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Journalism of Courage
WITH assertive BJP Hindu nationalism on one side and the DMK’s linguistic/regional politics on the other, the controversy over the ‘Dravidian’ identity of Tamil Nadu continues. A few days ago, Governor R N Ravi, who has done his bit to keep the fires burning, added a new dimension to it, raising the question ‘Who is a Dravidian?’.
Does it only mean the people of Tamil Nadu , or does it also include Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala?
Speaking at the inaugural of a two-day programme on ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat — Connecting India’ series on October 10, the Tamil Nadu Governor said the Dravidian identity had been adopted as a purely Tamil identity because of “politics of division”.
With enough tension between its government and Ravi, the DMK immediately shot back, with party leaders calling him “an RSS man occupying space at the Tamil Nadu Raj Bhavan”.
As much a claimant of Dravidian politics as the DMK, the AIADMK – which is riding on BJP shoulders now in the state – sprang to Ravi’s defence. The Governor was right, AIADMK leaders said, and the Dravidian concept was actually a geographical construct, covering the five southern states.
In his address at the Raj Bhavan, Ravi said that “one must understand Bharat” to understand the nation in totality, and referred to India’s thousands of years of civilisation and pride. He blamed Britain for dividing India along political lines, and said that while Dravidian originally meant the southern states, “today it’s a Tamil identity”.
As per historians, like all debates where politics gets into matters of fact, there is some truth on both sides.
The origin of ‘Dravidian’ or ‘Dravidar’ can be broken down into two aspects, spatial and linguistic, says a history and archeology professor who has done extensive studies on Tamil Nadu’s ancient past, and who doesn’t want to be quoted to avoid being drawn into the political row. The word Dravida is not originally Tamil but derived from Prakrit, the ancient language of India that was later refined to Sanskrit, which in turn became the language of the upper castes and the palace.
Several studies and books, including Dravidian Theories by R Swaminatha Aiyar, which talk about the origin of the word ‘Dravidar’ talk about how it is a distortion of the word ‘Tamila’, after becoming gradually ‘Damila,’ Damela’ and ‘Dameda’.
Incidentally, while all the earliest inscriptions from Afghanistan to Bangladesh to Sri Lanka and India are in Prakrit, Tamil Nadu remains an exception — not a single Prakrit inscription has been found in the state. On the contrary, Prakrit inscriptions from the 3rd Century BC can be found in Karnataka and Andhra regions.
At the same time, the earliest evidence of Tamil language goes back to 600 BC, while the earliest evidence for Telugu and Kannada languages is only from the 6th Century AD.
Linguistically, this manifests in the fact that many special letters available in Tamil are not present in other languages or offshoots of Sanskrit, and correspondingly, many letters like ‘ga’ present in Sanskrit do not exist in Tamil.
The professor quoted above says there are signs that people lived near the Chennai region as far back as about 15 lakh years ago.
“They most certainly spoke a language. There is a lot of evidence that Tamil, Kannada, Tulu, and Telugu all split off from a single language before 1000 BC. We don’t know when it happened, though,” says the expert, while warning against concluding that Kannada and Telugu came much after Tamil, as evidence regarding it may have simply not been found yet.
As an example, the expert adds: “The oldest written evidence for the Rig Veda, which dates back to 1500 BC, is only from the 1st Century AD in Gujarat. This is because the Rig Veda was not written and was passed down orally for hundreds of years… History is not only about carbon footprints but also oral histories, culture and memories.”
He further gives the example of Malayalam, saying that once, it had the most “non-Aryan words” — so to speak — at one point. “But in the Medieval Period, Namboothiri sections embraced Sanskrit, essentially changing the character of Malayalam, around 12th Century AD.”
In the latter period, the professor added, Buddhism, which emerged out of a movement to reform the rigidities of Hinduism, adopted Prakrit as its central language. Meanwhile, Tamil leaders resisted the spread of Sanskrit. “Religious books like Devaram, Divyaprabndham and Thiruvasagam were written in Tamil because the Pallavas strongly resisted Sanskrit. The main reason was to keep control of the economy. Because back then, a language meant a way to live. All of your medicines, farming techniques, monsoon safety tips and philosophies about life were written in those local languages.”
In that respect, Dravidian appears to have been more of a linguistic concept, which later got confined to a specific geography.
However, the debate is not likely to settle down any time soon given the context in which it is happening.
The latest round started with senior DMK leader A Raja asserting a few weeks ago that, “As long as you are a Hindu, you are a Shudra”, and said questions should be raised about such a system to “destroy the roots of Sanatan Dharma”. The BJP immediately linked it to the “anti-Hindu character” of the DMK, a party whose leaders swear by atheism and which was born out of a strong anti-Brahminical, anti-Hindi sentiment, and later acquired a regional character.
Then, in the light of Mani Ratnam’s film Ponniyin Selvan I (PS-I), based on Kalki’s Chola-era historical fictional novel, award-winning Tamil filmmaker Vetrimaaran warned Tamils against Hindutva groups coopting Raja Raja Cholan as a Hindu, provoking a sharp reaction from the BJP.
All art is political, Vetrimaaran said, adding that Tamils need to ensure that their culture and symbols are used correctly. “If we don’t do that, they (the Hindutva groups) will take our symbols,” he said.
Congress MP from Karur, Tamil Nadu, S Jothimani joined the debate, calling Raja Raja Cholan “a Tamil king”. “The BJP is totally ignorant about Tamil history. Neither are they concerned. The only thing that matters to them is hatred,” she said.
Union minister and BJP leader L Murugan, on a two-day visit to the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu asked in turn: “How can Tamil and Hindu be different?”
The debate is also happening against the backdrop of growing differences between the DMK government led by M K Stalin and Governor Ravi. A former police officer, Ravi, who ran into controversies in his previous stint as Nagaland governor too, has been vocal in praising certain Central policies strongly opposed by the state government. This includes the common NEET exam and the National Education Policy (NEP). He has also delayed assent to several Bills passed by the DMK government.
