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TAMIL HERITAGE...
the Tamils are an ancient people
Nadesan Satyendra
1998, 2007
Indus
Civilisation
 The
Tamils are an ancient people. Their history had its beginnings in the rich
alluvial plains near the southern extremity of peninsular India which included
the land mass known as the island of Sri Lanka today. The island's plant and
animal life (including the presence of elephants) evidence the earlier land
connection with the Indian sub continent. So too do satellite photographs which
show the submerged 'land bridge' between Dhanuskodi on the south east of the
Indian sub-continent and Mannar in the north west of the island.
Some researchers have concluded that it was during the period 6000 B.C. to
3000 B.C. that the island separated from the Indian sub continent and the narrow
strip of shallow water known today as the Palk Straits came into existence. Many
Tamils trace their origins to the people of
Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley around 6000 years before the birth of
Christ. There is, however, a need for further systematic study of the
history of the early Tamils and proto Tamils.
"Dravidians, whose descendents still live in Southern India, established
the first city communities, in the Indus valley, introduced irrigation
schemes, developed pottery and evolved a well ordered system of government."
(Reader's Digest Great World Atlas, 1970)
Clyde Ahmad Winters, who has written
extensively on Dravidian origins commented:
"Archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Dravidians
were the founders of the Harappan culture which extended from the Indus
Valley through northeastern Afghanistan, on into Turkestan. The Harappan
civilization existed from 2600-1700 BC. The Harappan civilization was twice
the size the Old Kingdom of Egypt. In addition to trade relations with
Mesopotamia and Iran, the Harappan city states also had active trade
relations with the Central Asian peoples."
He has also explored the question whether the Dravidians were of African
origin. (Winters, Clyde Ahmad, "Are Dravidians of African Origin", P.Second
ISAS,1980 - Hong Kong:Asian Research Service, 1981 - pages 789- 807)
Other useful web pages on the Indus civilisation (suggested by
Dr.Jude Sooriyajeevan of the National Research Council, Canada)
include the
Indus Dictionary.
At the same time, the
Aryan/Dravidian divide in India and the 'Aryan
Invasion Theory' itself has come under attack by
some modern day
historians. (see also
Sarasvati-Sindhu civilisation; 'Hinduism:
Native or Alien to India')
Professor Klaus Klostermaier in 'Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory and
Revising Ancient Indian History' commented:
"India had a tradition of learning and scholarship much older and vaster
than the European countries that, from the sixteenth century onwards, became
its political masters. Indian scholars are rewriting the history of India
today. One of the major points of revision concerns the so called 'Aryan
invasion theory', often referred to as 'colonial-missionary', implying that
it was the brainchild of conquerors of foreign colonies who could not but
imagine that all higher culture had to come from outside 'backward' India,
and who likewise assumed that a religion could only spread through a
politically supported missionary effort.
While not buying into the more sinister version of this
revision, which accuses the inventors of the Aryan invasion theory of malice
and cynicism, there is no doubt that early European attempts to explain the
presence of Indians in India had much to with the commonly held Biblical
belief that humankind originated from one pair of humans- Adam and Eve to be
precise ..."
Hinduism Today concluded in
Rewriting Indian History - Hindu Timeline:
"Although lacking supporting scientific evidence, this (Aryan Invasion)
theory, and the alleged Aryan-Dravidian racial split, was accepted and
promulgated as fact for three main reasons. It provided a convenient
precedent for Christian British subjugation of India. It reconciled ancient
Indian civilisation and religious scripture with the 4000 bce Biblical date
of Creation. It created division and conflict between the peoples of India,
making them vulnerable to conversion by Christian missionaries."
"Scholars today of both East and West believe the Rig Veda people who
called themselves Aryan were indigenous to India, and there never was an
Aryan invasion. The languages of India have been shown to share common
ancestry in ancient Sanskrit and Tamil. Even these two apparently unrelated
languages, according to current "super-family" research, have a common
origin: an ancient language dubbed Nostratic."
Tamils were
a sea faring people
Robert Caldwell wrote in 1875:
"... From the evidence of words in use amongst the early Tamils, we learn
the following items of information. They had 'kings' who dwelt in 'strong
houses' and ruled over 'small districts of country'. They had 'minstrels',
who recited 'songs' at 'festivals', and they seem to have had alphabetical
'characters' written with a style on palmyra leaves. A bundle of those
leaves was called 'a book'; they acknowledged the existence of God, whom
they styled as ko, or King.... They erected to his honour a 'temple', which
they called Ko-il, God's-house.
They had 'laws' and 'customs'... Marriage existed among them. They were
acquainted with the ordinary metals... They had 'medicines', 'hamlets' and
'towns', 'canoes', 'boats' and even 'ships' (small 'decked' coasting
vessels), no acquaintance with any people beyond the sea, except in Ceylon,
which was then, perhaps, accessible on foot at low water.. They were well
acquainted with agriculture.... All the ordinary or necessary arts of life,
including 'spinning', 'weaving' and 'dyeing' existed amongst them. They
excelled in pottery..." (Robert Caldwell:
Comparative Grammar of Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages
- Second Edition 1875 - Reprinted by the University of Madras, 1961)
The Tamils were a sea faring people.
They traded with Rome in the days of Emperor Augustus. They sent ships to many
lands bordering the Indian Ocean and with the ships went traders, scholars, and
a way of life. Tamil inscriptions in Indonesia go back some two thousand years.
The oldest Sanskrit inscriptions belonging to the third century in Indo China
bear testimony to Tamil influence and until recent times Tamil texts were used
by priests in Thailand and Cambodia. The scattered elements of ruined temples of
the time of Marco Polo's visit to China in the 13th century give evidence of
purely Tamil structure and include Tamil inscriptions.
"Tamil Nadu, the home land of the Tamils, occupies the southern most region
of India. Traditionally, Thiruvenkatam - the abode of Sri Venkatewara and a
range of hills of the Eastern Ghats - formed the northern boundary of the
country and the Arabian sea line the western boundary. However as a result of
infiltrations, made by peoples from other territories, Tamil lost its ground in
the west as well as in the north. In medieval times, the country west of
the mountains, became Kerala and that in the north turned part of Andhra Desa.
Bounded by the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Desa, the Tamil Nadu of
the present day extends from Kanyakumari in the south to Tiruttani in the
North....
 In
early times the
Pandyas, the
Cheras
and the
Cholas
held their pioneering sway over the country and extended their authority beyond
the traditional frontiers. As a result the Tamil Country served as the homeland
of extensive empires. It was during this period that the Tamil bards composed
the masterpieces in Tamil literature.....
"In the first decade of the 14th century the rising tide of Afghan
imperialism swept over South India. The Tughlugs created a new province in the
Tamil Country called Mabar, with its capital at Madurai which in 1335 asserted
independence as the Sultanate of Madurai. After a short period of stormy
existence, it gave way to the Vijayanagar Empire... Since then, the Telegus, the
Brahminis, the Marathas and the Kannadins wrested possession of the territory.
Between 1798 and 1801, the country passed under the direct administration of the
English East India Company." (History of Tamil Nadu 1565 - 1982:
Professor K.Rajayyan, Head of the School of Historical Studies, M.K.University,
Madurai - Raj Publishers, Madurai, 1982)
The East India Company website contains interesting
information about the efforts of the early English rulers.
Today an estimated 70 million
Tamils live in many lands - more than 50 million Tamils live in Tamil Nadu
in South India and around 3 million reside in the island of Sri Lanka.
British
conquest & Tamil renaissance
The response of a people to
invasion by aliens from a foreign land is a measure of the depth of their roots
and the strength of their identity. It was under British conquest that the Tamil
renaissance of the second half of the 19th century gathered momentum.
It was a renaissance which had its cultural beginnings in the discovery and
the subsequent editing and printing of the Tamil classics of the Sangam period.
These had existed earlier only as palm leaf manuscripts.
Arumuga Navalar in Jaffna, in the island of Sri Lanka, published the
Thirukural in 1860 and
Thirukovaiyar
in 1861.
Thamotherampillai, who was born in Jaffna but who served in Madras,
published the grammatical treatise
Tolkapiyam by
collating material from several original ola leaf manuscripts.
It was on the foundations laid by
Arumuga Navalar and Thamotherampillai that
Swaminatha Aiyar, who was born in Tanjore, in South India, put together the
classics of Tamil literature of the Sangam period. Swaminatha Aiyar spent a
lifetime researching and collecting many of the palm leaf manuscripts of the
classical period and it is to him that we owe the publication of
Cilapathikaram,
Manimekali,
Puranuru,
Civakachintamani and many other treatises which are a part of the
rich literary heritage of the Tamil people.
Another Tamil from Jaffna,
Kanagasabaipillai served at Madras University and his book 'Tamils -
Eighteen Hundred Years Ago' reinforced the historical togetherness of the Tamil
people and was a valuable source book for researchers in Tamil studies in the
succeeding years. It was a Tamil cultural renaissance in which the contributions
of the scholars of Jaffna and those of South India are difficult to separate.
Again, not surprisingly, it was a renaissance which was also linked with a
revived interest in Saivaism and a growing recognition that Saivaism was the
original religion of the Tamil people. Arumuga Navalar established schools in
Jaffna, in Sri Lanka and in Chidambaram, in South India and his work led to the
formation of the Saiva Paripalana Sabai in Jaffna in 1888, the publication of
the Jaffna Hindu Organ in 1889 and the founding of the
Jaffna Hindu College in 1890.
In South India, J.M.Nallaswami Pillai, who was born in Trichinopoly,
published Meykandar's Sivajnana Bodham in English in 1895 and in 1897, he
started a monthly called Siddhanta Deepika which was regarded by many as
reflecting the 19th century ' renaissance of Saivaism'. A Tamil version of the
journal was edited by Maraimalai Atikal whose writings gave a new sense of
cohesion to the Tamil people - a cohesion which was derived from the rediscovery
of their ancient literature and the rediscovery of their ancient religion.
Bharathy, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy & Tamil nationalism
The cultural renaissance of the 19th century led to an increasing Tamil
togetherness and was linked with the thrust for social reform and political
power - a thrust which at the same time, sought to marry a rising Tamil
togetherness with the immediate and larger struggle for freedom from British
rule.
In South India, no one exemplified the marriage of this duality more
effectively than
Subramania Bharathy whose songs in Tamil stirred the hearts of millions of
Tamils, both as Tamils and as Indians. The words of Bharathy's Senthamil Nadu
Enum Pothinale, continue to move the hearts of the Tamil people today. It was
his salute to the Tamil nation that was yet unborn. His Viduthalai was the
joyous song of Indian freedom and there he reached out beyond the Tamil nation
to the day when Bharat would be free.
Bharathy sought to consolidate the togetherness of his own people by his
ceaseless campaign against casteism and for women's rights. The Bharathy birth
centenary celebrations of 1982 served to underline the permanent place that
Bharathy will always have in the hearts of the Tamil people, whether they be
from Tamil Nadu, Tamil Eelam, Malaysia, Singapore or elsewhere.
Two other Tamils will be always associated with the rise of Tamil national
consciousness in the first two decades of the 20th century - lawyer, Tamil
scholar and revolutionary,
V.V.S.Aiyar and the Swadeshi steam ship hero,
Kappal Otiya Thamilan,
V.O.Chidambram Pillai.
Aiyar was a lawyer who joined Grays Inn in London to
become a barrister but became a revolutionary instead.
Later, he wrote many books in Tamil and in English and is
regarded by many as the father of the modern Tamil short
story. He was a pioneer in Tamil literary criticism. His
major works included a translation of the Thirukural and 'Kamba
Ramayanam - A Study'.
In the years after the first World War,
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi reached out to the underlying unity of India and
sought to weld together the many peoples of the Indian subcontinent into a
larger whole. But the attempt did not entirely succeed. The assessment of
Pramatha Chauduri who wrote in Bengali in 1920 was not without significance:
"...You have accused me of 'Bengali patriotism'. I feel bound to reply. If
its a crime for a Bengali to harbour and encourage Bengali patriotism in his
mind, then I am guilty "But I ask you, what other patriotism do you expect
from a Bengali writer? The fact that I do not write in English should
indicate that non Bengali patriotism does not sway my mind. If I had to make
patriotic speeches in a language that is the language of no part of India,
then I would have had to justify that patriotism by saying it does not
relate to any special part of India as a whole. In a language learnt by rote
you can only express ideas learnt by heart.
"It is not a bad thing to try and weld many
in to one but to jumble them all up is dangerous
because the only way we can do that is by force.
If you say that this does not apply to India the
reply is that if self determination is not
suited to us, then it is not suited at all to
Europe. No people in Europe are as different,
one from another, as our people. There is not
that much difference between England and Holland
as there is between Madras and Bengal. Even
France and Germany are not that far apart...If
you ask why this simple truth is not evident to
all the answer is: because of circumstances. The
whole of India is now under British
rule...therefore, the main link between us is
the link of bondage and no province can cut
through this subjugation by its own efforts and
actions...So today we are obliged to tell the
people of India, 'Unite and Organise'...
"People will recognise the value of
provincial patriotism the moment they attain
independence...Then the various nations of India
will not try to merge, they will try to
establish a unity amongst themselves... To be
united due to outside pressure and to unite
through mutual regard are not the same. Just as
there is a difference between the getting
together of five convicts in a jail and between
five free men... Indian patriotism then
will be built on the foundation of provincial
patriotism, not just in words but in reality..."(Pramatha
Chaudhuri: Bengali Patriotism - Sabuj Patra
1920, translated and reprinted in Facets,
September 1982)
 In
Madras Presidency, which was the largest province of British India, and
which included parts of that which is Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala today, the
Suya Mariyathai Iyakam (Self Respect Movement) of
E.V.Ramasamy
(Periyar) started initially, in the early 1920s, as a social reform movement
aimed at a casteless society. It later developed into a vehicle for a rising
Tamil nationalism.
"The Tamil Renaissance took place at the same time as the Nationalist
Movement. The outcome of this interaction of the renaissance and the
Nationalist Movement was the genesis of a consciousness of a separate
identity resulting in Dravidian Nationalism.... In philology the term
'Dravidian' was used to denote a group a group of languages mainly spoken in
South India, namely, Tamil Telegu, Kannada and Malayalam. Later when the
term was extended to denote a race, again it denoted the peoples speaking
these four languages. But in South Indian politics as well as in general
usage since the beginning of this century the term 'Dravidian' came to
denote the 'Tamils' only and not the other three language speaking peoples.
... Hence it may be observed that the terms 'Tamil Nationalism' and
'Dravidian Nationalism' were synonymous" (K.Nambi
Arooran - Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism, Koodal Publishers,
Madurai, 1980)
The establishment of Annamalai University in Chidambaram and later the Tamil
Isai Sangam in Madras were manifestations of a rising Tamil self consciousness.
The students at Annamalai University were to become influential political
leaders of the Tamil people in the years to come.
As early as 1926, Sankaran Nair, a nominated member of the Council of
State in Delhi, pleaded for self government to the ten Tamil districts of the
Madras Presidency, with its own army, navy and airforce.
Scholar politician V. Kaliyanasundarar writing in 1929 urged that Tamil Nadu
constituted a nation within the Indian state. He declared that the correct
English translation of the word Nadu was nation and not land and pointed out
that the early Tamils had their own government, language, culture and historical
traditions. (V.Kaliyanasundarar, Tamil Cholai, Volume 1, Madras 1954)
In 1937, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy took over the leadership of the South Indian
Liberal Federation, commonly called the Justice Party.
At the Justice Party confederation held in Madras in 1938, Periyar Ramasamy
put forward his demand for Dravidanad. This was two years before Mohamed Ali
Jinnah set out the formal demand for Pakistan at the Lahore conference. In 1944,
the Justice party changed its name to Dravida Kalagam and C.N.Annadurai
functioned as its first General Secretary.
These early manifestations of a Tamil national consciousness influenced
Tamils outside India as well. Periyar visited
Malaysia in 1929, and his visit led to a proliferation of Tamil
associations, dedicated to religious and social reform - associations which were
often led by journalists and teachers. The writings of Annadurai and other
leaders of the Dravida Kalagam were avidly read by ordinary Tamils and marked a
watershed in the literary heritage of the Tamil people .
But, in the end, Periyar E.V.Ramasamy, the undoubted father of the Dravidian
movement failed to deliver on the promise of Dravida Nadu. E.V.R. failed where
Mohamed Ali Jinnah
succeeded. It is true that the strategic considerations of the ruling colonial
power were different in each case - and this had something to do with Jinnah’s
success. But, nevertheless, if ideology is concerned with moving a people to
action, the question may well be asked: why did E.V.R’s ideology fail to deliver
Dravida Nadu?
Two aspects may be usefully considered. One was the attempt of
the Dravida movement to encompass Tamils, Malayalees, Kannadigas and all
Dravidians and mobilise them behind the demand for Dravida Nadu. Unsurprisingly,
the attempt to mobilise across what were in fact separate national formations
failed to take off.
It was one thing to found a movement which rejected casteism. It
was quite another thing, to mobilise peoples, speaking different languages with
different historical memories, into an integrated political force in support of
the demand for Dravida Nadu.
At the same time, the Aryan/Dravidian divide propagated by
German scholars such as Max Weber, encouraged by the British, and espoused by
E.V.R. paid insufficient attention to the underlying unity of India and the
enduring links that the Tamil people had with the other peoples of the Indian
sub continent.
That was not all. E.V.R extended his attack on casteism to an
attack on Hinduism - and indeed to all religions as well. Periyar E.V.R threw
out the Hindu child with the Brahmin bath water.
E.V.R was
right to extol the virtues of pahuth arivu, common sense. He was right to
attack mooda nambikai, foolish faith. His rationalism was often a refreshing
response to religious dogma and superstition. His attack on casteism, his social
reform movement and his Self Respect Movement in the 1920s infused a new
dignity, thanmaanam, amongst the Tamil people and laid the foundations on which
Tamil nationalism has grown.
The Iyer
Heritage Site serves to show that even today, the self perception of at
least some Brahmins is that they are "Aryans".
It was the pioneering work of EVR that led to the growth of the
Dravida Munetra Kalagam
(DMK) led by
C.N.Annadurai and
later by
M.Karunanidhi,
to the All India Dravida
Munetra Kalagam led by
M.G.Ramachandran and
the Marumalarchi Dravida Munetra Kalagam (MDMK) led by V.Gopalasamy.
But, having said that, the refusal of EVR to recognise that
casteism was one thing, Hinduism another and spiritualism, perhaps, yet another,
proved fatal. His belligerent atheism failed to move the Tamil people. In the
result even within Tamil Nadu, EVR's Dravida Kalagam became marginalised, and
the DMK which was an offshoot of the Dravida Kalagam and the ADMK which was an
offshoot of the DMK, both found it necessary to play down the anti religious
line and adopt instead a ‘secular’ face. One consequence of EVR’s atheism was
that spirituality in Tamil Nadu came to be exploited as the special preserve of
those who were opposed to the growth of Tamil nationalism.
Furthermore, the anti-Brahmin
movement tended to ignore the many caste differences that
existed among the non-Brahmin Tamils and failed to address
the oppression practised by one non-Brahmin caste on another
non-Brahmin caste. It is a failure that continues to haunt
the Tamil national movement even today. Caste divides and
fragments the togetherness of the Tamil people.
Support for the positive contributions that E.V.R. made in the
area of social reform and to rational thought, should not prevent an examination
of where it was that he went wrong. Again, it may well be that E.V.R.
represented a necessary phase in the struggle of the Tamil people and given the
objective conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, E.V.R was right to focus sharply on
the immediate contradiction posed by 'upper' caste dominance and mooda nambikai.
But in the 21st century, there may be a need to learn from E.V.R. - and not
simply repeat that which he said or did.
Growth of Tamil
national
consciousness in Sri Lanka
In the island of Sri Lanka, the separate national identity of
the Tamil people grew through a process of opposition to and differentiation
from the Buddhist Sinhala people. The
Sinhala people trace their origins in the island to the arrival of Prince Vijaya
from India, around 500 B.C. and the Mahavamsa, the Sinhala chronicle of a
later period (6th Century A.D.) records that Prince Vijaya arrived on the island
on the same day that the Buddha attained Enlightenment in India. However, the
words of the Sinhala historian and Cambridge scholar, Paul Peiris represent an
influential and common sense point of view:
"..it stands to reason that a country which was only thirty
miles from India and which would have been seen by Indian fisherman every
morning as they sailed out to catch their fish, would have been occupied as
soon as the continent was peopled by men who understood how to sail... Long
before the arrival of Prince Vijaya, there were in Sri Lanka five recognised
isvarams of Siva which claimed and received the adoration of all India.
These were Tiruketeeswaram near Mahatitha; Munneswaram dominating Salawatte
and the pearl fishery; Tondeswaram near Mantota; Tirkoneswaram near the
great bay of Kottiyar and Nakuleswaram near Kankesanturai. " (Paul E.
Pieris: Nagadipa and Buddhist Remains in Jaffna : Journal of Royal Asiatic
Society, Ceylon Branch Vol.28)
The Pancha
Ishwarams of Eelam were important landmarks of the country and
S.J.Gunasegaram's 'Trincomalee
- Holy Hill of Siva ' reveals the antiquity of Trincomalee as an
ancient Hindu shrine.
The Tamil people and the Sinhala people were brought within the
confines of a single state by the British. The struggle for freedom from British
colonial rule, did lead Tamil leaders such as
Ponnambalam Ramanathan and
Ponnambalam
Arunachalam to work together with their Sinhala counterparts in the Ceylon
National Congress. But it was largely a dialogue between the English speaking
Tamil middle class and its English speaking Sinhala counterpart.
Professor Kailasapathy in a
paper presented at a Social Scientists Association Seminar in Colombo,
traced the growth of Tamil consciousness in Eelam from the time of British
rule, through independence and upto 1979. The paper affords many insights into
the continuing growth of Tamil Consciousness today, not only in Eelam but in the
Tamil diaspora as well:
"Both the reformers and the revivalists came from the Hindu upper castes,
but while the former were not only English educated but also used that
language for their livelihood and for acquiring social status, the latter
were primarily traditional in their education and used their mother tongue
for their livelihood and social communication.. .most of them wrote in
English... In doing so they probably had a particular audience in mind, an
audience to whom they wanted to prove the antiquity and greatness of their
tradition...In contrast the revivalists were mainly highly erudite in their
mother tongue and wrote in it..."
The Pan Sinhala Executive Committee of the Ceylon State Council in 1936 and
the formation of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress led by
G.G.Ponnambalam
were some of the early manifestations of the growth of a separate Sinhala
nationalism and a separate Tamil nationalism in the political arena of the
island of Ceylon (as it then was known).
It was a Tamil nationalism which eventually found expression in the formation
of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchi led by
S.J.V.Chelvanayakam
in 1949 and later in the 1970s in the Tamil armed resistance movement, led today
by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and
Velupillai Pirabaharan.
The 'thiyagam' of
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, gave poignant expression to the cultural
values of the Tamil people, rooted in the Purananuru and
Cilapathikaram. At the same time, the armed resistance movement in Tamil
Eelam, also brought about a fundamental cultural transformation in Tamil
society. It helped to break down casteism among the Tamil people. It
helped to liberate Tamil women from the structures of oppression that had been
deeply embedded in sections of Tamil society - and help create the
Puthumai Penn that Bharathy had sung about.
"The historical storm of the liberation struggle is uprooting age old
traditions that took root over a long period of time in our society... The
ideology of women liberation is a child born out of the womb of our
liberation struggle... Our women are seeking liberation from the structures
of oppression deeply embedded in our society. This oppressive cultural
system and practices have emanated from age old ideologies and
superstitions. Tamil women are subjected to intolerable suffering as a
consequence of male chauvinistic oppression, violence and from the social
evils of casteism and dowry."
(Velupillai Pirabaharan,
1992, 1993)
That the armed resistance movement of the Tamil people should have originated
in Tamil Eelam and not in Tamil Nadu is not altogether surprising. It is the
nature of the discrimination and oppression which often determines the
nature of the response.
"Liberty is the life breath of a nation; and when life is attacked, when
it is sought to suppress all chance of breathing by violent pressure, then
any and every means of self preservation becomes right and justifiable...It
is the nature of the pressure which determines the nature of the
resistance." (Aurobindo
in Bande Mataram, 1907)
Suffering unites a people and the suffering of the Tamil people in the island
of Sri Lanka, in their struggle for freedom and justice, has also served to
bring together Tamils living not only in Tamil Eelam and Tamil Nadu but also
those living in many other lands. At the same time, in Tamil Nadu poverty
and corruption have weakened confidence in existing political structures.
"As programmes and reforms failed... repression appeared as the direct
method of dealing with peasant unrest. Between 1975 and 1982, the police
forces launched a series of operations against the Naxals. Either in what
was called encounters or under police custody nineteen young men died and
about 250 people were jailed. The green turbanned peasants led by
Narayanaswamy Naidu launched agitations in 1972 and 1980. In Coimbatore,
Dharmapuri, South Arcot and Madurai there were serious disturbances..
Between 1972 and 1982 fifty four peasants were killed in police firings and
more than 25,000 were taken into custody." (History of Tamil Nadu 1565 -
1982: Professor K.Rajayyan, Head of the School of Historical Studies,
M.K.University, Madurai - Raj Publishers, Madurai, 1982)
Indian Union &
the Tamil nation
The Tamil cultural renaissance of the second half of the 19th century, the
rise of the Dravida Tamil national movement of the first half of the 20th
century, and the armed struggle for Tamil Eelam are but tributories flowing into
one river - the river of the growing togetherness of the Tamil people - and it
is unlikely that this is a river that will flow backwards.
Here, not many will question that the future of the Tamil people lies with
the peoples of India. In 1973, Kamil Zvebil, Professor in Tamil Studies at
Charles University, Prague wrote in 'The Poets and the Powers', of the Tamil
contribution in shaping and moulding the great Indian synthesis :
"...Many and variegated are the contributions of the Tamils of South
India to the treasures of human civilisation, the
early classical love
and war poetry, the architecture of the Pallavas, the deservedly famous
South Indian bronzes of
the Chola period, the well known Bharata Natyam dance, the philosophy of
Saiva Siddhanta, the
magnificent
temples of the South - for more than two thousand years have the Tamils
been contributing to Indian
culture
and taking part in shaping and moulding the great Indian synthesis."
Sylvain Levi George Coedes and La Valee Poissin wrote in the 'The
Indianisation of South East Asia' in 1975:
"Without being aware of it, India determined the history of a good
portion of mankind. She gave three quarters of Asia a God, a religion, a
doctrine, a art. She gave them her sacred language, literature and her
institutions... All the regions contributed to this expansion and
civilisation, but it was the South that played the greatest role."
The Indian union in an
emerging post modern world, will be a
free and equal association of states, that will be rooted in the heritage
that the Tamil people, (whether they be from Tamil Nadu or Tamil Eelam or
elsewhere) share with their brothers and sisters of India - a shared heritage
that the Tamil people freely acknowledge. It is a shared heritage to which the
Tamil people have contributed and will continue to contribute - and from which
the Tamil people also derive strength. |
