalai Atikal, was the chief proponent of
this view.)
Thus in the early decades of the twentieth
century we find two contending narratives
(23) of Tamil
national identity - the ideology and caste
culture of the anti-British and "turbulent"
military castes and the ideology and caste
culture of the pro-British and "peace loving"
Vellala elite - claiming authentic readings of
the Tamilian past and present. The one claiming
that the "pure Tamils" were Vellalas. The other
claiming that all Tamils are Maravar and that the
Tamil nation was distinguished by its ancient
martial heritage. How then did Tamil militarism
which originally was related to a political and
social milieu that was opposed to the Dravidian
movement become its dominant feature in the
[nineteen] fifties and sixties to the levelof
strongly impacting on the Tamil nationalist
movement in Sri Lanka's north and east?
It was related politically to changes that
took place in the Dravidian movement and the
changes that took place in Maravar - Indian
National Congress relations after the [19]30's.
In the Dravidian movement the change was
connected mainly with, (a) the rejection of the
pro-British elitist leadership of the Justice
Party in 1944. (b) the radical change in the
attitude towards British rule and imperialism in
1947/48 which gave rise to sharp differences
within the movement.
Relations between the Indian National Congress
and the Maravar began to deteriorate when the
moderate Brahmin leadership of the Madras
Presidency Congress preferred not to oppose the
harsh measures of the British against the Tamil
military castes. The contradiction became sharp
when Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar the powerful
and influential Marava leader, joined the Indian
National Army under Subash Chandra Bose and began
organizing the Forward Bloc against the Congress
in the Tamil region.(24) The antagonism climaxed in a
violent caste conflict in 1957. The Congress
government arrested Muthuramalinga Thevar in
connection with the riot. The DMK which had very
little influence in the southern districts of
Tamil Nadu at that time made a strategic
intervention at this juncture in Maravar affairs.
M.Karunanidhi, the only DMK
candidate to be elected in the southern parts at
that time, was chiefly responsible for co-opting
the Maravar into the DMK; and for making the
culture of the Tamil military castes a dominant
and essential component of Tamilian national
identity.
For many years, until he became chief
minister, Karunanidhi wrote under the pen-name
Maravan. His weekly letter to party cadres was
known as Maravan Madal (25) - the Maravan's epistle. Tamil
militarism thus became integral to the Dravidian
movement. The secessionist militancy of the DMK
in the [nineteen] fifties and early [nineteen]
sixties wad dominated by the vocabulary of Tamil
militarism.
This was the nadir of the Dravidian movement's
impact on Sri Lankan Tamils. DMK branches were
organized in many parts of the north, east and
the hill country. It was during this period that
ayoung student named Kathamuthu Sivanandan from
Amirthakazhi, a small village near the Batticaloa
town who was studying in Tamil Nadu took part in
the militant agitations of the DMK. Karunanidhi
described him as "the appropriate weapon for
Tamil upheaval."(26). The student who was later
known as Kasi Anandan wrote for a fortnightly
called Dhee Mu Ka (DMK) (27) when he came back to Sri
Lanka. In it appeared his poem, 'The Maravar
clan'- Maravar kulam (28):
"The Tamil army is a Maravar Army…
the enraged Tamils are a Tiger Army
(Pulippadai)…"
These lines of the poem are now part of the
history and myths of the Tamil Tigers'
genesis.
"You are to know that in this land
of Malabar, there is another caste of people
called the Nayres who have no other duty than
to serve in war, and they always carry their
arms wither so ever they go…they all live
with the King and the other great lords;
nevertheless all receive stipends from the King
or from the great lords with whom they dwell.
None may become a Nayre save he who is of Nayre
lineage. They will not touch anyone of low
caste…The most part of these Nayres when
they are seven years of age are sent to schools
where they are taught many tricks of nimbleness
and dexterity…and when they are fully
accomplished in this way they teach them to
play with weapons to which they are most
inclined. All Nayres are mighty
warriors."(29)
observes Duarte Barbosa in his
account of the Zamorin's domain (a division of
the old Chera kingdom) - one of the earliest
records made by the Portuguese within a few years
of their entry into the Indian Ocean.
The feudal military system described
by Barbosa was common to those parts of South
India known to the Portuguese as Malabar. In its
southern and south eastern parts the military
castes were known as Maravar, Kallar and
Ahampadiyar; of these the Kallar and Maravar had
kingship traditions. This feudal military system
was found in Jaffna as well when the Portuguese
arrived. The Palk Strait was known to them as the
Marava Bay.
The Tamil country was divided into a
number of feudal domains, called Palayams,
which literally means 'military camps'
(30), the chief
of which was the Palayakarar - the
commander of the camp. Most of the Tamil
Palayakarar were Maravar. Each maintained a body
of Kallar, Maravar and Ahampadiyar warriors who
"served on the battle field and in times of peace
engaged in hunting and training in the military
arts, nourishing a rugged and practical
character", and serving as village guards
(kaval) for a contribution (31). In Jaffna "the
Maravar had to learn the art of war from the age
of sixteen till they were twenty four years of
age; then they had to become village kaval-karar,
live on land given by the King and return to
military service whenever the king required them
to do so."(32)
The military system of the Tamil
country was yet a dream in eighteenth century
Europe; its armies were in the process of
developing methods and regulations which "got rid
of the peasant" in the new recruit and "gave him
the air of a soldier."
J.Servan, an 18th century
French military theoretician wrote a treatise on
the 'soldier citizen' (1780). He "dreamt of a
military machine that would cover the whole
territory of the nation and in which each
individual would be occupied without
interruption, but in a different way according to
the evolutive segment, the genetic sequence in
which he finds himself. Military life would begin
in childhood, when young children would be taught
the profession of arms in military manors; it
would end in these same manors when the veterans
right up to their last day would teach the
children, exercise the recruits, preside over the
soldier's exercises…and finally make order
resign in the country, when troops were fighting
at the frontiers."(33)
The ideal Palayam was Servan's
military machine; the Kallar, Maravar,
Ahampadiyar and Nayar were its 'oldest citizen'.
The Palayam was sustained by a codified martial
culture. As we shall see later the practice of
martial suicide was most prevalent in the Kongu
region of Tamil Nadu, which had a very large
number of Palayams.
Early Europeans who studied the
military system of the Tamil country were
inclined to read therein, some of the ideals
embodied in the celebrated regulations of the
Prussian infantry that the whole of Europe
imitated after the victories of Frederick II. The
18th century British military
historian Robert Orme's description of
the military castes of the Tamil country is
typical. He says,
"They are tall, well made and well
featured. Their arms are lances and pikes, bows
and arrows, rockets and matchlocks, but whether
with or without other weapons every man
constantly wears a sword and shield. In battle
the different arms move in distinct bodies, but
the lancemen are rated the most eminent, and
lead all attacks. This weapon is eighteen feet
long. They tie under the point a tuft of
scarlet horse hair, and when they attack horse,
add a small bell. Without previous exercise,
they assemble in a deep column, pressing close
together and advance at a long steady step, in
some degree of time, their lances inclining
forward but aloft, of which the elasticity and
vibration, with the jingle and dazzle scare,
the cavalry; and their approach is scarcely
less formidable to infantry not disciplined
with firearms."(34)
The boomerang - or Valai Thadi
in Tamil - was another weapon that "played a
considerable part in the Poligar (Palayakarar)
ars". The Kallan and Maravan warriors plied it
with deadly effect and "could at one stroke
dispatch small game and even man."(35).
Like the Japanese Bakuhan system, the
Palayam system was based on a feudal class
structure of warriors, farmers, artisans and
merchants where the distinctions between the
caste statuses of the constitutent classes were
strictly enforced. To symbolize this society, the
Tamil warriors, like the Japanese samurai, wore
swords in everyday life because the system was
maintained by their military power.
Mr.Lushington who was sent as
Collector to Palayakarar (Poligar) country in
1799, desirous of wresting control of the vast
revenues of the land, described the Palayam
(Pollam) system of Tamil feudal militarism as
extremely evil.
"When this contribution (Kaval
dues) is not quietly submitted to, torture and
the whip are applied,the whole people of the
village put into confinement, every occupation
interdicted, the cattle pounded, the
inhabitants taken captive to, and not
unfrequently murdered in, the Pollams…and
such is the dread which they have inspired into
the cultivators of the circar lands by
remaining armed in the midst of a country
otherwise in profound peace, that these
requisitions are never resisted."(35)
A fierce and ancient martial culture
and religion was nurtured by the military castes.
As in the other martial regions of India,
traditional militarism permeated several levels
of society. Therefore, despite the great temple
centres, the heroes and godlings of Tamil martial
culture were worshipped widely throughout rural
Tamilnadu.
In Japan, the Samurai nurtured the values of
kyuba-no-michi (the way of the bow and
horse). In the Tamil country, Maram was the
martial ethos of the warrior castes. There are
three characteristics of Tamil feudal militarism
which set it apart from other pre-modern military
cultures. They are,
(a) the
detailed codification of the modes of war, the
warriors' martial life and rituals etc.; known
as Purath thinai.
(b) (b)
the rejection of divine participation and
perfidy sanctioned by religion in the conduct
of war. The great medieval Tamil commentator
Naccinarkiniyar says that norms which sanction
"killing through perfidy and by virtue of
divine powers given by gods" are to be
disregarded and that modes of war involving
gods are to be rejected and refuted as modes
not belonging to the Tamil speaking good
world."(8)
(c) the
classification of war with flowers; and a
practice of wearing a particular flower when
engaging in the mode of war, denoted by that
flower. The author of Ramayana had noted that,
"the southerners wore flowers for
war."
Codified Tamil feudal militarism
was nurtured and transmitted as the Purath thinai
division of high Tamil Senthamizh poetics and
grammar.
Tolkappiyam, the earliest Tamil
grammar, (36)
the Buddhist grammatical treatise Veerasoliyam,
the Saivite Ilakkana Villakam (17th
century) and Swaminatham (36a), written in early part of the
last [i.e., 19th] century are works
which contain treatises in which Tamil martial
culture is codified and annotated. The perfection
and codification of Tamil martial culture through
the ages was paralleled by the thematization of
several narratives of military glory in Tamil
culture through epics, inscriptions, minor forms
of poetry etc.
An observation is made in the British
Indian army's recruitment handbook on the Sikhs
that, "all Sikh traditions whether national or
religious are martial; in times of political
excitement the martial spirit reasserts
itself."(37) The
culture and class interests of Japanese feudal
militarism which survived the Meiji restoration
partly impelled and characterized Japan's
militarist nationalism and its growth as a modern
military power.
Similarly it can be said that the
culture and structures of codified 'high Tamil'
and folk forms of Tamil feudal militarism partly
impelled and characterized Tamil nationalism when
it became militant. Therefore two aspects of
Tamil feudal militarism which has been reasserted
in Tamil revivalism and militarism will be
briefly examined here. They are,
(a)
narratives of Tamil military might, thematized
in Tamil culture. The most important of these
can be reduced to the basic form - Tamil King
defeats the Aryans of north India and causes
his emblem to be carved on the Himalayas. The
Pandyan king Neduncheliyan bore the title 'He
who overran the Aryan army'. All three Tamil
dynasties - Chera, Chola and Pandya - are
distinguished by this feat in a wide range of
texts and inscriptions. These narratives, like
the kamikaze - divine wind - legend of Japan's
war with Mongols, have played an important role
in the growth of Tamil nationalism.
(b)
Codified practices of Tamil martial
life.
1. Moothinmullai: the duty of the
warrior mother to inculcate the martial ethos
and to urge her sons to attain martyrdom in
heroic battle. The concept of the warrior
mother's duty was central to the genesis of
Tamil militarism and later in militant Tamil
nationalism. It is a salient theme in LTTE's
current literature as well.
2. Avippali, Thannai, Verttal,
Vallan pakkam, Pun Kilithu Mudiyum Maram and
Marakkanchi: the forms of martial suicide and
suicidal battle of the warrior as the
ultimate expression of his loyalty to his
commander. These six forms of martial suicide
are defined as described by the works
referred to above.
Duarte Barbosa describes the practice
among the Nayar (of the Chera kingdom). It was
later noticed by British officials as well. It
was also prevalent among the Maravar (of the
Pandya kingdom) from whom the suicidal
Aapathuthavi bodyguard was selected.
Thannai Verttal also refers to the suicide
of a warrior on hearing that his king or
commander has died (Purapporul Venpa
Malai). Punkilithu Mudiym Maram is the
martial act of a warrior who commits suicide by
tearing apart his battle wound.
Another form of martial suicide
mentioned by all the works except Veera soliyam,
is Avippali. Tamil inscriptions speak of
it as Navakandam. Inscriptions found in
many parts of Tamilnadu provide greater
information on the practice. Navakandam is the
act of a warrior who slices his own neck to
fulfil the vow made to korravai - the
Tamil goddess of war - for his commanders'
victory in battle. The Kalingathu
Parani(38) -
a work which celebrates the victory of the Chola
king Kulotunga and his general Thondaman in the
battle for Kalinga, describes the practice in
detail.
"The temple of korravai is
decorated with lotus flowers which bloomed when
the warriors sliced their own necks"(106);
"they slice the base of their necks; the
severed heads are given to the goddess"(111);
"when the neck is sliced and the head is
severed, the headless body jumps with joy for
having fulfilled the vow"(113).
The epics of Chilapadikaram
(5: 79-86) and Manimekalai
(6: 50-51) mention the practice. To ensure the
complete severing of the head, the warrior tied
his hair to a bamboo bent taut before he cut his
neck. Hero stones depicting this practice are
found all over Tamil Nadu, and are called
Saavan Kallu by locals. The warriors who
thus committed suicide were not only deified in
hero stones (saavan kallu) and worshipped but
their relatives were given lands which were
exempted from tax(39).
An area handbook (Tharamangalam) of
the Tamilnadu archeology department notes that
"the Nava Kandam sculpture which is found
widely all over Kongu Nadu (Coimbatore, Salem)
is to be seen at the Tharamangalam
Kailasanathar kovil also. The people call it
Saavan Kallu. "The practice of Nava Kandam
existed in Kongu Nadu till the early part of
this [i.e., 20th]
century."(40)
A Saavan Kallu at Thenkarai
Moolanatha sami Kovil in Madurai, depicting the
act of a warrior holding his hair with his left
hand and slicing his neck with his right -
14th century - is said to be annually
worshipped by the Conjeevaram
Mudaliyars.(41)
The Conjeevaram Mudaliyars are Kaikolar, a
weaving caste which was militarized under the
Chola empire and was made into a special military
body; there are indications that Kaikolar
warriors practiced Nava Kandam(42). The founder of the DMK,
C.N.Annadurai was a Conjeevaram
mudaliyar, of the kaikolar caste.
Apart from these codified forms of
martial suicide, a method called
Vadakkiruththal is mentioned in Tamil heroic poetry. It is the act of
a warrior king fasting to death, if some dire
dishonour were to come upon him (43). The Tamil teacher,
and the Dravidian propagandist, turned the song
of the legendary Chera king Irumborai who
committed suicide when he was taken captive by
his enemies into a compelling theme in Tamil
renaissance.
The Avippali form of martial
suicide as the ultimate expression of loyalty to
one's commander, is deeply embedded in the Tamil
psyche. Senchorru-kadan (the debt of red
rice) is a phrase that is widely used today by
Tamils as an expression of loyalty. One
frequently hears of it in a popular Tamil song.
The phrase sands for the ritual of partaking of
rice by which Maravar and other Tamil military
caste warriors bound themselves to their king or
commander to die in suicidal battle for him, or
to commit suicide on the day he was slain. Of
Avippali, the Puraporul Venba Malai ([verse] 92)
says, "thinking of nothing but the red (blood)
rice the Maravar give their life as offering in
battle."
The ritual of red or blood rice was
described by two Muslim travellers who had
visited the Tamil country in the 9th
century. "A quantity of cooked rice was spread
before the king, and some three or four hundred
persons came of their own accord and received
each a small quantity of rice from the king's own
hands, after he himself had eaten some. By eating
of this rice, they all engage themselvesto burn
themselves on the day the king dies or is slain;
and they punctually fulfill their
promise."(44) In
modern times it has been observed that "when a
Maravar takes food in the house of a stranger, he
will take a pinch of earth and put it on the food
before he commences his meal."(45) This act freed him from the
debt of blood rice.
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.
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.
Robert Caldwell (1819-1891) was
the father of the Dravidian movement. He was the
Bishop of Tinnevely - the heartland of the
Maravar Poligars - during the times when the
British were engaged in suppressing the Tamil
military castes in the Tamil region. His
monumental work, The Comparative Grammar of the
Dravidian Languages, which was published in 1856
laid the theoretical foundation of the political,
academic and cultural movement that came to
dominate Tamilian life in the twentieth century.
The work argues that all south Indian languages
(and a few others elsewhere in the subcontinent,
like Brahui) belong to a distinct family of
tongues called the Dravidian languages. This
challenged the widely held view of the time that
most of India's cultivated languages were derived
from Sanskrit.
It followed therefore that the
culture and civilization of the Dravidian peoples
of south India were intrinsically unique. The
role of these ideas in the inception of the
Dravidian movement has been examined in detail
elsewhere (Irshick; 1969, Hardgrave; 1965,
Sivathamby:1978). These studies have been in
terms of the cultural and political
contradictions between the newly arisen
non-Brahmin elites and the Brahmins who had
achieved a pre-eminent place under colonial rule
in the Madras Presidency.
The intention of this study
however is to show that the fundamental tenets of
the nascent phase of the Dravidian ideology were
essentially linked to the political and cultural
legacies of the British attempt to demilitarize
Tamil society.
The writings of Bishop Caldwell
presuppose a teleological project which was not
uncommon to what were conceived as great
intellectual undertakings in that era of empire
building. The assumptions of the project formed
the basis of his Dravidian theory. They were,
Bishop Caldwell
1814 - 1891
(a) That the British empire was
destined to finally bring order amongst Tamils,
a large portion of whom had been more prone to
the habit of war than to the arts of peace from
the dawn of history in south India,
(b) That this order would be
the one in which the imminent protestant ethos
of the Dravidian civilization would reach its
full expressional ethos which the English
administrator saw as the virtue of those
classes which "contrasted favourably with the
Maravar", and whom the Bishop considered the
legitimate Tamilians,
(c) That the rediscovery of
Dravidian linguistic and cultural uniqueness
would help consolidate the position of the
'lower classes' among the Tamils who had played
an important role in the military expansion of
British rule in the subcontinent - the Tamil
Christian soldiers who were the Empire's
alternative to the traditional Tamil military
castes.
In the concluding remarks of his
'A History of Tinnevely'(1888), Caldwell
says,
"A mixed government…came
thus to an end and was succeeded by a
government purely English, at unity with
itself, and as just as it was powerful. The
results of this change have been most important
and valuable. Professor Wilson…places in
a striking light the course things would have
taken if the English Government had not been
enabled to interpose its authority."
"It may be concluded," he says,
"that had not a wise and powerful policy
interfered to enforce the habits of social life,
the fine districts to the south of
Kaveri…would have reverted to the state in
which tradition describes them long anterior to
Christianity, and would have once more have
become a suitable domicile for the goblins of
Ravana."
The first reflection that arises
in one's mind on reading the foregoing sketch of
the history of this district is, that war seems
to have been the normal condition of Tinnevely,
as of the rest of the old Pandya
country…from the beginning of man's abode
in these regions till A.D. 1801 (the year in
which the Tamil country was ceded to the
British).
Caldwell also notes that,
"Of the beneficial changes that
have taken place since then, the most remarkable
is that which we see in the Poligars themselves."
He claims with satisfaction that many among the
regions martial classes were taking to
agriculture; and of the Maravar, he says "the
change wrought amongst the poorer class of the
Maravas is not perhaps quite so
complete…though once the terror of the
country they are now amenable to law and
reason…" Tamil society was thus 'unity with
itself' and was realising its destiny under the
British Empire. He asserts that "Race after race
of rulers have risen up in this country, has been
tried and found wanting, and has passed away."
But that the Tamils "accept our government
readily and willingly as the best government they
have ever had and the best they are likely to
have in this age of the world."
Under the "paternal government"
of the English, Tamils were becoming a peaceful
and industrious nation. The last "race of rulers"
which had risen up and passed away in the Tamil
country were the turbulent Maravar. English rule
was the only one that was not found wanting
because its principles and protestant ethos were
in consonance with what Caldwell assumed were the
'true' religious and moral ideas of the Dravidian
race.
Although as a historian, he was
well aware of the hegemony of the Maravar's
martial culture in Tamil society, its exclusion
from what he desired to portray as the true
Dravidian civilization was central to the
imperial and religious interests of Caldwell's
teleologial project. The English, in suppressing
the martial castes, were restoring the soverignty
of Tamil society's "legitimate rulers" - the
peasantry and lower classes.
In Caldwell's view, the Tamil
military castes had to seek "the safer and more
reputable occupation of husbandmen" (Caldwell:
1888, p.229). However, he was deeply suspicious
of their peace. Commenting on the Poligar wars,
he wrote,
"The population of the
sequestered Pollams (Palayams) seemed to be
delighted with the opportunity afforded them of
trying their strength with the English once
more, being thoroughly discontented, no doubt,
with the peaceful life now required of them"
(p.197).
And he condemned a suggestion
ventured by the author of the Tinnevely Manual,
Mr.Stuart that the Palayam system of the Tamil
military castes was histocially inevitable as the
fiefdoms of medieval Europe - "It is so seldom
that one hears a good word about Poligars that I
quote these remarks of Mr.Stuart with
pleasure…I fear, however, that the misdeeds
of the Poligars were more systematic and
audacious than those of the feudal nobles of
Europe in the Middle Ages." (p.59)
Apart from concerns shared with
the British Government, the Bishop's hostile
attitude towards the Maravar arose from the
bloody violence they unleashed on the Shanar,
large numbers of whom were embracing the
Protestant faith. For him, if the idolatory and
the Sanskritic culture of the articulate Brahmins
was a spiritual threat to the propagation of the
Gospel, the violence and misdeeds of the Maravar
against the faithful was a dire physical threat.
In his scheme of Tamilian history, the culture
and ethos of the classes through whom the British
government and the Anglican Church sought to
consolidate the gains of Tamil society's
demilitarization were seen by Caldwell as the
true characteristics of the Tamils.
The martial habits of the Maravar
and the Sanskritic culture of the Brahmins were
alien to the social order and moral ideals of the
'true' Dravidians.
These views were shared by many
English missionaries of the 19th century who
worked among the Tamils. Missionaries and
administrators found evidence for this in many
religious and didactic Tamil texts. Henry Martyn
Scudder published a book in 1865, in which he
"used Tamil texts and poems to support the
missionary position that even in ancient Tamil
texts many Christian ideas were present."
(Irshick; 1976, p.15). This belief led to the
introduction of what were thought to be Tamil
works, with little or no extraneous influence in
institutions of higher education run by
missionaries.
The college curriculum created a
market for the publication of such works. This in
turn gave an impetus to the rediscovery of many
ancient Tamil works (U.V.Saminatha Iyer; En
Sarithiram, p.714)., which paradoxically led to
the publication of Purananooru and the Purapporul
Venba Malai, texts that portrayed the ancient
Tamils as a fierce martial race and lay the
foundation of modern Tamil militarism. Thus
Caldwell's teleology assumed that Tamil
revivalism would help consolidate the protestant
ethic and the allegiance to English rule among
the non-military castes in Tamil society, by
giving expression to the moral and religious
ideas which he assumed were imminent in their
ancient Dravidian culture and language.
The administrative manual of the
Madurai district commended a section of this
class of Tamils thus, "They…contrast
favourably with the Maravars, being very orderly,
frugal, and industrious". Other section, the
Shanar it was stated, "have risen enormously in
the social scale by their eagerness for
education, by their large adoption of
Christianity, and by their thrifty habits. Many
of them have forced themselves ahead of the
Maravars by sheer force of character." (Thurston:
1906, p.373).
It was to these 'loyal' classes
of Tamils that Caldwell referred to when he wrote
in the introduction to his Grammar that
"All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee
plantations are Tamilians; the majority of the
money-making classes even in Colombo are
Tamilians; and it seems not unlikely that [?]ere
long the Tamilians will have excluded the
Singhalese from almost every profitable
employment in their own Island. The majority of
the Klings or Hindus, who are found in Pegu,
Penang, Singapore and other places in further
East, are Tamilians; a large portion of the
Coolies who have emigrated in such numbers to the
Mauritius and to the West Indian colonies are
Tamilians; in short wherever money is to be made,
wherever a more apathetic or a more aristocratic
people is waiting to be pushed aside, thither
swarm the Tamilians, the Greeks or Scotch of the
East, the least superstitious and the most
enterprising and persevering race of Hindus."
(Caldwell: 1856, p.7).
Caldwell's Dravidian theory thus
gave rise to a vocabulary in which the word Tamil
came to connote the non-Brahmin, non-martial
aspects of Tamil culture. Bishop Robert Caldwell
in laying the foundation of the Dravidian
movement also endeavoured and partially succeeded
in dispersing the impression that the Tamils who,
only a few years before his time were thought of
as being "prone to the habit of war", were a
peace loving and industrious nation. The
intellectual endeavours of the learned missionary
made the British Empire cherish an ulterior hope
that the 'Dravidian' Tamils would remain the
faithful among the faithless, the bedrock of the
Raj for a long time to come - the events of the
great mutiny and the rise of the Dravidian
movement proved them correct.
The idea of the 'modern Indian
army' is rarely associated with the Tamils. The
nature or its ethnic composition generates the
impression that it is a predominantly north
Indian phenomenon. This impression has become so
strongly established that the military history of
the British Empire's rise has been studied in
recent times in connection with the role of the
'martial peoples' of north India in the British
Indian army. The tenacity and power of this
'impression' in modern scholarship is best
illustrated in the argument of David Washbrook
(13):
"The role the British Indian
army played in international affairs over the
course of the 19th century however, lifts it
out of the context of British Indian relations
and places it in a broader global perspective.
It was not an army intended primarily for
domestic defence and police duties in India.
Rather, it was the army of British Imperialism,
formal and informal, which operated worldwide,
opening up markets to the products of
industrial revolution, subordinating labour
forces to the dominating of capital and
bringing to 'benighted' civilizations the
enlightened values of Christianity and
Rationality. The Indian army was the iron fist
in the velvet glove of Victorian
expansionism.Moreover, because the British
Empire was the principal agency through which
the world system functioned in this era, the
Indian army was in a real sense the major
coercive force behind the internationalization
of industrial capitalism. Paradoxically (or
not!), the martialization of north Indian
society and, in many ways the feudalization of
its agrarian relations, were direct corrolaries
of the development of capitalism on a world
scale during the 19th century." (Washbrook: 1990)
Washbrook's view is based on what
the Indian army was towards the latter part of
the nineteenth century. It is underpinned by an
"impression" which arose many years after the
British had established their strategic hold on
India and had laid the Empire's foundation with
what was known as their 'Coastal Army' which was
built up in the latter half of the 18th century,
mainly with Tamil soldiers. The British succeeded
in empire-building not by martialising dominant
north Indian military caste communities, but by
building up a cheap but loyal and effective army
of predominantly Tamil soldiers. Until the latter
half of the 19th century, it was the Tamil
Christian soldier who was the main coercive force
behind the expansion of the Empire in the
subcontinent and elsewhere.
The British Recruitment Handbook for Madras
classes (46),
says
"It can truthfully be said that
the Coast Army was mainly instrumental in
conquering India for the British." (p.8) The
Tamil soldier was seen as the bearer of the
Sword and the Bible - with few religious and
caste prejudices which madehim suitable for
expeditions beyond the sea unlike his more
expensive brethren in north India. Contrary to
what Washbrook claims, the early phase of
British overseas expansion in East, West and
South Asia was not based on the martialisation
of north Indian society, but on the south
Indian alternative to its military labour
market - the loyal classes of Tamils.
"During this whole period, as always
throughout its existence, the Coast Army was
specially noteworthy for the cheerful alacrity
with which its regiments have volunteered of
service overseas. The Bengal regiments on many
occasions refused to embark for foreign
service, on the plea that it was contrary to
their religion. But the Coast Army willingly
embarked, and took a leading part in many
successful expeditions, including Manila
(1762), Mahe (1779), Ceylon (1782 and 1795),
Amboyna and the Spice Islands (1796), Egypt
(1801-02), Bourbon and Mauritius (1810) and
Java (1811-12)".
The Coast Army took part in the
final expedition against the King of Kandy which
was followed by the first war in Burma (1824-26).
The first war by the British in China was also
fought by them in 1840-42 where the 37th Madras
Infantry was made grenadier battalion for its
distinguished conduct. Sir Hugh Gough reported on
their service in the China war that "their
perseverance and gallantry before the enemy have
secured for them the confidence of the British
European soldiers." (Recruitment Handbook for Madras
Classes, p.6)
Even a brief study of the history of the Coast
Army and the Tamil soldiers who were recruited
into it would reveal that the 'military agency'
which "conveyed British capitalist power to areas
of the world (including the South Asian
hinterland) it could not otherwise have reached"
had a very small proportion of north Indian
military groups. Washbrook's argument that the
World Capitalist system which the British Empire
helped so much to expand rested heavily on the
intermediation of the Indian army and that
without it and similar agencies constituted
outside the European capitalism core, "the forces
of world capitalism would have been ethnic, much
weaker or else of a very different kind" is
plausible but the argument that harnessing the
dynamic potential of the readily available north
Indian military groups made it cheaper for the
British to rapidly expand their empire, is
untenable in view of the two most critical phases
which determined the hold of the English on the
subcontinent.
The first phase begins towards the middle of
the 18th century. It was the contest with the
French that first compelled the British to
abandon their policy in India till then, that was
was bad for trade, and raise local troops. There
was in the subcontinent at that time paramilitary
caste groups whose services could be obtained for
a fee. The British unlike the great Indian
princedoms in that era could not afford the
soldiery of the high caste martial groups
although they very much desired them. From the
proceedings of the government, dated 7th May
1770, it appears that the Sepoy battalions then
consisted of Mohamedans, Tamils and Telugus, but
no details of caste are given. It may be inferred
that the number of Brahmans, Rajputs and
Maharattas in the Madras army was very small. It
is clear that the authorities were desirous of
restricting enlistments to men of good caste, but
it is equally clear that this wasnot practicable
during the last (18th) century."
Again in 1795, it is stated that "owing to the
small pay of the sepoy and the high price of
rice, considerable difficulty was experienced in
obtaining good recruits, and the battalions were
kept up to their proper strength by accepting
undersized men and those of low caste." (Phytian
Adams: 1943) (48). Yet Stringer Lawrence and Clive
succeeded in making the cheap low caste Tamil
sepoys into an army with which the English were
able to establish themselves as the main European
trading group in India, in the contest with the
French. It later won all the crucial battles that
subjugated most of India during the course of the
seventy five years since recruitment of the first
Tamil sepoy levies began in the northern parts of
Tamilnadu in 1746.
The East India company established its first
military department at Madras in 1752. The main
reason behind the rapid rise of the British in
this era was their low cost but hardy army. The
major Indian kingdoms of the time, although
possessed of modern and larger forces were
falling into financial difficulties in
maintaining their expensive high caste soldiery
whose pay arrears was frequent cause for mutiny.
The English fought with the advantage of an
extremely loyal army which did not rebel for
pay.
The Recruitment Handbook of the Madras classes
records "never were these qualities more fully
tried than in the war with Hyder. The pay of the
army was sixteen months in arrears, famine raged
all over the country, the enemy was at the gates
offering large bounty and pay to our Sepoys to
desert, but in vain. Under all these
circumstances severe action were fought. Their
conduct during the war excited the admiration of
all who knew it, and Frederick the Great of
Prussia was known to have said, "after reading
Orme's account of the war, that had he the
command of troops who acted like the sepoys on
that occasion, he could conquer all
Europe."(9)
The second crucial phase in which the future
of the British as an Empire building power was
determined was the period in which the Indian
Mutiny erupted in North India. Again, it was the
loyal Coast Army that helped the English survive
the Mutiny. It was the Mutiny that made the
British reorganize the Indian army into that form
which Washbrook considers in his thesis.
"In 1857-58, came the great
Mutiny of the army in Bengal, when the Coast
Army displayed its loyalty and devotion in no
uncertain manner. In a despatch dated the 19th
August 1859, the Secretary of State of India
said, 'The commander-in-chiefs Minute contains
only a slight sketch of the important services
rendered by the Madras army during the great
contest in the North of India. The great fact
has been the perfect fidelity of that army and
the perfect loyalty of the 23 millions of
persons who inhabit this Presidency, which
enabled the resources of the South of India to
be freely put forth in support of our
hard-pressed country men in North."
Lieut-General Sir Patrick Grant
said,
"The services in the field of
the Troops of this Presidency employed in the
suppression or the Rebellion and the Mutiny are
now a matter of history, and the glowing terms
in which they have been recognized must endure
for ever, an unperishable record of this noble
soldiers. It can never be forgotten that, to
their immortal honour, the native troop of the
Madras army have been, in the words of the Earl
of Ellenborough, faithful found among the
faithless."
The Dravidian ideology was
underpinned by the idea of the loyal Tamil
soldier of British Coast Army, bringing to
"benighted" civilizations the enlightened values
of Christianity and Rationality. Caldwell and his
successors elaborated a theory of a Tamil
Diaspora as the bedrock of Protestantism and the
English Empire on this idea.
Bishop N.C.Sargant, who like Caldwell, was the
Church of England's Bishop of Tinnevely spells it
out clearly in his 'Dispersion of the Tamil
Church': (47)
"The Tamils are great soldiers;
they went with the army along with their
families and lived in its newly established
camps and in the newly captured
territories…they were excellent
instruments for establishing the Church among
the Telugu and Kannada speaking peoples."
"There is much evidence to show that Tamil
soldiers - of the British Indian Army - and
those (Tamils) who followed the army took the
gospel with them to the other parts of India."
(Sargant: 1940, p.32 and p.68)
About the intention of his word,
Sargant says,
"The Dispersion of the Jews
was a preparation for the spread of
Christianity in the ancient world. Similarly
can it be said that the Dispersion of the Tamil
church helped the missionaries? The first
Apostles found some God fearing Jews, as their
first believers. Did the missionaries find the
Tamils perceptive…was this race the first
fruit of Christian work? I tried to find
answers to such questions…This research
made me understand that Christ realised many
unexpected and inexplicable things through the
Dispersion of the Tamils and the Tamil
Church."
Sargant, like Caldwell and Bishop
Whitehead before him, believed that research into
ancient Dravidian forms of expression found in
Tamil would reveal that there were many
surprising words and ideas which denoted
Christian concepts such as that of sin. "Like the
ancient Hebrews the ancient Dravidians also tried
to lead a righteous spiritual life."(p.3)
The close connection between the
British Indian army's early conquests, the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
(S.P.G.), the Dispersion of the English Church,
and the Tamils of Bishop Caldwell's flock in
Tinnevely is described by Sargant in detail
(chapters 2, 3, 5). Thus the Tamil soldier, the
Tamil Diaspora and the Dravidian movement came to
constitute a basis of the British Imperial
project.
The nationalist reaction to this project in
the Tamil country, articulated by the terrorist
movement, proclaimed modern Tamil militarism as
the means of national emancipation from British
rule.
At the turn of the Twentieth
century Tamil nationalism was articulated in
terms of two different interpretations of
Tamilian identity, propagated by two distinct
movements which were politically opposed to each
other. The one was the Dravidian school; the
other was the Indian revolutionary movement. The
former was closely associated with English
missionaries and unequivocally supported British
rule; the latter strongly opposed the Raj and
preached violence as the chief means of national
emancipation from foreign domination.
The discourse that may be identified today as
Tamil nationalism is constituted at its basis by
these two interpretations - or more appropriately
'founding' narratives - which contended with each
other to offer authentic readings of the Tamilian
past and present, of what 'really' constituted
Tamilian identity. The Dravidian school gave
political and academic form to linguistic
ethno-nationalism; the revolutionary movement
turned traditional Tamil militarism into a
liberation ideology, which evolved into
militarist ethno-nationalism. The militarist
reading has also characterised Tamil
ethno-nationalism in the twentieth century not
merely because it was "constructed and deployed
to advance the interests and claims of the
collectivity, banded and mobilized as a pressure
group" but also because, as this study intends to
show, it appealed to, and arose out of the
structures of experience produced and reproduced
through folk culture and religion in rural
Tamilnadu.
This is how, as we shall see later, MGR became
Madurai Veeran, the warrior god of a numerous
scheduled caste in Periyar district in Tamilnadu.
Jeyalalitha contested from an electorate there in
the last election [i.e., 1991 general election].
However, it is essential to understand the
politics behind the claims and silences of the
early Dravidian school of Tamil revivalism and
'historiography' for examining the rise of modern
Tamil militarism.
Caldwell and his followers who wrote and spoke
about Tamil culture and history endeavoured to
show that Tamils were essentially a peaceful
people who had achieved a high level of
civilization independent of and prior to the
arrival of the 'Aryans' in the Indian
subcontinent. This was the unique Dravidian
civilization. The theory of Dravidian linguistic
and hence cultural independence also contained in
it the idea that the Tamils were originally a
class of peaceful farmers. The politics of
Caldwell's teleology compelled him [to] introduce
this idea into his writings. (It was seen earlier
that it arose from the attitude he shared with
the English rulers towards the Maravar.) The
views of Bishop Caldwell were found to be
extremely useful by the newly arisen Vellala
elite which was contending for higher status in
the Varna hierarchy of caste. Therefore the
'histories' which were written by the Dravidian
school of Tamil studies at the turn of the [20th]
century were underpinned by,
(a) The political and religious concerns of
Caldwell and other missionaries like Henry Martyn
Scudder and G.U.Pope
(b) The caste politics of Vellala upward
mobility.
The interests of both were intertwined. Their
express political interest was to show that Tamil
culture in essence was pre-Aryan-Brahmin and
non-martial. The first non-Brahmin Tamils to take
up the Dravidian theory to examine theTamil past
belonged to the Vellala elite and were supported
and encouraged by Protestant missionaries (and
sometimes by English administrators).
Professor Sunderam
Pillai, 1855 - 1897
The writings of Professor
Sunderam Pillai of the Trivandrum University on
Tamil history and culture inspired many of his
castemen who had been seething at being
classified as Sudras by the Brahmins, and worse,
by the British caste census and courts of law as
well.
Thus, the historical works of the early
Dravidian school were produced as "social
charters directed toward the census, where the
decennial designation of caste status became a
major focus for contests over rank between 1870
and 1930.
V.Kanakasabhai
Pillai
1855 - 1906
The first Dravidian history of
the Tamils, 'The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years
Ago', was written by V.Kanakasabhai Pillai, a
Vellala from Jaffna who was a civil servant in
Madras. Edgar Thurston thought it appropriate to
quote the following excerpt from that work, in
the section dealing with the Vellala caste in his
'Castes and Tribes of South India'.
"Among the pure Tamils, the class most
honoured was the Arivar or Sages. Next in rank to
the Arivar were Ulavar or farmers. The Arivar
were ascetics, but of men living in society the
farmers occupied the highest position. They
formed the nobility, or the landed aristocracy,
of the country. They were also called Vellalar,
the lords of the flood or karalar, lordsof the
clouds…The Chera, Chola and Pandyan kings
and most of the petty chiefs of Tamilakam,
belonged to the tribe of Vellalas." (Thurston,
1906: p.367-368)
The efforts of the early
Dravidian school of Tamil 'historiography'
culminated in the work of Maraimalai Atikal - the founder of
the Pure Tamil movement which became a powerful
force in the anti-Hindi struggles from 1928
onwards. He published a book called, 'Vellalar
Nakareekam' - The Civilisation of the Vellalas -
in 1923. The book was a lecture he had given at
the Jaffna Town Hall on January 1, 1922 on the
'Civilization of the Tamils' A contribution of
Rs.200 was made in Jaffna towards the publication
of the lecture, as a book. The Jaffna Vellala of
that time saw his interests as being bound with
that of his castemen in South India, who were
attempting to rid themselves of the Sudra status
assigned to them in the Varna hierarchy of caste
by Brahmins.
However, Maraimalai Atikal had decided to
publish it as a book in order to refute a claim
in the caste journal of the Nattukottai Chetti
community, that the Chetties did not marry among
the Vellalas because they (the Vellalas) were
Sudras. In the English preface to the work,
Maraimalai Atikal says that his book
"is written in scrupulously
pure Tamil style, setting forth at the same
time views of a revolutionary character in the
sphere of social religious and historical ideas
of the Tamil people…In the first place
attention is directed to Vellalas, the
civilized agricultural class of the Tamils, and
to their origin, and organization…it is
shown that at a time when all the people except
those who lived all along the equatorial
regions were leading the life of hunters or
nomads, these Vellalas attained perfection in
the art of agriculture…and by means of
navigation occupied the whole of India. When
the Aryan hordes came from the north-west of
Punjab and poured forth into the interior, it
was the ten Vellala kings then ruling in the
north that stopped their advance."
Maraimalai Atikal goes on to
claim that the eighteen Tamil castes were created
by the Vellalas for their service; that they (the
Vellalas) were vegetarians fo the highest moral
codes;that Saivism and the Saiva Siddhantha
philosophy nurtured by the Vellalas for more than
3,500 years were the pre-Aryan religious heritage
of the Tamils; that the classification of
Vellalas as Sudras was the result of an insidious
Aryan-Brahmin conspiracy. Maraimalai Atikal was
also defending fellow Vellala Dravidian scholars
and their claims against attacks and veiled
criticisms of Brahmin Tamil academics,
M.Srinivasa Aiyangar, a respected Brahmin Tamil
scholar who had worked as an assistant to the
superintendent of census for the Madras
Presidency.
Mr.Stuart, had made a devastating attacking on
the claims of the Dravidian school of Tamil
historiography, which derived its authority from
the 'scientific' philological works of Bishop
Caldwell. He debunked the theory of the
Caldwell-Vellala school that Tamil culture was
constituted by the high moral virtues of an
ancient race of peaceful cultivators, on the
basis of what he had studied of the religion and
culture of the Tamil country-side, as an officer
of the census, and on the basis of 'pure' Tamil
works that had been rediscovered towards the
latter part of the 19th century.
Srinivasa Aiyangar noted in his 'Tamil
Studies', "Within the last fifteen years a new
school of Tamil scholars has come into being,
consisting mainly of admirers and castemen of the
late lamented professorand antiquary, Mr.Sunderam
Pillai of Trivandrum." Aiyangar argued that
contrary to the claims of the new school, the
Tamils were a fierce race of martial predators.
He wrote,
"Again some of the Tamil
districts abound with peculiar tomb stones
called 'Virakkals' (hero stones). They were
usually set upon graves of warriors that were
slain in battle…The names of the deceased
soldiers and their exploits are found inscribed
on the stones which were decorated with
garlands of peacock feathers or some kind of
red flowers. Usually small canopies were put up
over them. We give below a specimen of such an
epitaph. A careful study of the Purapporul
Venba Malai will doubtless convince the reader
that the ancient Tamils were, like the
Assyrians and the Babylonians, a ferocious race
of hunters and soldiers armed with bows and
lances making war for the mere pleasure of
slaying, ravaging and pillaging. Like them the
Tamils believed in evil spirits, astrology,
omens and sorcery. They cared little for death.
The following quotations from the above work
will bear testimony to the characteristics of
that virile race.
(1) Garlanded with the entrails
of the enemies they danced with lances held in
their hands topside down. (2) They set fire to
the fertile villages of their enemies, and (3)
plundered their country and demolished their
houses. (4) The devil's cook distributed the
food boiled with the flesh of the slain, on the
hearth of the crowned heads of fallen
kings.
With these compare same
passages from the Assyrian stories of
campaigns: 'I had some of them flapped in my
presence and had the walls hung with their
skins. I arranged their heads like
crown…All his villages I destroyed,
desolated, burnt; I made the country desert.'
And yet the early Dravidian are considered by
Dr.Caldwell as the farmers of the best moral
codes, and by the new school of non-Aryan Tamil
scholars…"
Aiyangar even claims, "We have
said that the Vellalas were pure Dravidians and
that they were a military and dominant tribe. If
so one could naturally ask, 'How could the
ancestors of peaceful cultivators be a war-like
race?" He argues that the etymology of the root
Vel is connected to war and weapons, that it was
not uncommon for cultivating castes to have been
martial tribes in former days as in the case of
the Nayar, the Pillai, the Bants, etc. He also
cites an official census of the Tamil population
in the Madras Presidency, which shows that Tamil
castes with a claim to traditional marital status
constituted twenty six percent of the total
number of Tamils in the Presidency. (Srinivasa
Aiyangar; 1915, pp.40-58)
Aiyangar's attack on the Dravidian theory of
Caldwell and the Vellala propagandists had
political undertones. Learned Brahmins of the day
were acutely aware of the political interests
that lay behind the claims of the early Dravidian
school. Vellala Tamil revivalism and its idea of
Dravidian uniqueness were closely related to the
pro-British and collaborationist poltical
organization that was formed in 1916, by the
non-Brahmin elites of the Madras Presidency - the
South Indian Liberal Federation. Its proponents
were, therefore careful not to emphasise the
narratives of the martial reputation of the
Tamils that were embodied in the ancient 'high'
Tamil texts or in the folk culture of rural
Tamilnadu. (Tamil revivalism had been promoted by
Protestant missionaries and British officials in
the latter half of the 19th century, only in as
much as it was seen to facilitate the social,
economic and religious aims of demilitarizing
Tamil society and diminishing the influence of
Brahmins in it.)
This was done not only out of a desire to
promote Vellala caste culture, as Tamil national
culture, but also in conscious deference to the
concerns of the Raj about the 'seditious' views
of Tamil cultural revival that were being
propagated by the 'terrorists' and their
sympathisers which were aimed at stirring the
"ancient martial passions" of the Tamils in
general and the military castes in particular, by
appealing to martial values inscribed in the
caste traditions of the Maravar and linking them
to a glorious past that had been sustained by,
what according to them, was the unique and
powerful Tamil martial tradition. The political
life of Purananooru, the foundation text of Tamil
militarism had been initiated by two Brahmins who
were sympathisers of the Indian revolutionary
movement at this juncture. (The one was the great
Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi; the other was the
great Tamil scholar M.Raghava Aiyangar, the court
pundit of the Marava kings of Ramnad.)
These concerns, had compelled the Raj to take
lines of action aimed at the terrorists and the
military castes. One, it carefully sifted through
the Tamil revivalist propaganda of the suspected
sympathisers of the terrorist movement, to charge
them with sedition. Two, it introduced the
Criminal Tribes Act of 1911, with the express
objective of throughly obtaining knowledge of,
supervising and disciplining the Kallar and
Maravar who were classified as dacoits and thugs
under this act. The political mobilization of the
Tamil military castes began as reaction against
this act. The political leadership of this
mobilization was inspired by the militarism of
the terrorists. Modern Tamil militarism as a
political force emerged from this
conjuncture.
As we shall see later, Karunanidhi, Thondaman,
Kasi Anandan and Prabhakaran are all, in varying
degrees, products of the notions of Tamilian
identity which arose from this conjuncture.
Students of Tamil ethno-nationalism's current
phase will find that the martial narratives of
Tamilian past and present are at work in two
extremes of the Tamil political spectrum. Last
month, an audio cassette was released in Jaffna
by the LTTE and a commemoration volume was
released in Singapore in Thondaman's honour. Both
are politically conscious efforts to root two
personalities and their nationalist projects, to
what has been portrayed as the most powerful
manifestation of the Tamil martial tradition -
the Chola Empire.
The LTTE cassette evokes a glorious past
associated with Prabhakaran's only nom de guerre,
Karikalan - the founder of the Chola Empire. The
commemoration volume, on the other hand seeks to
emphasise the 'continuity' of a martial caste
tradition between the leader of the CWC and the
great general of the Chola Empire, Karunakara
Thondaman. Thus the examination of Tamil
militarism in this study is an exploration of the
answer to the question - why does Tamil
ethno-nationalism express itself thus and how
does it sustain power to appeal to pan-Tamilian
sentiments?
One of the main figures of the
Indian revolutionary movement in Tamilnadu at the
turn of the [20th] century was Maha Kavi Subramaniya Bharathy. One
of it sympathisers was the Tamil scholar
M.Raghava Aiyangar, who was the court pundit of
the Maravar kings of Ramnad. Subramaniya Bharathy
has been one of the most powerful influences in
Tamilian cultural and political life in the
twentieth century. The fundamental idea of modern
Tamil militarism - that the Tamils were a martial
race and that the rejuvenation of their martial
traditions is necessary for national liberation,
was enunciated by these two Brahmins in the first
decade of the twentieth century.
This idea has informed Tamil
scholarship as well as the narratives of militant
Tamil nationalism since then. It has been
reproduced in many forms but its fundamental
structure has remained the same. This narrative
has been a basis of the vocabulary of Tamil
nationalism in
(a) The Indian revolutionary
movement in Tamilnadu,
(b) The Indian National movement in
Tamilnadu,
(c) The DK's secessionist and Anti-Hindi
movement,
(d) Caste revivalist movements in
Tamilnadu,
(e) The DMK,
(f) The Federal Party in Sri Lanka, and
(g) The armed Tamil separatist movement in the
North and East of Sri Lanka.
Current (establishment)
literature in the West on the use of history in
national liberation organizations and terrorist
groups, refers to what these organizations
endeavour to disperse among their members and
their people as 'the' authentic reading of the
nation's past and present, as projective
narratives which are, it is claimed, "stories
that not only recall the past, but also teach how
to behave in the present."
"Narratives of this sort tell individuals how
they would ideally have to live and die in order
to contribute properly to their collectivity and
its future."
It has been argued in an analysis which draws
attention to the frequent use of these projective
narratives by the Armenian Secret Army for the
Liberation of Armenia, that the members of the
Army are not marginal outcastes from Armenian
society, but that projective narratives transform
them into "paradigmatic figures of its deepest
values." (Gerald Cromer: 1991). The projective
narratives that shaped militant Tamil nationalism
and its idea of nationl liberation were
formulated as a reassertion of feudal Tamil
militarism and its traditional cultural hegemony
in Tamil society.
This was so because they were eseentially
linked to the Indian revolutionary movement's
idea of reviving India's traditional martial
heritage as a precondition for national
liberation. The importance of chiefly Bharathy
and to lesser extent Raghava Aiyangar in the rise
of modern Tamil militarism lies in the fact that
they initiated a political reading of the ancient
Tamil text Purananooru, in particular- an
anthology of predominantly heroic poems - and a
heroic Tamilian past in general, as basis of a
Tamilian concept of national liberation. Their
reading was conceived as part of the Indian
revolutionary movement's ideology of national
liberation through armed insurrection.
It must be emphasised that they saw the Tamil
martial tradition from a pan-Indian perspective.
To them the heroic Tamil past was a reflection of
a great Indian martial heritage, whereas the
Dravidian school vehemently rejected the
pan-Indian perspective as a myth promoted by
Brahmin interests. Therefore the politics of the
views propagated by Bharathy and Raghava Aiyangar
have to be located at two levels; the pan-Indian
and the south Indian.
At the first [pan-Indian] level, the following
factors have to be considered; (a) British
recruitment policy and its theory of martial
races, (b) the cultural and political reaction to
it among the educated Indian middle classes in
Bengal and west India., (c) the kshatriya
revivalism of Bal Ganghadar Thilak, (d) Japan's
victory over Russia in 1905.
At the south Indian level, the following
factors shaped the two men's thinking; (a) the
movement for elevating the status of Tamil
language, (b) the rediscovery of the Sangam
anthologies, (c) the status and role of feudal
Tamil militarism in Tamil society.
The shift in [military] recruitment to the
northwest of the subcontinent toward the latter
part of the 19th century was accompanied by the
martial races theory which sought to elaborate
the idea as to why some Indian people - Rajputs,
Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims - were martial, while
others - Marathas, Bengali upper castes, Mahars,
Telugus and Tamils who had once been the
predominant groups of the British Indian army -
were not martial.
Lord Roberts of Kandahar, the commander in
chief of the Indian army, 1885-1893, had made
disparaging remarks about the martial character
of the Tamils [and] Telugus who had once formed
the backbone of the army's largest group of
infantry units.
"Each cold season I made long tours in order
to acquaint myself with the needs and
capabilities of the men of the Madras Army. I
tried hard to discover in them those fighting
qualities which had distinguished their
forefathers during the wars of the last and the
beginning of the present century…and I was
forced to the conclusion that the ancient
military spirit had died in them."
It was reasoned that long years of peace in
the south had had a softening effect on them.
There were protests and petitions from the
de-recruited classes including Tamils and
Telugus. A need to prove their ancient martial
character arose among many classes that were thus
affected.
At a Congress session in 1891, two Telugu
Brahmins invoked the ancient Hindu law giver Manu
in support of their contention that they were
traditionally a war-like race, to refute Lord
Robert's alleged slights against the Telugu
people. These sentiments had been already
exacerbated by the Arms Act of 1878 which
prohibited Indians from possessing arms without
permission. This was seen as a loss of self
respect. Raja Rampal Singh protested against it
at the second session of the National Congress in
1886,
"…But we cannot be grateful to it (the
British Government) for degrading our natures,
for systematically crushing out of us all martial
spirit, for converting a race of soldiers into a
timid flock of quill driving sheep." (Cohen;
1990, chapters 1, 2)
The Marathas had also been particularly
affected by these developments. Thilak arose as a
national leader among them. He propagated the
view that the kshatriya class which had been
disfranchised by the British had to rise again.
They were the traditional defenders of the realm
and internal order. National emancipation could
be achieved through the rejuvenation of that
class and the traditional Indian social
order.
Thilak's ideas played an important role in the
rise and dispersion of the Indian revolutionary
movement. The movement got a big boost in 1905,
when Japan defeated Russia. The victory
demonstrated a point - that Asian martial spirit
could prevail over European military might.
Hence, for the revolutionaries (the Raj
classified them as terrorists) India's
emancipation lay in the revival of its
traditional martial values. The impact of Japan's
victory over Russia on the Indian revolutionary
movement in Bengal and west India has been
examined (in detail, in Dua: 1966).
At this time Subramaniya Bharathy was the editor
of a nationalist Tamil paper called, 'India'. He
was an ardent follower of Thilak and the
revolutionary movement and was one of the few in
Madras who were bold enough to propagate its
ideas through his paper. On Thilak's fiftieth
birthday, he wrote an editorial (14.7[July]
1906):
"The present condition of the country makes it
necessary to have Veera Poojai (hero
worship)…Veera Poojai is indispensable for
a country's progress. The people of our country
who have always keenly observed Veera Poojai,
should not be slack at a time when it is most
needed."
A note in the paper says that, Thilak's
birthday was celebrated in Madras at Bharathy's
house at Lingaya Chetty street and that a pooja
had been held for India's martial goddess - Veera
Sakthi - Bhavani (the goddess worshipped by the
Maratha warrior king Shivaji). The revolutionary
movement was spreading the Shivaji festival in
many parts of India to rekindle the martial
spirit which according to them had been
systematically crushed out of the Indian nation
and were establishing gymnasiums to improve its
physical power.
Bharathy wrote an editorial titled in English
as, 'The Outrage of the Arms Act', reminiscient
of Raja Rampal Singh's outburst - "An evil
Viceroy called Lord Lytton introduced this Act in
1878. The people should have opposed it then. It
is totally against divine law to make a great
country's people cowards who cannot wield
weapons." (1.12[Dec] 1906)
Again he wrote an editorial titled, 'Are
Indians Cowards?', on Japan's martial example. "A
few Asiatics soundly beat hundreds and thousands
of Russians. This is enough to show the valour of
the Asians. The warrior's heaven - Veera Swarkam
- is better." (29.12 [Dec.] 1906)
He [Bharathy] was opposed to those who upheld
the value of English education. The ideas of the
revolutionary movement had to be rooted in Tamil
culture and its deepest values; and they had to
be spread among the ordinary Tamil masses. This
could be done according to him only by adopting a
simple style of writing Tamil. This view
underlies his poems and songs through which he
propagated the idea of the rejuvenation of the
Tamil martial spirit as part of the India's
heroic reawakening and liberation.
"Amongst us, the Tamils, manliness is gone,
valour is gone. We don't have a country. We don't
have a government. Will Saraswathy (the goddess
of learning) appear in this country in such a
situation?"
"Tamil Nadu has not lost its wealth,
independence, physical strength, and mental
strength and has descended to a low state. Hence
good poets disappeared from this country."
In his Puthiya Aathisoody (a book of moral
aphorisms for children), he wrote, "Dismiss fear.
Do not fail in courage. Learn the art of
War."
Thilak's idea that the kshatriya class of
India that had been disfranchised by the British,
had to reasert itself in the struggle for the
nation's emancipation was more real and immediate
to Bharathy, because he came from a Brahmin
family from Tinnevely in the deep south, that had
served the Poligars of Ettayapuram. He was hence,
acutely aware of the traditional status of the
Maravar in Tamil society and what had befallen
them under the British. The great famine of 1876
had brought untold suffering upon the people in
the deep south and had led to a further decline
in the standing of the poorer sections of the
Maravar. They were constantly harassed by the
police which was formed by Brahmins and other
non-military castes.
The poet, a Brahmin who had given up the holy
thread, hated Brahminism and his castemen who
were servile to the English. To Bharathy, the
kshatriyas of Tamilnadu were the Maravar. (This
view seems to have been common to Brahmin
families that had served the Marava chieftains
and kings. See also, Dirks; 1982; p.662). In a
note to his 'Paanjali Sapatham', he says,
"Maram means valour - Veeram. Maravar are
kshatriyar. Understand that, in our country, the
class that is known now as Maravar are
kshatriyar."
His 'Maravan's song' (Maravan Paattu) relates
the predicament of the traditional Tamil military
castes under British rule and urges the
reassertion of the Maravar, and their martial
reputation. He portrays his own castemen in the
police as a wretched and greedy lot, abject
before the English master, framing criminal cases
against the Maravar and fleecing them under
various pretexts.
"Alas, we have to dig the soil today to earn
our wage. The might of our swords and spears are
gone! A bad name has come upon us in this
world…The times when we made war with bows,
blowing our chanks, are now a thing of the
past…Can we bring disgrace upon our great
warriors of yore by selling our honour? Aren't we
the valourous Maravar? Should we lead this
useless life anymore?"
Thus the revival of traditional Tamil
militarism - in its caste and broader cultural
forms - was essentially linked to Bharathy's
project of propagating and kindling Tamil
nationalism among the masses as a means of
national liberation. The project has continued to
be at the centre of all political schemes that
have invoked Tamil nationalism from his time.
Bharathy's convictions received a boost in
September 1906, at the time when the activities
of the revolutionaries were gathering momentum.
It came from a talk given by U.V.Saminatha Aiyer
on a poem from the Purananooru - an anthology of heroic
Tamil poetry. U.V.Saminatha Aiyer, after many years
of research, had discovered and published the
Purananooru in 1894. It was considered to be one
of the most ancient Tamil works. It is said that
"the publication of Purananooru created a
revolution in Tamilian thinking." (P.S.Mani;
p.105. Bharathiyarum Thamil Pulavarhalum, 1981,
Madras. "They - the Tigers - are writing the new
Purananooru", Ulahath Thamilar,
1.5[May].1992)
The talk gave Bharathy what he was looking for
- a sound basis for propagating the idea of
reviving the martial spirit among the Tamils to
achieve national liberation through violence. He
wrote an editorial on the subject titled in
English as 'Ancient Tamil Lady of Ever Sacred
Memory', on 8.9[Sept].1906. The political life of
Purananooru, the foundation text of Tamil
militarism, begins in this editorial.
It was a time when very few Tamils knew about
Purananooru or the Sangam corpus. He says,
"A Tamil work called
Purananooru was written many centuries ago. It
does not, like later works, relate Puranic
fables. It tells of the condition of Tamilnadu
in those times, the wars of the kings and many
other natural events. A poem from this work was
expounded by U.V.Saminatha Aiyer of the Madras
Presidency College. There are some, who out of
ignorance think that there is no use in
learning Tamil and that it cannot inspire
patriotism. Aiyer spoke on this poem to refute
their erroneous notions.
The poem is about the mother of
a warrior (Rana Veeran). The woman had sent her
son to the battle field, thinking that he will
either die in war for his mother country or
come back victorious. A liar came and told her
that her son had taken fright and run away from
the battle field. On hearing this the old woman
exclaimed, 'Did I bring up a coward to whom his
life was more important than the love for his
nation? I shall go to the battle front and if
he has done so, I shall hack these breasts that
gave him suck and will die there.'
Determined thus the old woman
went to the field and was overjoyed to find her
son slain in battle. She was at peace, because
her son had given his life for his motherland.
The woman's name is not known now. But only if
Lord Isvara blesses the continent of Baratha
with many such mothers in these times, a
solution to all our problems could be
found."
Bharathy draws a parallel here to
the story of a Japanese mother who had lost all
her sons in the war but was found crying that she
did not have more sons to send to the battle
front. There were books on Japan's victory over
Russia like, 'The Russo-Japanese War' in
circulation, particularly among the
revolutionaries and their sympathisers at that
time. The theme of the heroic Japanese mothers
who nurtured the martial spirit in their sons
during the 1905 war was emphasised in these
books.
Japan's victory over Russia had inspired
another nationalist minded Brahmin to write
Parani poems (A form of Tamil war poetry sung for
a warrior who slays 1,000 elephants in battle)
hailing its martial example. This was M.Raghava
Aiyangar, who was the editor of the Madurai
Thamil Sangam's journal 'Senthamil.'
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. (49) 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). (50)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.
(51) 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).
(52)
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 (53) 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.
"The lines of a song in today's
ceremony touched my heart. The lines refer to the
Tamil flag which fluttered on the Himalayas.
Although this may be a thing of the past, history
can be re-established. Today this country is at
war because the youth of this area were denied
opportunities in education and culture…Our
youth have not only done well in education but
have shown that they have the self respect to
achieve their aims through armed struggle. If
nothing is done towards finding a settlement to
the crisis in the north-east, the history related
in the lines of that song will be reasserted." -
Joseph Pararajasingham, MP for Batticaloa,
speaking at a school function on 26.9[Sept]'92
(reported in the Virakesari of 1.10[Oct].'92
The song referred to by the member of
parliament is from an MGR film. The lines of the
song about which the MP speaks, are "I see that
era when Cheran's flag fluttered on the
Himalayas."*[see below the foot-note by Sachi Sri
Kantha]. Joseph's speech and MGR's song
invoke one of the most powerful narratives of
modern Tamil nationalism - the conquest of north
India by the kings of the three Tamil dynasties,
the Cheras, Cholas and the Pandyas, which was
accomplished by imprinting the Bow (Chera) or
Tiger (Chola) or Pandya Fish (Pandya) emblems on
the Himalayas.
The legend of Cheran Senguttuvan is the
dominant episode of this narrative. Its political
life in the Tamil nationalist project in Tamil
Nadu and Sri Lanka has been more tenacious than
the Dutugemunu - Elara episode in the narrative
of Sinhala Buddhism's struggle against the 'South
Indian Tamil threat'.
The legend of Cheran Senguttuvan, as we shall
see later, was used by the Dravidian movement for
drawing a compelling characterization of its
anti-Hindi agitation. The legend forms the third
part of the epic Silappathikaram,
which was written by Ilango Atikal, Seran
Senguttuvan's brother - a Jain ascetic.
It relates the story of Kannaki
who became the goddess Pattini. The epic is
divided into three parts (kaandam), named after
the capitals of the Chera, Chola and Pandya
kingdoms; Vanji, Puhar and Madurai. Unlike the
heroic Sangam poetry which preceded it, the
Silappathikaram speaks for the first time about a
Tamil Nadu as such, constituted by the three
kingdoms, distinguished by a martial tradition
superior to that of north India. It portrays the
three dynasties conquering the north and
imprinting their emblems on the Himalayas,
together and separately. The Pandyan king who
mistakenly causes the beheading of Kannaki's
husband, Kovalan, bears the title 'He who overran
the Aryan army' (Aryappadai kadantha).
M.Raghava Aiyangar wrote a book based on the
third part of the epic - the Vanji kaandam -
called, 'Seran Senguttuvan'. It was dedicated to
Pandithurai Thevar. A recent work on Aiyangar's
contribution says, "This was the first book to
give the Vanji kaandam in prose. It was after
this that many scholars studied the Vanji kaandam
and wrote books…the book made everyone
realise and appreciate the golden era of the
Tamils." (Annals of Tamil Research: M.Raghava
Aiyangar Commemoration Volume, University of
Madras, 1978, pp.18-19) The book went through
four editions in the first two decades of its
publication. "It can be said that after the
appearance of this book, research on the Sangam
period expanded. Many times it was made a text in
the universities of Andhra, Mysore and Madras and
in Ceylon, and is widely read." (Araichi
Thohuthi, 1938, p.20).
We examined the life and politics of M.Raghava
Aiyangar in the last issue. As we pointed out
there, Aiyangar's idea of Tamilian renaissance
differed from contemporaneous Indian nationalists
in one important respect. Whereas the Indian
nationalists who upheld the cause of Tamil
culture and history, especially saw them from a
pan-Indian perspective, Aiyangar's writings
emphasised a south Indian, Tamilian uniqueness
and martial superiority. His most famous work
'Seran Senguttuvan' and the essay he wrote later
to supplement and support it are clear attempts
to establish and popularise that idea. Three
reasons can be identified for his attitude.
The first, as we noted earlier, was his close
relationship with the Marava rulers of Ramnad -
the Sethupathys. The second is that he was a
Vaishnavite Brahmin - the Indian National
Congress was dominated in the Presidency of
Madras by Saivite Brahmins. Many Vaishnavites
have, as a result tended to sympathise with the
Dravidian movement (Sivathamby, 1989). In a
lecture delivered to the 23rd annual conference
of the Madurai Tamil Sangam, Aiyangar said,
"The three Tamil kings, the Cheras, Cholas and
the Pandyas established their martial glory
beyond Thamilaham (Tamil homeland) which lay
between the Vengadam hills to the north and
Comorin to the south; but their love for the
Tamil speaking land was so great that they were
not desirous of attaching lands where foreign
languages are spoken, to Thamilaham…It will
be appropriate to name the Madras Presidency as
the Dravidian Province." (Araichi Thohuthi; 1938,
pp.318, 338)
The third reason is related to his stay in
Kerala, as head of the Tamil department in the
University of Trivandrum. Kerala was the ancient
Chera kingdom. Aiyangar's writings during his
residence at Trivandrum attempt to place Kerala
history and culture within the tradition of
Thamilaham. The Maharaj of the Travancore state
at that time, Sithirai Thirunal had told
Aiyangar, "Malayalam is the Tamil language that
bathed in the sea of Sanskrit" (R.Veerapathiran;
1978, p.38).
Some aspects of Kerala and Tamil literature
and 'Chera Venthar Seiyutt Kovai' Aiyangar's
'gothra'(section) name was Aiyanarithan, a poet
of the Chera dynasty, who wrote the Purapporul
Venba Malai - a treatise on Tamil martial
culture. One of his most controversial essays
which resulted from his work at Trivandrum was on
the kinship system of the Chera dynasty. All this
stems from his work on Seran Senguttuvan. This
book which has to be read in conjunction with his
essay, 'The conquest of the Himalayas by the
Tamil Kings' (Thamil Ventharin Imaya
Padai-eduppu) attempted to ground the story of
Senguttuvan in epigraphical literary evidence.
The work seeks to establish a story of
Senguttuvan, related in the Silappathikaram's
Vanji kaandam, as a historical truth. The book as
a school and university textbook has left a deep
imprint on Tamilian cultural-political
vocabulary.
Annadurai, Karunanidhi, MGR and the speakers
of the Federal Party have invoked the example of
Seran Senguttuvan to bestir Tamil youth. The
Silappathikaram portrays his expedition into
north India as the assertion of Tamil military
might over Aryan kings who had in their ignorance
disparaged the martial prowess of southern
Tamils.
Senguttuvan vows to defeat two Aryan kings,
Kanakan and Vijayan ("They who could not hold
their tongue", says the epic) who had cast
aspersions on what is called "Then Thamil Aatral"
- south Tamil might. [Would] make them carry a
stone hewn from the Himalayan mountain, back to
Tamil Nadu for the deification of Kannaki as
goddess Pattini. Senguttuvan is told, "You faced
the thousand Aryan kings in combat on the day you
bathed the goddess in the great flood of the
Ganges…if you have decided on the
expedition (to bring the stone), let the kings of
the north fly the Bow, Tiger and Fish flags in
their lands."
Senguttuvan, says the epic, was born to
Nedun-cheralathan, who bears the title, Imaya
Varamban (He who has the Himalayas as his
boundary) and the daughter of a Chola king; and
as such, he is seen as representing a Tamilian
unity. (The Silappathikaram says that Gajabahu of
Lanka invoked the goddess Pattini at
Senkuttuvan's capital to come to his country and
give her blessings on the day Senkuttuvan's
father Imaya Varamban's birth was commemorated
there.)
The conquest of the north and the Himalayas is
a leitmotif in the Sangam anthologies which
precede the Silappathikaram. ("The Aryans
screamed out loud in pain when you attacked
them.", says a poem in the Sangam anthologies)
The three parts of the epic emphasise the theme
to glorify each dynasty. The first part refers to
an expedition undertaken to the Himalayas by
Thirumavalavan, who was known as Karikalan
(Prabhakaran's nom de guerre) - the founder of
the Chola empire. He is shown as defeating the
Maghadha, Avanti, and Vajjra kingdoms. The second
part speaks of the Pandyan who conquered the
'newly arisen Himalayas' when his ancient land of
the Kumari mountains and the Pahruli river were
taken by the sea.
It is a theme in the inscriptions of the Chola
empire at a later date. One Chola emperor takes
on the title, the Conqueror of the Ganges. Minor
poetry which arose after the decline of the
Cholas praising military commanders and
chieftains of the Tamil country also utilise the
theme (Karumanikkan Kovai, Kalingathu Parani,
etc.)
The leitmotif of the Tamil emblem on the
Himalayas finds the most vivid expression in the
story of Senguttuvan. Aiyangar takes it out of
its epic context to emphasise a perception - that
the Tamils were historically indomitable martial
race. The story of Senguttuvan's expedition
repeatedly lays stress on the what is referred to
as South Tamil martial might. Aiyangar's later
essay on the theme of Tamil expeditions into the
north tried to prove again that these events were
true on the basis of evidence, culled from the
Imperial Gazeteer of India and the Hand Gazeteer
of India.
In this essay, he [Aiyangar] argues that Asoka
did not think of invading Tamil Nadu because he
and other northern Aryan kings were aware and
scared of the martial prowess of the ancient
Tamils who before their times had invaded and
defeated the north and imprinted their emblems on
the Himalaya mountains.
The first Tamil king to imprint his emblem on
the mountain was Karikalan; the names borne by
parts of the Himalayas such as the Chola Pass and
the Chola Range prove the Chola king's expedition
is a historical fact, argued Aiyankar (Araichi
Thohuti; 1938, p.184).
He did the 'academic' groundwork for the
propagation of the narrative of Tamil military
expeditions into the north as an expression of a
unique and superior martial prowess and its
symbol - the Tamil flag on the Himalayas.
Dravidian propagandists and the politicians of
the Federal Party transformed it into a nostalgic
and powerful story of a golden era woven into the
rhetoric and national liberation and youth
mobilization.
There is some confusion here,
about which MGR song was played in the said
school function. The quote of Joseph
Pararajasingham, cited by Sivaram, states "The
lines refer to the Tamil flag which fluttered
on the Himalayas" but the exact Tamil words of
the song were not quoted. But Sivaram has cited
the lines as "I see that era when Cheran's flag
fluttered on the Himalayas". I'm not sure
whether Sivaram was a witness to that
particular event of September 26, 1992.
If Sivaram's translated quote
of the song is taken literally, then these
lines appear in an MGR song: "Puthiya Vaanam -
Puthiya Bhoomi enrum Puhal Mazhai Pozhikirathu"
(Anbe Vaa movie).
But, an earlier MGR song by
poet Kannadasan "Achcham Enpathu Madamaiyada"
அச்சம்
என்பது
மடமையடா
(Mannathi Mannan movie) provides a more fuller
version of the Tamil militarism spirit,
including the flag fluttering on the Himalayas.
In my recent eulogy to Sivaram, I had presumed
that the Kannadasan song in the Mannathi Mannan
movie was the one which was referred to by
Joseph Pararajasingham. Despite this confusion,
there is no doubt that MGR made use of the
powerful historical scenario of 'Cheran Tamil
flag fluttering on the Himalayas', more than
once in the lyrics of his movies.
The Significance of
Sivaram's study on the Maravar Caste and Tamil
Militarism
Its unfortunate that D.P.Sivaram's notable
study [at least the published version in the
Lanka Guardian journal] on the Maravar Caste
and Tamil Militarism didn't have a proper
closure in 1992. One is also not sure, why
Sivaram didn't respond to two of his critics,
namely Charles Hoole and T.Vanniasingham. May
be, he might have felt that the expressed views
of these two correspondents were half-baked and
not worth a response.
From my readings of the academic
contributions of late Charles R.A. Hoole
(Principal, Baldaeus Theological College,
Trincomalee; died on Sept.28, 2003), I have
inferred that he subscribed to the tradition of
the 19th century Chrisitian evangelists, who
came to the Tamil Nadu and Eelam to retrieve
the 'savage natives from their sins and show
the path to the Saviour'. Evangelists belonging
to this clan [which included Charles Hoole's
namesake Rajan Hoole and Rajani Thiranagama,
among others] adhere to an obscurantist view
that hardly any respectable culture and
civilization among the Tamils existed, before
the Christian missionary campaigns in the
Indian subcontinent which began in earnest
since early 1500s.
Correspondent T.Vanniasingham's thoughts
[Lanka Guardian, Oct.15, 1992] also partially
reflected this Christian evangelist position.
His observation that "Poets and bards were
hired-hands in the service of chiefs and could
be paid to praise and exaggerate their
struggles and victories" is somewhat
na�ve. The quatrain of 12th
century epic poet Kambar cursing the Chola
king with disdain,
"Mannavanum Neeyo - Vala Naadum
Unatho - Unnai Arintho Thamizhai Othinen" [Are
you still a King? Is this wealthy land only
yours? Did I study Tamil only to serve
you?]
disproves the fallacy of
correspondent Vanniasingham.
Maybe there indeed were poets
and bards of mediocre quality who praised and
exaggerated the 'glories' of their Chiefs. But,
ranking poets and bards who had pride in their
skills never stooped low for mundane benefits.
Even in the 20th century, the ranking Tamil
poets [Subramaniya Bharati, Bharathidasan, Kannadasan and Kasi Anandan comes to my mind] have
shown us in their lives that they'd suffer
poverty, indignity, humiliation, harassment and
even prison terms; but they'd never lick the
feet of power holders for mundane comforts. Of
the four Tamil poets I've noted as examples,
the last three were our contemporaries, and
Kasi Anandan is still living.
Unlike the two [or three, if one includes
R.B.Diulweva] critics of Sivaram, few non-Tamil
academics from USA who have made in-depth
research on the Tamil literature and culture
have provided corroborating reports to that of
Sivaram. These have been compiled as 'Essays on South India'
(Asian Studies at Hawaii, No.15, University
Press of Hawaii, 1975), edited by Burton
Stein.
Thus, I provide excerpts below,
from the thoughts of Clarence Maloney, George
L.Hart III and Burton Stein, to supplement the
research of Sivaram on Maravar caste. This is
vital since I believe that Sivaram may not have
had access to these reports, which preceded his
1992 study. The research ventures of George
Hart and Burton Stein (1926-1996) in the 1960s
and 1970s have questioned the credibility of
the pro-Brahmanical views expressed by
Nilakanta Sastri, the doyen of medieval Tamil
studies in the first half of 20th century, and
the author of The Cholas (Madras;
University of Madras, 1935-1937) and A History of South India from
Prehistoric Times to the Fall of
Vijayanagar (Oxford University Press, 1966,
3rd edition).
George L. Hart III ['Ancient Tamil
Literature: Its Scholarly Past and Future',
pp.41-63]
"…A reading of any of Nilakanta
Sastri's books discloses many facts concerning
the daily life and culture of the Brahmans of
South India, who were never more than a tiny
(though important) minority, but it reveals an
almost total lack of information concerning
other segments of the South Indian population,
even those high non-Brahman castes in whose
hands the power has almost always been held.
Ancient Tamil literature, on the other hand,
was written by high-class poets who followed
the model of the oral poetry of the Paanans and
Paraiyans, men of the lowest castes, and is
devoid of both high-class and Brahmanical bias.
For this reason, it gives a more accurate
picture of the social life and customs of the
area to which it belongs than does any other
classical literature of India." (pp.41-42)
"…It does not seem too much to hope
that some day anthropologists will actually be
able to trace the history of many Tamil castes.
Unfortunately, most work done by
anthropologists on modern Tamilnad has been
devoted to the descendants of the uyarntor, or
'high ones'. Much more study needs to be
devoted to the low castes, who are, after all,
just as important for a proper understanding of
the customs of the area as their higher
counterparts." (p.58)
Burton Stein ['The State and the Agrarian
Order in Medieval South India: A
Historiographical Critique', pp.64-91]
I quote below two relevant paragraphs from
Burton Stein's essay, but refrain from citing
the complete references he had noted, only for
reason of convenience. He also makes a passing
mention of Polonnaruva inscription of Sri Lanka
during the period of King Vijayabahu.
"The maintenance of Chola armies and the
requirements of warfare as central state
functions requiring a bureaucratic structure
constitute the ultimate defensive redoubt of
the conventional view of the state and the
economy. Substantial chapters are devoted to
territorial security and the organization of
royal armies. Where a military unit is
identified, it is assumed to be part of a
central military organization. Thus the many
velaikkarar military units of the period of
Rajaraja are considered not only as the 'king's
own' but as soldiers who have vowed to
sacrifice their lives, by suicide, if
necessary. The evidence upon which these
conclusions about Chola armies are based is
highly doubtful, and it is interesting to note
that the early epigraphists Hultzsch, Krishna
Sastri, and Venkayya held the view that the
warriors called velaikkarar were probably made
up of men from various occupational groups
temporarily engaged in military activities.
Gopinatha Rao, Nilakanta
Sastri, and Mahalingam have, in recent years,
transformed these soldiers into a centrally
recruited and controlled force completely
devoted to the ruler. The implication of the
revised view is that the Chola state had a
monopoly of coercive power which at once
required an effective mobilization and
centralization of resources through a
bureaucracy and, simultaneously, provided the
'central' government with a powerful instrument
of coercion for that purpose - a large, royal,
standing army. This proposition is indefensible
and contrary to a considerable body of evidence
that military power was distributed among many
groups quite independent of the 'centralized
monarchy'.
We have substantial evidence
that mercantile groups maintained a formidable
military capability which was required by the
extensive, itinerant trade network of the age.
Ayyavole inscriptions bear this out, as does
the famous Polonnaruva inscription of Sri Lanka
in the time of Vijayabahu (ca.1120) in which
the Tamil idangai velaikkarar are referred to
in association with the trade organization of
the valanjiyar. References to kaikkolar
velaikkarar have suggested that artisans too
were capable of maintaining armed units, though
Nilakanta Sastri has questioned this.
However, the major loci of military power
were from those prosperous and populous tracts
of agriculture throughout the Coromandel plain
and parts of the interior uplands. The logic of
resources - human and non-human - would make
the dominant peasant population the major
source of armed power. Local military
authorities, local 'chiefs', were conspicuous
in the early Chola period, before Rajaraja I,
and once again attained high visibility in the
thirteenth century when the Chola overlordship
weakened. During he period of the great Cholas,
from Rajaraja I through the time of Kulottunga
I, these local chiefs almost disappear from
view as that view is provided by inscriptions.
This may, of course, mean that as a class of
local leaders these warriors were eliminated
much as the 'poligars' were reduced later by
Tipu Sultan and the British. In a few cases
there is evidence of this. However, it is much
more likely that this level of leadership
continued intact, but submerged beneath the
surface of a society only partially revealed to
us in the inscriptions of the age."
(pp.75-76)
Clarence Maloney ['Archeology in South
India: Accomplishments and Prospects',
pp.1-40]
"…The various Sangam literary works
mention diverse occupations: kings, chieftains,
scholars, sacrificial priests, purohita, poets,
warriors, customs agents, shippers, foreign
merchants, horse importers, blacksmiths,
carpenters, potters, salt makers, pearl divers,
caravan drivers, guards, tailors, fishers,
dancers, drummers, plow farmers, shepherds,
hunters, weavers, leather workers, and robbers.
So far archeology has not produced evidence of
well-developed handicrafts such as this list
suggests. But for such a variety of occupations
to be patronized there must have been an elite
element leading an essentially urban way of
life.
Named peoples may be considered as tribes,
geographical or occupational castes, or ruling
lineages: Kadambar, Velir, Oliyar, Aruvaalar,
Maravar, Aayar, Kocar, Oviyar, Paratavar,
Palaiyar, Velalar, Naagar and others. These
functioned essentially as castes; both Palaiyar
and Paratavar were living in Korkai under the
Pandiyas. But caste as a structural system was
not as rigidly hierarchical as it was to become
in later medieval centuries." (p.17)
Coda
By means of his 1992 study on
the Marava caste, D.P.Sivaram has joined the
elite circle of North American academics who
preceded him in focusing their attention on
other non-Brahmin Tamil castes. These academics
include, Robert Hardgrave (Nadar caste), Brenda
Beck (Kongu region's Kavundar caste), Clarence
Maloney (Paratavar caste), Bryan Pfaffenberger
(Jaffna Vellalar caste) and Stephen Barnett
(Thondai-mandala Kontaikatti Velalar Mudaliyar
caste).
Sivaram's study describing the paalayam and
paalaya kaarar ('Poligars' of British) of
Tinnevely district in Tamil Nadu aroused my
interest when it appeared in the Lanka
Guardian, since one formative influence in my
life - for a whole decade of 1960s - was from
this region. The native address of my music
teacher and flute guru, T.P.Jesudas [the Radio
Ceylon flute artiste of 1950s and 1960s], which
I remember very well is: Paalayam Kottai,
Samathanapuram, Tirunelvely district.
Last but not the least, though
Sivaram did not have a Bachelor's degree from a
university, it is my view that for his
published academic contribution on Marava
caste, Sivaram truly deserves a posthumous
honorary post-graduate degree [Master's Degree
at least] from a Sri Lankan university. And I'm
sure that quite a number of Sri Lankans as well
as non-Sri Lankans would concur with my
suggestion.
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.
I am thankful to
Mr.Joganathan of Wellawatte for drawing my
attention to the fact that the Panivar clan
of Myliddy is also connected to Ramnad. My
information however was based on
(a) Place Name Studies
� Kankesanthurai Circuit, by
Dr.E.Balasunderam of the Jaffna University,
1988, pp.5-6. The book was published for the
Mani Vizha of S.Appadurai of Myliddy.
(b) An interview with
Mr.Ratnalingam of Myliddy politburo member of
a Tamil militant group who I believe is a
relative of Mr.Joganathan. The foot-notes
could not appear due to an unavoidable
circumstance.
Prabhakaran's Mentors
[Lanka Guardian, August 1, 1992, p.2]
D.P.Sivaram's thought-provoking analysis on
the history of Tamil militarism (May 1, May 15,
June 1 and July 1) was a delight to read.
However, he has omitted an essential
contributing factor to the militarism of the
LTTE. It is too simplistic to believe that the
historical traditions of the different castes
among Tamils in Tamil Nadu and Jaffna alone
contributed to the emergence of Tamil Tigers.
If that is so, which caste does Clint Eastwood
belong to? I pose this question because
Prabhakaran had gone on record to acknowledge
the influence of Clint Eastwood movies in
developing his own martial acumen.
While Sivaram had commented on
the links the current DMK leader M.Karunanidhi
developed with the Maravar community, he has
failed to note that more than Karunanidhi's
journalistic skills, it was the movies of
Kandy-born M.G.Ramachandran, which brought a
sense of martial pride to the Tamil masses,
both in Tamilnadu and Sri Lanka. In the late
1940s and whole of 1950s, MGR acted in a series
of Tamil historical costume-adventures to
highlight the Tamil martial tradition.
Especially successful as box-office 'hits' were
the movies with names that began with the first
syllable 'Ma'. The names of these movies told
the past glory of Tamil. These include, Manthri
Kumari (Minister's Daughter), Marutha Naatu
Ilavarasi (Princess of Marutha Land), Marma
Yogi (Mysterious Ascetic), Malai Kallan
(Mountain Thief), Madurai Veeran (Hero of
Madurai), Maha Devi (The Great Devi) and
Mannaathi Mannan (King of Kings). In all these
movies, MGR exhibited his martial skills to
thrill his fans. There is no doubt that
Prabhakaran and his original band were more
influenced by these MGR movies than by anything
else.
A Post-script in 2005 by
Sachi Sri Kantha to this 1992
Correspondence:
In 1992, I was fully aware that
Mervyn de Silva, the editor of Lanka Guardian,
exercised his editorial pen sharply; thus I had
to limit my critical comments to a maximum of
300 words for this type of unsolicited
correspondence, if I wanted to see my letter in
print. Thus I exercised word economy, as well
as 'hooks' to tease Mervyn de Silva's erudite
eyes. The sarcastic sentence, "If that is so,
which caste does Clint Eastwood belong to?" was
one of such 'hooks', and I didn't mean it to
undermine author Sivaram's scholarship.
Also, I didn't elaborate further on the
probable significance of MGR's fascination with
the alphabet 'Ma'; call it a cryptic
acknowledgment to the warrior 'Maravar' caste.
For a whole decade [1950s], MGR named quite a
number of his costume-adventure movies with the
first syllable 'Ma'. It is also not
inconsequential, that his ancestors belonged to
the Manradiyar caste of Kovai district,
Kangeyam constituency, who settled in Maruthur
in Kerala state [see, Puratchi Nadigar MGR (in
Tamil), edited by Lena Thamilvanan, Manimegalai
Publishers, Chennai, 1994, 2nd edition, p.6].
Then in the 1960s, when contemporary social
themes became his movie vehicles, MGR chose
'Thaa' as the first syllable for a number of
his movie titles or the word Thai as suffix in
the movie titles.
Can one attach any significance to these
word games of a movie star? Cynics may say no.
But, movie stars - like politicians and
sportsmen - also have superstitions on success
for 'gains', 'hits' or 'runs', and image-making
via movie careers is not necessarily limited to
Tamil Nadu. Hollywood had given birth to Ronald
Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thus, MGR and
his illustrious contemporary Sivaji Ganesan -
as actor-politicians - who dominated the Tamil
movies from 1950s to 1970s and made producers
and directors to dance to their wishes and
whims - may not have been exceptions. Sivaji
Ganesan also had a series of successful movies,
which began with the short syllable 'Pa' or
long syllable 'Paa' in late 1950s and
1960s.
Finally, the theme of kaval-karar -
described by author Sivaram in part 5 of his
series - did receive attention in MGR's movies,
especially in his successful Madurai Veeran
(1956) movie. Kavalkaran was also the title of
another MGR movie released in 1967, under the
banner of his own company, Sathya Movies.
3. Letter of Correspondent
C.R.A.Hoole [Ontario, Canada]:
Tamil Military Caste
[Lanka Guardian, September 15, 1992, p.12]
D.P.Sivaram's claim that Bishop Caldwell's
writing served to "demilitarize Tamil society"
(August 1) discloses a fixation on Tamil
martial prowess and warrior bravery. The
fixation is more explicit in Mr.Sivaram's
account of the 'Tamil military castes' (May 1 -
July 1). The account cannot however be taken as
an accurate reading of Tamil history. It may be
better understood as a charter, providing
historiographical legitimacy for the
present-day glorification of warrior-heroes who
earn fame and honour through gruesome
deeds.
Crucial to his argument is the assertion
that the pre-British society was dominated by
martial values and only subsequently "under
active British patronage the Vellala caste
established its dominance, and its culture
became representative and hegemonic in Tamil
society" (May 15, p.18). Against this view, it
may be pointed out that centuries before the
Bishop launched his so-called pacification
programme, the brahmans and their Vellala
allies initiated a process of agrarian
expansion that not only brought large tracts of
land under cultivation, but its people under
the sway of brahmanical values (B.Stein, 1980;
B.Beck, 1979). Kallar and Maravar during the
Chola times progressively converted their lands
to peasant agriculture and also adopted Vellala
titles. This process has been described as
"Vellalization" or "brahmanization" and gave
rise to the Tamil proverb, "Kallar, Maravar and
Agambediyar becoming fat, turn into Vellalar".
The caste society as we know it today, began to
emerge from process in the tenth century, with
its left-hand and right-hand structural
divisions.
It would then follow that the dominant
values of the Tamil society in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries are typically caste
values that is, "hierarchy" and "consensus" -
in opposition to "conflict" (M.Moffat, An
Untouchable Community in South India, 1979). In
this context, the Kallar and Maravar who
continued to inhabit the remaining marginal or
peripheral tracts at this time, may be seen to
represent a classical ethosthat was receding
into oblivion.
There is no doubt that the Kallar and
Maravar remained an irritant to the British
Raj, as they had been to the Chola and Pandya
overlords. On the other hand because they
existed outside the larger caste society,
neither a Kallan nor a Maravan could during the
time become a paradigmatic figure worthy of
imitation by the vast majority of the Tamils.
In short, Mr.Sivaram has exaggerated their
influence on the Tamil society during that
period.
4. Letter of Correspondent
T.Vanniasingham [Canada]:
Maravar Militarism [Lanka Guardian, October
15, 1992, p.21]
Please permit me to say a few words about
Mr.Sivaram's essays on Tamil military castes.
In his account he is illegitimately glorifying
them. He seems to be implying that they were
treated unambiguously with awe and veneratio,
at the time of their exploits. Tamil literary
documents of the period are not reliable on
this score.Poets and bards were hired-hands in
the service of chiefs and could be paid to
praise and exaggerate their struggles and
victories. In any case there are other Tamil
poems that portray the Maravar as blood-thirsty
savages, uncouth, undisciplined and lawless who
lived by robbing unarmed travellers. The
Silapathikaram for instance mentions them as
practising "the glorious art of stripping
travellers of their wealth - for the brave
Maravar virtue lies in the heartlessness of
plunder."
There is no doubt that they established
kingdoms of their own - and at other times they
were mercenaries in the pay of other kingdoms.
In fact there were many ruling castes in
ancient Tamil society. The Maravar were one
such group. These many castes were always in
contention for power and the Maravar won, at
times. They were not overpowering and dominant
all the time and over the entire territory. In
this respect, Mr.Diulweva's claims (Lanka
Guardian, 1 Sept.'92) were quite correct. In
fact it is possible to show that they were a
"fierce maravar tribe - who prefer to die a
glorious death on the battle field to a village
funeral pyre," as the Silapadikaram puts it,
they lacked a theory of government and civil
society. For them a civil society is not
something that people live in but something
that one robs and devours because the Maravar
never produce anything. Long before the British
came to suppress them, they had shown an
inability to govern a civil society of many
castes for any extended period of time.
Governance needs intelligence, political
wisdom, historical knowledge, forebearance and
a capacity for trust, all of which, if we are
to judge by the descriptions in the ancient
Tamil texts, the Maravar conspicuously
lack.
A readiness to kill and be killed, as we
know only too well, is not the way to create a
civilized society.
Letter of Correspondent
R.B.Diulweva [Dehiwela] and Sivaram's
response:
Martial Tamils [Lanka Guardian, September 1,
1992, p.24]
I read with wry amusement, and increasing
bewilderment, Sivaram's curious assemblage of
'facts' about Tamil 'military' castes. The
recluse in the Vanni, and his acolytes in the
diaspora, should be grateful to the L[anka]
G[uardian] for providing a platform for this
skewed rewriting of history.
Some random reflections on Sivaram's thesis.
Does he seriously believe that the buccaneering
Portuguese had the time to indulge in
sociological analysis of Tamil militarism (a la
CIA) and strategically decide to
erase/Vellalise the 'military' castes? This
also applies to the Dutch and the Brits.
Sivaram's overall picture is of a truly
fantastic war sodden people imbibing blood
thirstiness with their mothers' milk. Weren't
the vast mass of Tamils peaceable farmers,
fishermen, craftmen? Or was their sole function
to service these magnificent bravos? And whom
did these 'military' castes fight during the
eras of peace when Tamil civilization, in its
truest sense, flourished?
Another fact for Sivaram. One of his
'military' castes the Maravar has made a
contribution to the Sinhala language. To this
day, a 'marava-raya' is synonymous with 'thug'.
This is, probably, all that these 'warriors'
were!.
D.P.Sivaram states:
I suggest that Mr.Diulweva go
on reading before he finally decides whether it
is skewed history or not. He should also study
Prof.K.Kailasapathy's Tamil Heroic Poetry,
which describes an earlier phase of the culture
that I have tried to analyse. He might find the
overall picture there even more gruesome.
I understand Mr.Diulweva's concerns given
the current situation of the country, and hence
his wish to think that the vast mass of Tamils
were peaceable farmers. His wish and concern
have had precedents in the British era. As for
the sociological analysis of the buccaneering
Portuguese, it was based on Prof.Tikiri
Abeyasinghe's 'Jaffna under the Portuguese'
(discussed there in detail). I deal with the
Maravar in as much as they were a political
fact in the rise of Tamil nationalism. A write
up in the Sunday Times of 23.8[Aug].[19]92 by
its Madras correspondent refers to the
political influence of one Mr.Natarajan who he
says "belongs to the powerful Thevar (the caste
title of the Maravar) community in southern
Tamilnadu." Mr.Diulweva will find, if he takes
a closer look at the politics of Tamilnadu,
still an important political fact.
(1)
'Viduthalai Pulihal' (official organ of the
LTTE), April-May 1991, editorial.
(2)
Viduthalai Pulihal; Article of the Tiger
insignia, p.3, Feb-March 1991. The flag with
the Tiger insignia was declared as the national
flag of Thamil Eelam on Great Heroes Day, 27
Nov 1990.
(3) Baker,
C.J. 1976: The Politics of South India
(1920-1937). Vikas, Delhi; Irshick, Eugene F
1969: Politics and social conflicts in South
India, Berkeley, California.
(4)
Sivathamby, K: Politics of a Literary Style,
Social Scientist, No.68, March 1978.
(5) It has
been noted in passing in another context,
"…all actions and activities (of the DMK)
were presented as activities of warriors
preparing for battle. The protest against Hindi
became a battle like Purananooru
battles…", C.S.Lakshmi: 'Mother-Mother
community and Mother-politics in Tamil Nadu',
Economic and Political Weekly, October 20-29,
1990.
(6)
Maraimalai Atikal: pp.34-35, Chintanai
Katturaikal, English preface to second edition,
Kazhakam, 1961.
(7) Stephen
P.Cohen: The Indian Army - Its Contribution to
the Development of a Nation, Oxford University
Press, New Delhi, 1990. revised Indian edition.
The first edition appeared in 1971. "In the 18
years since this book was first published no
other study has appeared which either
duplicates or replaces it." Introduction to
revised edition, xi.
(8) Dharm
Pal: Traditions of the Indian Army, Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting, Govt.of India,
1961. A second revised edition was put out in
1979. National Book Trust, Delhi.
(9) Twelve
"traditions of Gallantry" in the Indian army
are related in part one. The only one of South
India is that of the Madrasi soldier, an
amorphous term, for the Madras regiment, is a
totally mixed one like the Parachute regiment
and recruits any eligible Indian from the
South. The other traditions of gallantry which
are recounted 'The Rajput Soldier'; The Sikh
soldier etc. refer to specific ethnic caste,
religious or regional groups of north
India.
(10) Madras
Infantry, 1748-1943. Lt.Col.Edward Gwynne
Phythian-Adams, Madras Govt.Press, 1943.
History of the Madras Army,
Lieut.Col.W.J.Wilson, Madras Govt.Press, 5
vols, 1882-89.
(15) Edgard
Thurstan, K.Rangachari: Castes and Tribes of
South India, vol.V, 1909, Govt.Press, Madras,
pp.22-23.
(16) The
Maravar's connections with Jaffna will be
examined elsewhere in this study, especially in
view of a recent attempt by a Jaffna historian
to show that the early colonists of Jaffna were
Maravar and that the rulers of Jaffna belonged
to the Sethupathy clan of that caste. He has
claimed that Vadamaradchi was in former days
Vada Maravar Adchi [the domain of north
Maravar]; 'Yazh Kudi-etram', K.Muthu
Kumaraswamippillai, 1982, Chunnakam,
Jaffna.
(21) The
Portuguese had applie this principle to
establish their control in Jaffna. Tikiri
Abeyasinghe: Jaffna under the Portuguese, 1986,
Colombo, p.24.
(22) The
father of the Dravidian ideology, Robert
Caldwell was Bishop of Tinnevely, the seat of
Marava power.
(23) For the
idea of 'contending narratives' in the
formation of national identity in another
Indian context, the Ayodhya crisis, see Barbara
Stoller Miller: Presidential Address, Journal
of Asian Studies, vol.50, no.4, Nov.1991.
(24) The
Forward Bloc was found by Subash [Chandra
Bose]. I am grateful to Subash Chandra Bose
Thevar, the chief subeditor of the
'Virakesari', a Maravar himself, for drawing my
attention to this phase of Maravar history and
for the valuable comments and material on the
subject, when I began this study in 1990.
(25) This
was also the name a main DMK party paper, in
the [19]60s.
(26) 'Uyir
Thamizhukku', Kasi Anandan, Fatima Press,
Batticaloa; Preface, p.2, 3rd edition,
[publication] year not given.
(27) Two
other papers called 'DMK' were published in Sri
Lanka during this period.
(29) The Book of Duarte
Barbosa, 1518; first published 1812 English
translation by Mansel Longworth Dames, 1921
Hakluyt Society, 1866; reproduced by Asian
Educational Services, New Delhi, 1989, vol.II,
pp.38-40.
(36) Tholkappiyam
Porulathikaram, Naccinarkiniyar's
commentary on verse No.68 & 90.
(36a)Swaminatham was first
published in full in 1975, by S.V.Shanmugam,
Annamalai University, based on a manuscript
found in the British Museum library. It refers
to Avippali as Poar Avikkoduthal, verse
141, p.233.
(37) Maj.A.E.Barstow, 1928: Sikhs,
Handbook for the Indian Army, Calcutta
Central Publications Branch, p.40.
(38) Parani - "A poem about a
hero who destroyed 1000 elephants in war",
Tamil Lexicon, vol.IV.
(39) South Indian
Inscriptions, 1943: Madras, vol.XII,
no.106.
(40) R.Poonkunran, 1979:
Tharamangalam, publication No.58.
Tamilnadu Dept.of Archaeology, no pagination.
"Kongunadu was well known for its palayams",
R.P.Sethupillai, op.cit,
p.76.
(41) M.Chandramoorthy:
'Kalvettu' Quarterly of the Tamilnadu
Dept.of Archaeology, no.8, January 1975,
pp.21-22.
(42) South Indian
Inscriptions 1967; vol.XIX,
no.3.
(43) Purananooru; [verse]
212-223. Kopperun-Cholan who thus committed
suicide was apotheosized. K.P.Aravanan examines
this practice in relation to the 'Sallehana'
form of fasting unto death among Jain saints:
The Other side of Tamils, 1989; Paari
Nilayam, Madras. Cheraman Peruncheralathan
committed suicide thus when he accidentally
received a wound on his back in battle which
was considered a great dishonour to a warrior
(Purananooru: [verse] 65).
(46) Recruitment handbooks of the
Indian Army series. Madras Classes, by
Lieut-Col.G.E.D.Mouat, revised by
Capt.G.Kennedy Cassels, New Delhi: Govt.of
India Press, 1938.
(47) I
have used a Tamil translation of Sargant's
book. The Dispersion of the Tamil Church,
N.C.Sargant, 1940; translated into Tamil by
Rev.C.L.Vethakkan, 1964.
(49)
[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.
(51)
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'.
(53)
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. Bharathi Tharisanam
(�India�
essays, 1906), vol.1, New Century Book House,
Madras.
3. Nicholas B.Dirks; The pasts of a
Palayakarar � The ethnohistory
of a South Indian Little King. Journal of Asian
Studies, vol.XLI, no.4, August 1982.
�Many of my informants
(Brahmins as well as Maravars and Kallars) have
told me that the Mukkulathors
� the three Tamil military
castes � are really the
kshatriyas of Southern India.�
Dirks deals with the Poligars (Palayakarars) of
Othumalai, who belong to the Kondayam Kottai
subsection of the Maravar, the group to which
most of the Southern feudal military
chieftainsbelonged. The Sethupathys
� the kings of Ramnad
� belong to the subsection
known as Sembi Maravar.
4. R.P.Dua; 1966. The Impact of the
Russo-Japanese (1905) War on Indian Politics,
S.Chand, Delhi.
5. Gerald Cromer; In the Mirror of the Past
� The use of history in the
justification of terrorism and political
violence. [Journal name is missing here, due to
author�s or
printer�s slip], vol.3, no.4,
winter 1991.
6. An interesting study of the military
labour market in north India has been done
recently by Ditk.H.Kloff-Naukar, Rajput and
Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour
Market in Hindustan 1450-1850, Cambridge
University Press, New York, 1990.
7. History of the Madras Army,
Lt.Col.W.J.Wilson, Madras Govt. Press, 5 vols.,
1882-89.
I am greatly indebted to Prof.K.Sivathamby
for his valuable comments on Tamil history and
culture and for drawing my attention two years
ago to the role of the southern districts of
Tamil Nadu in Tamil renaissance.
