More than a century after it was founded, the only “justice” that the notorious Justice Party delivered to Tamil Nadu was snuffing out the inherently dharmic soul of the Tamil people. The Justice Party ensured that the sacred Tamil Desam permanently lost its capacity to produce iconic sons like Pallava Narasimhavarman, Raja Raja Chola, Rajendra Chola, all the way up to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
The state’s impressive infrastructure is now a vast and glimmering but soulless wasteland where nothing cultured and refined grows because all the good and the noble and the virtuous and the lofty and the spiritual has been scorched by the flames lit by generations of Dravidianists.
The learning, nurturing and preservation of Sanskrit was among the first casualties to burn in this Dravidian furnace. The story of its near-total annihilation needs to be told in a detailed volume. But to offer a tragic appetiser of sorts, this essay series has picked a real-life slice from the recent history of Sanskrit destruction in Tamil Nadu.
The period is the 1960s decade and the scene of action is set in the prestigious Presidency College, Madras.
The manner in which the destruction of Sanskrit was carried out resembles the manner in which fanatical Muslim sultans made appointments in officialdom: kicking out Hindus and replacing them with Muslims or with Hindus who fell for the lure of converting to Islam for material benefits.
It might seem incredible and even unbelievable today, but even as recently as in the 1940s, the learning of Sanskrit and its literature was regarded as a mark of high culture in Tamil Nadu. Especially in Tamil Nadu.
Throughout Indian history, Kanchipuram strode aloft as one of the renowned and prestigious centres of Sanskrit scholarship. The sacred city took pride in being home to several unbroken lineages of extraordinary Sanskrit pandits and vidwans.
Sadly, Kanchipuram, like the rest of the Tamil Desam, had not reckoned with the Messianic, caliginous sword called Dravidianism which was making slow but determined inroads about a century ago.
The rowdy denizens of the Justice Party, in their rabble-rousing speeches, essentially spouted variants of the following clamour: “What is there in Sanskrit that’s not there in Tamil? The wicked Aryas from the north and their Sanskrit language invaded our pure Tamil land and destroyed our literature and culture and flung us into backwardness. We must liberate our pure Tamil land and culture from these Aryas. They are today known as South Indian Brahmins, who continue to oppress us.”
Today, the whole of the Dravidian ecosystem resembles a cauldron of dangerous junk composed of the following: at the top is the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by the aptly-christened MK Stalin and his son Udhayanidhi Stalin. Other elements include the fossilised Periyarists and the innumerable Dravidian groups and petty factions. For more than half a century, they have held Tamil Nadu in their vice-like grip.
But history tells a different story.
The Justice Party and its predecessors didn’t have it easy. The early role played by the Church, especially by Bishop “Kaltuvel Aiyar” (Robert Caldwell) in seeding and fomenting Tamil separatism is too well-known to repeat here. But its far-reaching consequences leading up to our own time need deeper examination.
One such consequence has already been mentioned: the naked lie that evil Aryas from north India and their oppressive Sanskrit language destroyed an alleged “original” Tamil culture and a “pure” Tamil language. This has become a settled truth in Tamil Nadu’s public discourse. It is still the seed capital of the Dravidian ideology. It also posits that these Aryas armed with their Sanskrit were solely responsible for creating backward classes in the state.
But the purveyors of this ideology only need to remember two important facts of their own cultural and social history. The first is the fact that a significant portion of these backward classes have become cannon fodder for Christian missionary activity. This has reached such a sickening pitch that they now exercise frightening levels of political power all the while preaching a religious imperialism in the tongue of piety and compassion. The second is the fact that the converted generations of these backward classes have defiled the memory of and the valiant fight that their own ancestors put up against these Christian cultists.
Much before “appa” Caldwell shot to fame, he had devoted several patient years to mining the Sanatana society for potential souls to harvest. In 1849, he published a spurious pamphlet titled The Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli) Shanars.
Today, the Shanars are more commonly known as Nadars. Their traditional profession was toddy-tapping. Among other things, Caldwell’s tract imputed “non-Aryan origins” to the Shanars, a fact that elicited immediate outrage from the community. By this time, a substantial section of the Shanars had obtained English education. However, it was still firmly anchored to its roots and saw through Caldwell’s divisive game and launched widespread agitations against Caldwell’s pamphlet, leading to riots.
As a result, his vile tract was withdrawn from circulation. But as history tragically shows, it appears that Caldwell ultimately triumphed: a good chunk of the Nadar community is now in the fourth or fifth generation as Christians worshipping a fictional Mother Mary, who has replaced their traditional Kula Devi — she is the strength-giving, life-nurturing and foe-destroying Bhadrakali who had enabled their ancestors to fight both Islamic invaders and Christian evangelists.
Fanatical clerics like Caldwell have become the deities and role models for these fifth-generation Christian Nadars, some of whom have also become bishops, pastors and evangelists on a mission to culturally consume their Nadar brethren.
To be continued
The author is the founder and chief editor, The Dharma Dispatch. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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