Who is a Tamil DOCX

Title	Who is a Tamil
Author	V. Geetha
Pages	19
File Size	49.9 KB
File Type	DOCX
Total Downloads	107
Total Views	588

Summary

Page 1 of 19 Being Tamil in the World: Some Journeys and Some Arrivals V. Geetha Who is a Tamil? What determines Tamil identity? These are not simple innocuous questions, rather they have been central to political, social and cultural discussions in the Tamil country in what may be called the ‘moder...

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Page 1 of 19 Being Tamil in the World: Some Journeys and Some Arrivals V. Geetha Who is a Tamil? What determines Tamil identty? These are not simple innocuous questonss rather they have been central to politcals social and cultural discussions in the Tamil country in what may be called the 'modern' period – that is froms say the late 18th century onwards. They acquired a certain weight and resonance in the late 19th centurys but they were posed at least 100 years earlier – Thomas Trautmann the well-known anthropologists known fors amongst other thingss his work on Dravidian kinship has pointed to the debates that were afoot in Madras in the early 19th centurys presided over by governor Elliss who furnished what he calls the 'Dravidian' proof which established the independent and non-Sanskritc and non-Aryan identty of the Tamil language. In fact one might even push the date backward for the invocaton of such a proofs in the writngs of Bernard Schmidts a colleague of Bartholomeus Ziegenbalgs who pointed to the 'diferent' genius of the Tamil language. Many of us know the story as it unfolded in the mid-19th century and afer: aldwell's grammars Pope's translatons and the evoluton of what may be called Tamil exceptonalisms that iss the noton that historical developments in the Tamil country followed their own autonomous logic in the ancient periods and did not owe anything to the events that occurred in the northern plains of the sub-contnent. Purnalingam Pillais Sundaram Pillay and a host of other – Vellala and even Brahmin – literary historians added and extended this argument in the early years of the 20th century. Of course some might argue that questons to do with Tamil identty are consttutve of Tamil historical development as such: given the culture's complicated and contentous relatonship with Sanskrit and Palis with both brahminical and shramanic traditons these questons haves as the writer and critc aj Gautaman argues in a fne set of essays on the Tholkappiyam shaped the culture's responses to intellectual developments that fowed southward from the Gangetc plains. owever this may bes my concern is with the manner in which identty concerns were posed in the modern period: - For Elliss aldwell and others who wrote in their wakes Tamil exemplifed a distnct civilizatonal impulses which they defned as Dravidian - For Tamil intellectuals and publicistss this distnct character had to do with ancient Tamil historys as imaged in the Sangam corpus of poems – whichs they argued bespoke an egalitarianism and clearly predated the coming of varnashrama dharma to this part of the world. The Thirukurals some of them insisteds may be read to this ends as embodying startlingly secular values. - For yet otherss Tamil uniqueness had to do with Tamil Saivism – which they argued represented a religious sensibility that was clearly non-Brahmanic. - For some otherss Tamilness had to do with languages and in a colonial contexts to uphold the latter's linguistc and cultural worth in the face of Englishs which was favoured by the upper classes appeared an act of cultural asserton – this is evident in the writngs of men as diferent as Thiru Vi Kalyanasundaranar and Subramania Bharathii Maraimalai Adigal and Pandit Iyothee Thass. This is of course a rough and crude summary of arguments that ranged from the formulaic to the sophistcated. I am intrigued that in all these defnitons there is no serious and consistent gesturing towards accountng for Tamilness in a world-historical context. That iss Tamil identty is examined in the context of peninsular Indias and overdetermined by what it is not – that it is not Sanskritc and brahmanical and so on. There appears to have been little or no attempt to consider Tamil identty as shaping and being shaped by the larger world: afer alls we have a long coastline and for several...