The Journey to Tamil Graffiti by feet_candy

A Collection of Essays Siddharth T.

FOREW

WORD I

ndia is as heterogeneous as it is populous. A country that speaks over 30 different languages, with 29 different states and yet to the outside world we continue to exist as a unified entity with a Hindi-speaking homogeneity. This is not the case. To the uninitiated, India is a boiling pot of social, political, and colonial angst. While a large number of these struggles are documented and continue to be studied, one vein that is seldom touched upon is the very sensory distance between the dominant Hindi-speaking demographic in the north, and the non-hindi speaking states in the south. It is important to note however that this does not imply a natural divide between the geographic north and south of the country, but rather a cultural distinction between two independent races of people with different historical routes to their Indianness. Indigenous to the subcontinent with possible connections to descendants from West Asia, Dravidians are an ethnic and linguistic group native to South Asia. Despite a momentous Indo-Aryan migration that forever changed the dynamic of the subcontinent, the south for the majority of history

however has remained largely free from foreign invasions and empires, thanks largely due to the presence of our own powerful kingdoms and princely states. Over time thus, our differences were passed down from one generation to the next and only compounded. With the capital just happening to be located in the north, most power and resources from the centre manage to trickle down only to the neighbouring states, with the south being largely outside of this spread of wealth and resources. As a result, the image of India that sells abroad is one that is inadequately representative of the sheer diversity of our country, a ‘Hindi-washed’ media that has been successful at shrouding an entire other culture thanks to its sheer size, glamour and fanfare. India is portrayed as a Hindi-nation, with Hinduism being our way of life; Bollywood, Yoga and perhaps Mathematics being our catalyst to international stardom. I’m a dravidian, and we don’t speak Hindi, we never wanted to. We speak Tamil, and we’re unimaginably proud of it. Being one of the oldest languages in the world, with a script that can be traced back to at least 1000 BCE, Tamil as a language has become more than just a mere tool of communication - it has become our identity. It has become our way of life, with our own set of festivals, deities, customs and beliefs. We have successfully warded off any attempts at neutralising our ‘Tamil-ness’ by way of grappling for resources, and vehemently standing against the imposition of universal Hindi across the country. Hindi is not our language, it is not our culture, and it is not our story. While we may be more conservative on the artistic side of things, over the past few years we are now currently experiencing a rapidly growing body of contemporary artists exploring previously unexplored art forms. One such art form is Tamil Graffiti, a relatively unknown craft that has been for the most part unheard of. This could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there are only a handful of

artists who work on Tamil Graffiti around the world. When I mention Tamil Graffiti, I simply mean Graffiti done using the Tamil script. As an art form, Tamil Graffiti in my opinion has been alienated on three different fronts. • Firstly, there is a sort of international othering. As mentioned before the sheer size of Hindi-media and Bollywood overshadows the relatively small and independent Tamil industry, and thus the version of India that is consumed overseas is one that has been ‘Hindiwashed.’ • Secondly, due to various factors including historical and cultural differences, Tamil culture and dravidian culture on the whole is seen as the other and a minority by the rest of the country. There is thus a national sense of othering that occurs as well. • Finally, Tamilians themselves aren’t fully aware of the various contemporary artists and art forms that are slowly making their way into the spotlight. This could be as a result of our largely conservative approach to most things in life, let alone art, or even because of the relative newness of these artforms, with Tamil graffiti being one of the newest explorations. Still largely mired by third-world problems, we have only now started to see the merits of investing in art and design. Through my project thus, I hope to shed some much needed light on Dravidian culture, and consequently Tamil culture. More importantly I shall try to employ and showcase Tamil Graffiti as a potential bridge for understanding between Dravidians, North India, and the rest of the world, in order to combat this three-pronged othering. With little to no coverage on the topic, I hope my project at the very least initiates a conversation around Tamil culture.

table conte SECTION 1

SECTION 2

Unraveled: Where Indians Comes From, Part I Akhilesh Pillalamarri

Here We Go Again: Why They Are Wrong About The Aryan Migration Debate This Time As Well Arvindan Neelankandan

Unraveled: Where Indians Comes From, Part II Akhilesh Pillalamarri The Truth About Us Indians: Who Are We & Why? Mohan Guruswamy

Why North and South Do Not Meet T. J. S. George

e of ents SECTION 3

SECTION 4

North India-South India Divide - Is there a Growing Regional Divide in India? Sethu Krishnan M.

Where Does Tamil Graffiti Fit In? Siddharth T.

The Dravidians of South India: Their Distribution, History and Culture C.K. Das

section 1

Article taken and accessed from TheDiplomat.

UNRAVELED: WHERE INDIANS COME FROM, PART 1

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Akhilesh Pillalamarri

espite the considerable antiquity of Indian civilization, with some sites in what is today northwest India and Pakistan dating from over five thousand years ago, the origins of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Indians have long been shrouded by the depths of time, a murky morass for archaeologists and historians. However, 2018 was rightly described as the golden age of Indian population genetics, because DNA evidence, modern and ancient, combined with archaeology and linguistics, has finally unraveled the origins of Indians. What has emerged is a picture of Indian origins that aptly reflects the present diversity of South Asia. Indians â&#x20AC;&#x201D; their civilization, language, and religion â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are the multilayered, composite product of many different sources, now mixed to produce the modern population.

ABORIGINAL INDIANS A significant portion of Indian DNA is derived from the aboriginal inhabitants of India, possibly descendants from the human populations that arrived there in the first waves of migration out of Africa by 50,000 years ago; in present-day India, the tribes of the Andaman islands, with a physiological profile most similar to modern Australian aborigines and New Guineans, are the taken to be the most representative of this ancient population,

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part I

which has been labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), somewhat of a misnomer since this population is a major component of the DNA of all South Asians. AASI DNA is particularly prominent in mitochondrial DNA (passed through the female line), indicating that there was consistent selective mixing between aboriginal women and high-status males from populations from outside of India, probably buoyed by innovative technologies such as agriculture and metallurgy.

“The west asian agricultural toolkit was serviceable in northwestern south asia for reasons of climate and ecology, but could not expand further east and south.” Much of the rest of Indian DNA comes from the Middle East, with some input from the Central Asian steppe. Originally, this genetic population was labeled Ancestral North Indian (ANI), since this genetic component is more prominent in North India. However, it is also a deliberate misnomer, chosen for political reasons so as not to offend Hindu nationalists, that obscures the non-Indian origin of these people. Humanity was much more diverse in terms of languages and physical features before the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry a few thousand years ago. But as a result of agriculture in the Near East and China, farmers fanned out from these regions, spread their languages, and displaced or assimilated the native populations of Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. Some farmers from western Iran, one of the homelands of agriculture, migrated east to the Indus Valley in modern Pakistan by 9,0007,000 years ago, where they remained without further expansion for a few thousand of years because, according to geneticist Razib Khan, “the West Asian agricultural toolkit [crops like wheat] was serviceable in northwestern South Asia for reasons of climate and ecology, but could not expand further east and south.”

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Article taken and accessed from TheDiplomat.

UNRAVELED: WHERE INDIANS COME FROM, PART 2

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Akhilesh Pillalamarri

round 5,000 years ago (3,000 BCE), India was on the verge of a major demographic transition, as new groups migrated to the subcontinent and mixed with the original inhabitants. The original inhabitants of the subcontinent, its aborigines, labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), lived throughout the subcontinent, but were soon to be partially assimilated into two demographic waves of farmers from the east and west: a larger group of Middle Eastern farmers expanding from what is now the northwestern part of the subcontinent, and a smaller group of Southeast Asian farmers from the east, whose demographic impact was minor, but whose crop — rice — transformed life in South Asia, because rice can be thrive in India’s climate much better than wheat. Soon, the final major contributor to the subcontinent’s ancient culture and demography, the steppe peoples, would arrive.

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

indus valley civilisation Between 3,300 and 1,300 BCE, the urban, Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) thrived, mostly inhabited by communities of Iranian farmers somewhat mixed with aborigine Indians. Very little is known about its actual history, as its script has not yet been deciphered, and scholars are dependent on excavations and genetics in order to understand its nature. It was probably a collection of independent city-states and communities, speaking various languages of multiple origins, considering that the farmers who migrated there did so in several waves. Recent archaeology demonstrates the the IVC was spread out over a much larger area than previously imagined, perhaps because the best-preserved sites were initially found in the arid areas of Pakistan. Site have also been found in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and the countries of Afghanistan and Oman. While in one sense, the IVC can be seen as a

civilization with cities, art, and administration, in another sense, it was also part of an expanding wave of agriculture into the subcontinent, perhaps the most urbanized portion of it. This wave had previously been stalled for thousands of years in what is todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pakistan, presumably because the Middle Eastern crops of its farmers were not adapted to growth in the rest of the subcontinent. However, rural, agricultural settlements probably fanned out from the Indus Valley into the rest of the subcontinent in the third millennium BCE. Even when the urban IVC stage ended (previously thought to be a â&#x20AC;&#x153;collapseâ&#x20AC;?), the rural material culture of the IVC persisted and continued to expand east and south throughout India. This may be explained by the adaptation of rice, the distribution of which is less dependent on large urban centers, and could favor ruralization.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

DRAVIDIANS While genetically, farmers from Iran contributed to most of the DNA of the northwestern subcontinent and the IVC, around 5,000 years ago, some farmer groups began to fan out, mix with the aborigine Indians in much of what is present day India, and establish agricultural communities throughout the subcontinent. This mixture, which is around 25 percent Iranian farmer and 75 percent aboriginal Indian, spread throughout the subcontinent by 4,000 years ago, and has been labeled by scientists as Ancestral South Indian (ASI), another misnomer since ASI populations were the base populations of most of the subcontinent prior to 2,000 BCE. Somewhere, in this process of admixture, and expanding wave of agriculture, new stone tools, social organization, and rituals, theanother misnomer since ASI populations were the base populations of most of the subcontinent prior to 2,000 BCE. Somewhere, in this process of admixture, and expanding wave of agriculture, new stone tools, social organization, and rituals, the Dravidian peoples and language family was born. Judging from

the ancient Dravidian-sounding toponyms of Sindh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, it is quite likely the roots of this family lie in an eastward expansion along the coast of India into the peninsula and southern India; many of the millets and gourd-like crops cultivated by Dravidian peoples also indicate seaborne contact with tropical parts of the southern Middle East and eastern Africa, while rice was adopted from the east. There is no evidence that Dravidian languages were spoken in the Ganges Valley and Punjab, and the native speakers of these regions may have spoken something related to the language isolate of the Hunza Valley of northern Pakistan, Burushaski. Recent linguistic analysis has found that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4,500 years old (2,500 BCE), which coincides nicely with the South Indian Neolithic period, a period after 3,000 BCE when archaeologists have noted the expansion of cattle rearing, lentil farming, and hilltop villages radiating out from the Godavari River basin in Karnataka and Telangana. While some linguists claim that Dravidian is related to the ancient Elamite language of southwest Iran, which has no known relatives, juryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still out.

INDOEROPEANS In the Eurasian steppe, the Indo-Europeans, an ancient people, who proved to have an enormous impact on world history and whose descendent languages are highly successful, arose. There is overwhelming genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that the source population of the Indo-Europeans were â&#x20AC;&#x153;ancient agro-pastoralists (herders)â&#x20AC;? originating from the western Eurasian steppe in modern Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Work by the geneticist David Reich indicates that the IndoEuropean population was formed from a mixture of ancient European huntergatherers, ancient Siberians, and farmers from northwestern Iran. Hindu nationalists have claimed that Indo-Europeans, often conflated with the Aryans, who were just one of many Indo-European groups, originated in India, or at least northwestern India (Punjab). However, archaeological discoveries from the Yamnaya culture of the steppe, as well as the nature of common-words shared between Indo-European

languages all indicate a colder, more temperate origin for the family (for example, Vedic Sanskrit is not rich in tropical terminology). Indo-European sites were characterized by their use of the wheel and horses, which was probably the innovation that allowed their rapid spread after 3,000 BCE. Indo-Europeans spreading west into Europe displaced much of the original European population, at that time descended from the first waves of Middle Eastern farmers, who themselves had displaced the previous hunter-gatherers. As Reich points out in his book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, rapid population movements and changes, and not just cultural diffusion, were rather common in ancient history.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

ARYANS One group of these pastoral Indo-Europeans migrated to what is todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Central Asian steppe (most modern Central Asians are not fully descended from these ancient peoples, because Turkic and Mongolian tribes replaced them in the Middle Ages). Archaeologists refer to these people as the Andronovo culture, better known to linguists as the Indo-Iranians. Most Indo-Iranian groups referred to themselves as some variant of the term arya, meaning noble; this is the etymology of both the modern country of Iran, and the Aryans of India. The Iranian branch of these people eventually settled in Iran and Afghanistan, and assimilated linguistically the original Iranian farmers of these regions (it should be noted that the term Iranian can be used to refer to two sets of originally different ancient peoples, one farmers from western Iran, and one herders from the

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

steppe). Another branch of the Indo-Iranians, the Aryans, spread south before the Iranians and migrated both to ancient Syria and Iraq, where they became the ruling class of the Mittani polity. Another group of Aryans spread southeast through the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan into South Asia; these are the IndoAryans most prominently known in history. It is quite possible that originally, the Aryans and Iranians were just two related tribal configurations that went their own ways. The Indo-Aryans are believed to be responsible for many aspects of what became Indian civilization, including the Vedic religion (an ancestor of modern Hinduism), the Indo-Aryan languages (Sanskrit and its modern descendents like Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Nepali, Marathi, and Bengali), horses, and the idea of a four-fold division of society (varna) that is an aspect of modern caste.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

THE ARYAN MIGRATION CONTROVERSY Since much of later Indian civilization has been organized by the framework provided by the Aryans, whose prestige culture became gradually dominant through a process of subcontinental Aryanization and Sanskritization, their origins and the nature of their arrival in South Asia are the subject of much investigation and controversy. While Hindu nationalists claim that the Aryans are indigenous to India, even many archaeologists discount anything like an Aryan migration into India, instead suggesting diffusion. Some of this was because the material culture of India during this period did not indicate an invasion or population change (Indus Valley-type tools and pottery are found throughout this period). However, there was also a strong 20th century scholarly pushback against the 19th century view of European colonialist scholarship that held that Indian civilization was founded by “European,” and “white” Aryan invaders (although in reality, the IndoEuropeans were a steppe

people who migrated to both Europe and India, and as such have little to do with Germanic fantasies). The truth, however, is more complex, and it seems that aspects of both the 19th and 20th century views are correct. While the female-line (mtDNA) and archaeological record vindicate the 20th century view, linguistic, literary, the male-line (Y-chromosome) evidence align more with 19th century perspective: many Aryans did enter India. There is absolutely no evidence in favor of an out-migration of Aryans from India.

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

THE ARYAN MIGRATION As DNA studies suggests, the original neolithic Iranian farmer ancestry of the people of the Indus Valley remained the primary genetic component of people from this region, but there is a significant steppe component layered onto it. This combined population has been labeled by geneticists Ancestral North Indian (ANI), a deliberate, politically-correct misnomer that obscures the non-Indic origins of these people. ANI represents an Aryan wave overtaking and assimilating a farmer wave, creating a combined migration wave that spread into the Ganges Valley. The evidence backs this up: in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan, samples of DNA from modern people, and remains dating from 1,200 BCE have steppe ancestry, while previous ones do not, indicating that the Aryans had arrived by then and mixed with the farmers. Meanwhile, farther east, DNA from Rakhigarhi in Haryana from around the same time does not display the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a, now common in northern India, and thought to have originated from the

European steppe, indicating that the Aryan expansion had not yet arrived there. Yet, further east, by 900 BCE, the Kuru kingdom, which inspired the Hindu epic the Mahabharata and where the Aryan hymns were codified as the Vedas and aspects of Hindu orthodoxy were established, existed in northern Uttar Pradesh, indicating that the Aryans were expanding rapidly to the east. In fact, it was probably the cultural synthesis that developed in the Kuru kingdom, which also incorporated non-Aryan tribes and rituals, that laid the basis for what is now considered the Vedic, Aryan civilization of early India; it was also around this time that Sanskrit began to develop into simplified, descendent languages in a process of second-language acquisition by new speakers. It is likely is that as the urbanization devolved toward a rural lifestyle, many of farming communities of the Punjab invited nearby IndoAryan groups as protectors or these groups migrated on their own volition in order to seek alternative pastures. And there is no reason to rule out military dominance, especially as the dominant Hindu castes, even today, have the most steppe

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

admixture relative to other castes, and it is likely that some of these early Aryan priests and warriors (kshatriyas) set themselves up as rulers upon their arrival in India. Razib Khan notes: “Historically the boundary between pastoralists and peasants could be fluid, but when political resistance collapses pastoralists have been able to use their military prowess to swarm across the lands of agriculturalists.” The population of the Punjab was gradually assimilated into the Aryan language and culture, and its elites co-opted, while maintaining its pre-existing material and agricultural traditions. In a process known as elite dominance, it is not uncommon for smaller groups of warriors and rulers to spread their culture and language to larger settled groups, especially those bereft of leadership. The expansion of the Arabs, Turks, and Slavs all proceeded in this manner, as often more “primitive” groups offer more organizational flexibility to rural communities.

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

GOING NATIVE It should be noted that while the Aryans may have originated from outside of India (as did many other groups, including possibly the Dravidians), they became rapidly indigenized, so it ought not to matter if they did come from Central Asia. Generally, such processes do not take very long. Take for example Babur, the TurkoMongol founder of the Mughal Empire in India, who was clearly uncomfortable with its climate and customs; his grandson Akbar was thoroughly Indianized. The iconography and rituals of Hinduism incorporate indigenous influence, spirituality, and gods, and signs of belonging to a tropical climate (like offering coconuts and bananas to deities); many common Hindu and Buddhist ideas such as reincarnation and karma are are underdeveloped or nonexistent in the early Vedic religion. Sanskrit over time begins to demonstrate more Dravidian stylistic and literary influence, uses retroflex consonants (a type of consonant used extensively in India), and often acts like a left-

branching language, with the subject of a sentence coming last. Regardless of their origins, the Dravidians and Aryans made India their home.

MIGRATION AND MIXING The mixture between a smaller, dominant steppe population, and a larger farmer population created the ANI genetic population that became dominant in northwest India after 1,500 BCE. Meanwhile, the ASI genetic population, a mixture of farmers and aborigines, was prevalent throughout most of the rest of India. That there were two very distinct populations in ancient India is backed up by some some circumstantial evidence in the Vedas, the Mahabharata, as well as in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, who notes that some Indians have â&#x20AC;&#x153;the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the Ethiopians. Their country is a long way from Persia towards the south, nor had king Darius ever any authority over them.â&#x20AC;? This is presumably an ASI population. Of an ANI

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

population, he says: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Besides these, there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the city of Caspatyrus, and the country of Pactyica; these people dwell northward of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode of life as the Bactrians [in Afghanistan]. They are more warlike than any of the other tribes.â&#x20AC;? The Iranian farmer component was a vital part of both groups, as a 2018 study by Vagheesh M. Narasimhan and others demonstrates. As there was some aboriginal admixture with the original Iranian farmers in the Indus Valley, every group in India also has some admixture from the original Indians. Older models posit an indigenous Dravidian population being overtaken by foreign Aryans, but in actuality, both groups seem to have entered India within a few hundred years of each other, and expanded in almost parallel waves. The Dravidians may seem more indigenous only because the surviving Dravidian peoples are concentrated in southern India, where they assimilated larger aboriginal populations; the large genetic imprint of Iranian-farmer DNA among elite groups in Dravidian cultures, such as the Kannadigas, Telugus, and Tamils, testifies to a Dravidian migration into South India. also has some admixture from the original Indians. Older models posit an indigenous Dravidian population being overtaken by foreign Aryans, but in actuality, both groups seem to have entered India within a few hundred years of each other, and expanded in almost parallel waves. The Dravidians may seem more indigenous only because the surviving Dravidian peoples are concentrated in southern India, where they assimilated larger aboriginal populations; the large genetic imprint of Iranian-farmer DNA among elite groups in Dravidian cultures, such as the Kannadigas, Telugus, and Tamils, testifies to a Dravidian migration into South

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

CONCLUSION The period after 2,000 BCE seems to have been a time of great change and mixing in India, as Aryans and Dravidians expanded, agriculture spread, and rice was introduced. By the time of the establishment of states along the Ganges more than a thousand years later, Dravidian and Aryan groups were mixing and influencing each other, though it probably took a long time, possibly up to just a thousand years ago, for Dravidian and Aryan cultures to spread throughout the entire subcontinent, and seep from the elite level to the masses (generally hierarchically lower groups in India seek to raise their status by adopting norms associated with the higher castes). During this process, the ANI and ASI genetic populations also mixed, inevitably, as farmers from the Indus Valley region migrated into the Ganges Valley, and then south; in some places like Bengal, the ANI mixed not only with ASI, but with Southeast Asian genetic components. Gradually the ANI to ASI ratio in the Indian gene pool has shifted in favor of ANI because ANI has continuously been renewed by new arrivals from outside of India, according to research by the geneticist David Reich. These include groups like the Persians, Greeks, Kushans, Scythians, Hephthalites, and Tajiks, and Pathans, whereas the ASI component is limited to a population in India with no relatives elsewhere, and will inevitably be diluted by continuous admixture. Today, everyone in India is a mixture, in some proportion, of these two groups, regardless of the language they speak, or the region they live in. Interestingly, admixture in India stopped around 1,500 years ago, during the Gupta Period, when a particularly strict understanding of hereditary caste boundaries was developed and endogamy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no marriage between the thousands of jati caste groups â&#x20AC;&#x201D; became the social norm. By this time, though, every group in the subcontinent had intermixed to some extent, so that there is some aboriginal DNA among Afghans and some steppe DNA in populations from Tamil Nadu, at the southern tip of India.

Article taken and accessed from Deccan Chronicle

THE TRUTH ABOUT US INDIANS: WHO ARE WE, AND WHY?

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Mohan Guruswamy

ollowing the new political reality of India, there is a resurgence in the politicotheological narrative of India being a nation mostly of indigenous people and its socio-cultural development being likewise entirely indigenous. Simultaneously, there is an attempt to link Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mythology on a historical basis. By this, the Ramayan becomes a historical narrative rather than an allegory of a spiritual journey. These notions violently clash with scientific reason.

The Truth About Us Indians: Who Are We, And Why?

The only indigenous people in India are the Adivasis, who Nihar Ranjan Ray had described as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the original autochthonous people of Indiaâ&#x20AC;?. All the rest, be they Dravidian or Aryan, Hindu or Muslim, Rajput or Jat, are migrants, with as much or as little claim as the European settlers in the New World have to be known as Americans. It is true that the colonising people

in the Americas have managed to forge a distin``ct new identity, just as the European Jew has managed to become the modern Israeli, and the world acknowledges them as that, but to believe them to be an indigenous people would be akin to the patently bogus Afrikaner claim to be an indigenous African people.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Quite clearly, both the Aryans and Dravidians were migrant races that travelled eastwards in search of pastures for their cattle and fertile land for agriculture. This is where we run into ideological problems with the ultranationalist and conservative Hindu gerontocracy that, like Gagabhatt did for Shivaji, are foisting a new genealogy upon our nation. The word out now is that we, the Indians of today, are an indigenous people. Nothing can be further from the truth.

modern upper caste Indian populations are genetically more similar to Europeans and lower caste populations are more similar to Asians. This was further validated by a study in Nature in September 2009 “Reconstructing Indian population history”, by David Reich, K. Thangaraj, N. Patterson, A.L. Price and Lalji Singh.The last-named was the director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India’s leading genetic research centre.

“The word out now is that we, the Indians of today, are an indigenous people. Nothing can be further from the truth.” There are scientific ways to discover who we are. Recent advances in genetics have made it possible to draw linkages between peoples of different regions. Studies here in India have not only confirmed that Nihar Ranjan Ray was right when he said that the Adivasi of Central India was the only real native of this country. A study by Dr Michael Bamshad, a geneticist at the University of Utah, published in the June 2001 edition of Genome Research, explicitly states that the ancestors of the

The study analysed 25 diverse groups in India to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians and Europeans, whereas the other, the “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations,

The Truth About Us Indians: Who Are We, And Why?

they showed that ANI ancestry ranges from 39-71 per cent in most Indian groups, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and IndoEuropean (Sanskrit derived) speakers. Another study conducted by Andhra University scientists (B.B. Rao, M. Naidu, B.V.R. Prasad and others) has found the southern Indian to be quite distinct to the northern Indian, in terms of genetic makeup at least. That stands to reason considering that the varna composition in South India, which is weighted overwhelmingly in favour of the lower castes, is very different than that of North India, which has a more even spread of caste density. Despite the divergent trails of genetic markers, Aryans and Dravidians may not be that far removed from each other. Linguists have for long been agreed that “English, Dutch, German, and Russian are each branches of the vast Indo-European language family”, which includes Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Baltic, IndoIranian and other languages — all descendants of more ancient languages like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Digging down another level, linguists have reconstructed an earlier language from which the latter were derived. They call it “Proto-Indo-European, or PIE for short”. Dr Alexis Manaster Ramer of Wayne State University in the United States digs even deeper and finds common roots between PIE and two other language groups — Uralic, which includes Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian; and Altaic, that includes Turkish and Mongolian. All these three groups, Dr Ramer argues, find their roots in an older language called Nostratic. If he is right then all Indian languages, Sanskritic or Dravidian, are descended from Nostratic, spoken about 12,000 years ago. Dr Vitaly Shevoroshkin at the Institute of Linguistics in Moscow, and another Russian scholar, Dr Aaron Dogopolsky, now at the University of Haifa, did pioneering work in establishing the Nostratic language in the 1960s, and this today is the inspiration to younger linguists like Ramer. Incidentally the word “Nostratic” means “our language”. This study of language is really the study of the evolution of the human race after the advent of the anatomically modern human being, a relatively recent 120,000 years ago. Language, as linguists see it, is more than just the heard word and the spoken, for we can even communicate with gestures and signs. According to Dr Derek Bickerton of the University of Hawaii: “The essence of language is words and syntax, each generated by a combinational system in the brain.” Dr Asko Parpola, a prominent Finnish scholar, raises a fundamental question as to whether Sanskrit is a Dravidian language, and advances enough evidence to suggest that is just what it is. Other scholars have written on the similarities of words and syntax between the Dravidian languages, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Tulu, and the Finno-Ugrian languages like Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and the Lapp languages. While the modern versions of these Dravidian languages are considerably influenced by Sanskrit words, the old writings “do not contain a single Sanskrit word”. On the other hand, some scholars argue, a number of Dravidian “loan words” appear in the Rig Veda. Not only Sanskrit but languages like Latin and Greek too have a number of loan words from Dravidian. For instance, the protoDravidian word for rice, arici, is similar to oryza in Latin and

The Truth About Us Indians: Who Are We, And Why?

Greek, and ginger is inciver in Tamil while it is ingwer in German, and zinziberis in Greek. This lends much credence to the theory that the original Dravidians were of Mediterranean and Armenoid stock, who in the 4th millennium B.C. had settled in the Indus Valley to create one of the four early Old World state cultures along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China’s Yellow River civilisation.

क च ट त प य ष

ख ग छ ज ठ ड थ द फ ब र ल स ह

घ झ ढ ध भ व

ङ ञ ण न म श

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

CONCLUSION The continued presence of a Dravidian language, Brahui, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, and still spoken by more than half a million people, further suggests that the Dravidians moved eastwards and southwards under Aryan pressure. The struggle between these two ancient races is captured vividly in the mythology of the ages which depicts a great struggle between the light-skinned devas and the dark-skinned asuras. Whatever be its origins, it seems clear that the Sanskrit that emerged out of the Aryan Dravidian fusion was the language of a light-skinned elite, and was replaced by Persian, another IndoEuropean language of another light-skinned elite. In northern India, these languages of the elites combined with regional dialects to produce a patois called Hindawi, or Urdu. Santosh Kumar Khare on the origin of Hindi in “Truth about Language in India” (EPW, December 14, 2002) writes: “The notion of Hindi and Urdu as two distinct languages crystallised at Fort William College in the first half of the 19th century.” He adds: “Their linguistic and literary repertoires were built up accordingly, Urdu borrowing from Persian/Arabic and Hindi from Sanskrit.” They came to represent the narrow competing interests of emergent middle class urban Hindu and Muslim/Kayasth groups. But the real sting is in the conclusion, that “modern Hindi (or Khari boli) was an artificial construct of the East India Company which, while preserving the grammar and diction of Urdu, cleansed it of ‘foreign and rustic’ words and substituted them with Sanskrit synonyms.” But the real sting is in the conclusion, that “modern Hindi (or Khari boli) was an artificial construct of the East India Company which, while preserving the grammar and diction of Urdu, cleansed it of ‘foreign and rustic’ words and substituted them with Sanskrit synonyms.”

The Truth About Us Indians: Who Are We, And Why?

section 2

Article taken and accessed from Swarajya

HERE WE GO AGAIN: WHY THEY ARE WRONG ABOUT THE ARYAN MIGRATION DEBATE THIS TIME AS WELL

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Aravindan Neelakandan

n 2001, population geneticist Michael Bamshad of the Institute of Human Genetics, University of Utah, studied the genetic makeup of caste groups from Visakhapatnam district in Andhra Pradesh and compared them with various castes and regional groups of India as well as those in Africa, Asia and Europe. Then in his paper, he announced how the ‘genetic distances’ between castes correlated with social rank. The ‘upper castes’ were ‘significantly more similar to Europeans’ than the ‘lower castes’, he concluded.

Exactly a century before Bamshad, there was Sir Herbert Risley, commissioner for the 1901 census of India and honorary director of the Ethnological Survey of the Indian Empire, who had applied the nasal index to the castes. He had ‘proved’ how Indian castes belonged to several racial categories – from dark skinned, snubbed nose Dravidians to fair skinned Aryans with pronounced proboscis. Doubts were raised from the Indian side, when Swami Vivekananda’s brother B N Dutta challenged Risley’s notion that ‘higher’ castes had European noses. He simply used more data than Risley.

Here We Go Again

Later, in a detailed work on the origins of untouchability, Dr B R Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Constitution of India, questioned the methodology and conclusions of Western ethnography. Considering the colonial thesis that the so-called ‘untouchables’ belonged to a different race from the ‘caste Hindus’, Dr Ambedkar made a profound statement. Even if one were to consider ‘anthropometry as a science’ by which the race of a person could be established, he said, the data obtained “disprove that scheduled communities belonged to a race different from the rest of Hindu communities. The measurements prove that the Brahmin and the Untouchables belong to the same race.” So, did Bamshad in 2001, with Single Nucleotide Polymorphism in the place of nasal index, prove Risley’s colonial ethnographic project of 1901 right and Dr Ambedkar wrong?

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Interestingly, the story was immediately grabbed by popular science magazines as well as local media. Popular Tamil newspaper Dinamani wrote an article approvingly quoting Bamshad’s paper as ‘Aryan invasion/migration theory’ being finally proved by science. UK-based popular science magazine New Scientist presented the Bamshad paper with the sensational heading ‘Written in blood’. It then quoted a pro-missionary scholar Robert Hardgrave as saying that there are ‘some historical and archeological evidence’ that the “Aryans came in, they intermarried with indigenous people and also absorbed many of them into their social system of ranking”. The Times of India newspaper reported the study with the prominent heading in its international section: ‘Upper caste Indian male more European, says study’. Frontline, the magazine from the Left-leaning The Hindu family of publications, in reporting the Bamshad paper announced sensationally: “New genetic evidence for the origins of castes indicates that the upper castes are more European than Asian. It took a potshot at ‘strident nationalism’ in the form of ‘Hindutva’ ideology, which rejects the premise that Aryans were outsiders.” While conceding that the archeological evidence of marauding or migrating Aryans was wanting, the article declared “modern population genetics, based on analyses of the variations in the DNA in population sets, has tools” that could provide “a more authoritative answer”. And that answer was that the Y-chromosomes of the ‘upper caste’ men had markers closer to Eastern Europeans than to the Asians. One lone media voice that questioned the study was India Today. Labelling the Bamshad study ‘controversial’, an article in the publication drew parallel with the pseudoscientific racial study of Risley a century ago. The magazine quoted the famous archeologist Dilip Chakravarti, questioning the terminology used by the papers. The article cautioned readers against taking the paper as the final say on the matter. Soon, the Bamshad study was followed by another study in 2004. A team of six scientists, including Richard Cordaux of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, studying the origin of the ‘Hindu caste system’ concluded that

Here We Go Again

‘paternal lineages of Indian caste groups are primarily descended from Indo-European speakers who migrated from central Asia 3,500 years ago’.

Subsequent Studies Reject The ‘Authoritative Answer’ In 2003, Dr Toomas Kivisild and 17 other scientists published a paper, which studied both tribal and ‘caste’ populations. The paper reported that the “Haplogroup R1a, previously associated with the putative Indo-Aryan invasion, was found at its highest frequency in Punjab but also at a relatively high frequency (26 per cent) in the Chenchu tribe”. This suggested

‘that southern and western Asia might be the source of this haplogroup’. This study did not receive the media spotlight that Bamshad paper received. However, it did prove to be a turning point. Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, of Estonian Biocenter, who is an expert in the field of biological anthropology and evolutionary biology, says, “the paper is still true and that is the one which has enlightened me to move to population genetics from Drosophila genetics!” Dr Chaubey since then has been at the forefront of research work related to the peopling of South Asia and is co-author of almost all the important papers dealing with the subject.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Then in 2006, a major genetic study of the Indian population was taken up by a team of 12 scientists. The study produced results that contradicted the 2001 study of Bamshad et al. However, this too did not receive the media attention it deserved. The paper had concluded: “The Y-chromosome data consistently suggest a largely south Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major inﬂux, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family.” This was followed by yet another research paper published in the same year. Among the 15 scientists, who submitted this paper, are some legends in the field, including Partha Mazumder of Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, L Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Peter Underhill of Stanford University. The paper said: “The ages of accumulated microsatellite variation in the majority of Indian haplogroups exceed 10,000-15,000 years, which attests to the antiquity of regional differentiation. Therefore, our data do not support models that invoke a pronounced recent genetic input from Central Asia to explain the observed genetic variation in South Asia. R1a1 and R2 haplogroups indicate demographic complexity that is inconsistent with a recent single history.” In 2010, Peter Underhill along with Dr Lalji Singh of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and a team of 21 scientists published another paper, particularly dealing with R1a – specifically in relation to its geographic spread and its link with the spread of I-E languages. Here, the study was conducted by “analysing more than 11,000 DNA samples from across Eurasia, including more than 2,000 from haplogroup R1a to ascertain the phylogenetic information of the newly discovered R1a-related SNPs’. The paper made a decisive point:

“The diversity and frequency profiles of M458 suggest its origin during the early Holocene and a subsequent expansion likely related to a number of

Here We Go Again

prehistoric cultural developments in the region. ... Importantly, the virtual absence of M458 chromosomes outside Europe speaks against substantial patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, including to India, at least since the mid-Holocene.” Even with such an avalanche of academic refutation of Bamshad 2001 paper, it continues to enjoy media patronage. For example, in 2014, ‘Beyond Headlines’ a website that calls itself ‘a leading alternative news portal’ published an op-ed piece titled ‘American Scientist Proves Brahmins are Foreigners’ written by New Delhi-based Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Research Centre director Professor Vilas Kharat. Prof Kharat wrote that “Michael Bamshad has tremendously indebted the entire native Indians by publishing this report at an international level”. According to him, the report “proclaims that, the higher castes (ie the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) are not the original residents of India but they are the foreigners”. BAMCEF (All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation) launched by the founder-supremo of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is taking claimed. It has been an interesting coincidence that the 2001 Bamshad paper had appeared almost at the same time, when the then National Democratic Alliance government was battling attempts to equate caste with race in the ‘World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Tolerance’ (WCAR) organised by United Nations in Durban. The conference was to be held from 31 August to 2 September 2001. As certain globally connected non-governmental organisations (NGOs) pushed the agenda to include caste-based issues as a form of racism at the Durban conference, heated arguments erupted in the National Committee on World Conference Against Racism (NCWCR). Dr Andre Beteille, the well-known social anthropologist had resigned protesting equating caste with race in June. And the same month, of course as a coincidence, Bamshad paper appeared on the scene. Dr Beteille was also critical of the Bamshad paper.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

ARYAN MIGRANTS VS. INDIGENOUS ARYANS One of the consistent straw man argument in many of the polemical pieces supporting Aryan migration is that the ‘Hindu nationalists’ claim Aryans to be indigenous. Leaving aside fringe groups, the organisation of historians affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the main Hindutva organisation, does not claim Aryans to be ‘indigenous’. On the other hand, it rejects the race concept itself and claims that there is no such race called Aryans at all. So any critique of ‘Aryan’ invasion/migration is not to claim that Aryans are indigenous and genetically pure. While accepting that there has been gene flow into and out of Indian land mass, the contention is only that there was no such event as an ‘Aryan’ invasion or migration. In fact, one of the tallest ideologues of Hindutva, V D Savarkar stated as early as in 1924 that all a human being can claim in terms of ‘purity’ is that the blood of all humanity runs through his veins and that the fundamental unity of human race from pole to pole is the only reality.

THE REAL SPIN So, when The Hindu reported in 2017, the paper of Prof Martin B Richards which claimed evidence of “genetic influx from Central Asia in the Bronze Age” which was “strongly male-driven, consistent with the patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal social structure attributed to the inferred pastoralist early Indo-European society’, it is to be expected that the report would be filled with the usual ‘clinching evidence’ cliché. And the writer Tony Joseph definitely does not disappoint us with his sensationalist heading ‘How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate’. Deja vu 2001! Unfortunately, the euphoria was to be short-lived as it became clear that the writer has concealed data and has been economical with truth as revealed by the article of Anil Suri. It will also become clear now that Joseph has been less than honest in even dealing

Here We Go Again

with the papers he quoted in favour of ‘Aryan migration’ scenario and media reports he assailed.

the population which exists now and there is a genetic relationship between the populations within India.”

SPIN 2009?

The study, however, makes no such statements whatsoever – in fact, even the figures 65,000 and 40,000 do not figure it in it!

In his article, Joseph takes to task some media reports of the 2009 study by Dr Lalji Singh et al. Written under the subheading ‘Spin and the Facts’ here is his criticism at length: Aryan-Dravidian divide a myth: Study,” screamed a newspaper headline on September 25, 2009. The article quoted Dr Lalji Singh, a co-author of the study and a former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, as saying: “This paper rewrites history… there is no northsouth divide”. The report also carried statements such as: “The initial settlement took place 65,000 years ago in the Andamans and in ancient south India around the same time, which led to population growth in this part. At a later stage, 40,000 years ago, the ancient north Indians emerged which in turn led to rise in numbers there. But at some point in time, the ancient north and the ancient south mixed, giving birth to a different set of population. And that is

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

The media report, he talks about, is from The Times of India, (25 September 2009) a competitor to the newspaper he was working for. A conflict of interest at work here? However, what Joseph did not do or if he did, what he had concealed from his readers is talking to the reporter for the source of the numbers 65,000 BP for ancestral south Indians (ASI) and 40,000 BP for ancestral north Indians (ANI). In fact, the report in The Times of India also quotes Dr Kumaraswamy Thangaraj of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad as saying the above factoids and does not say it is from the paper. In 2009, I had independently contacted Dr Thangaraj. In his communication with me, he stated the following, which I present here in his own words: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

Our paper basically discards Aryan theory. What we have discussed in our paper are pre-historic events. Data included in this study is not sufficient to estimate the time of ANI settlement. However, our earlier studies using mtDNA and Y chromosome markers, suggest that the ANI are 40,000 years old. We predicted that the ASI are part of Andamanese migration, therefore they could be about 60,000 years old.

Here We Go Again

So, clearly Tony Joseph has allowed his bias towards the migration theory get the better of his journalistic standards. Even here, he does not seem to have done his homework properly or decided not to deal with certain facts. In 2012, Dr Lalji Singh, two other scientists of CCMB (Rakesh Tamang and Kumaraswamy Thangaraj) had published a paper. The paper explicitly made the following statements, along with the info-graphics showing ANI entering India 40,000 years BP and ASI entering India 65,000 BP: “Interestingly, both the ANI and ASI ancestry components of the Indian populations are found to harbour higher haplotypic diversity than those predominant in west Eurasia. The shared genetic affinity between the ANI component of northern India and west Eurasia was dated prior to the Aryan invasion (Metspalu et al. 2011). These realities suggest the rejection of the Aryan invasion hypothesis but support an ancient demographic history of India.” So there is no spin involved in the 2009 TOI report. The only spin regarding that 2009 report is the negative one spun by Joseph, with wrong presumptions and concealed data.

And The Real Spin Now let us come to the real spin Joseph engages in. Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Genetics scientist Peter Underhill’s 2015 paper contains an interesting caution “against ascribing findings from a contemporary phylogenetic cluster of a single genetic locus to a particular pre-historic demographic event, population migration, or cultural transformation”. And more importantly he finds in “the geographic distribution of R1a-M780 a reflection of early urbanization within the Indus Valley”.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

In his email communication, Dr Underhill cautioned against jumping to conclusions with quite a few caveats: “It is important to realize that haplogroup R1a1 is just one piece of genetic information that informs the conversation about the peopling of Eurasian as well as Indian. It is also important to keep in mind that the Y chromosome locus is sensitive to founder effect and high frequencies may over-emphasize the magnitude of the impulse relative to other genetic data. For example while the Y chromosome might indicate a large degree of replacement of other Y chromosomes in a region, while other genetic data may indicate that the degree of replacement and mixing was not as great as reflected by Y chromosome data alone..” Then he pointed out:

“

”The place of origin of the M417 branch & Z93 & Z282 branches as well as the Z780 branch is uncertain but the diversification and distribution of M780 sub-lineages is consistent with an approximate 5,000 years ago time horizon. As city state populations began to rise relatively recently (post-New Stone Age ie Neolithic) the frequency distribution of M780 is consistent with this population growth as well as a culture involving metallurgy and probably Indo-European speakers as well as displacement of earlier peoples. While locally at considerable frequencies, the overall distribution of various R1a lineages is a minority fraction (ca. 10%) in the Indian population overall.” So, let us summarise: • •

The place of origin of Z93 as well as Z780 branches have not been yet resolved. The distribution of the branch itself happened approximately 5,000 years ago which is when the city-states’ population and culture involving metallurgy were expanding. And even the probable ‘replacement’ was not completely true in Indian context as ‘the overall distribution of various R1a lineages is a minority fraction’.

Both the 2015 paper and Dr Underhill’s communication speak

Here We Go Again

respectively about ‘the early urbanisation within the Indus Valley‘ and the rise of city-states as well as their population growth, associated with the spread of R1a lineages. So from the above, what can we conclude? The early demographic changes in the area had a lot of region specific dynamics, which include the distribution of M780 in the region. Given the ‘minority fraction’ presence of R1a in Indian population, the ‘replacement of earlier people’ cannot be applied at least to Indian/Indus Valley scenario. Dr. Chaubey affirms the above conclusion, ‘without any doubt’. According to him, ‘M780 is a marker that originated in India’ and ‘phylogentically it is not nested in any other R1a branch present in the world’. In other words, he concludes, ‘M780 doesn’t show Central Asian or Middle Eastern or European variants as ancestral to it’. Interestingly, Joseph had contacted Dr Chaubey and after getting his inputs decided to edit them out completely and does not even mention him once. Joseph, citing the 2016 study, ‘Punctuated bursts in human male demography inferred from 1,244 worldwide Y-chromosome sequences’ says something curious, which deserves to be quoted at some length: "This paper, which looked at major expansions of Y-DNA haplogroups within five continental populations, was lead-authored by David Poznikof the Stanford University, with Dr Underhill as one of the 42 co-authors. The study found the most striking expansions within Z93 occurring approximately 4,000 to 4,500 years ago. This is remarkable, because roughly 4,000 years ago is when the Indus Valley civilization began falling apart.” However, the study itself says something very different: Potential correspondence between genetics and archeology in South and East Asia have received less investigation. In South Asia, we detect eight lineage expansions dating to 4.0-7.3 kya and involving haplogroups H1-M52, L-M11 and R1a-Z95. The most striking are expansions within R1a-Z93, 4.0-4.5 kya. This time predates by a few centuries the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization associated by some with the historical migration of IndoEuropean speakers from the western steppes into Indian sub-continent.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Interestingly, this paper is present behind a paywall and hence the original lines with which Joseph has done almost a Lysenko-like editing, may not be seen by a casual Google search [the abstract is available in ‘Nature’ genetics magazine website with article behind the paywall while the entire text is available in NCBI website]. Actually, the period of expansion within R1a-Z93, 4,000-4,500 BP, matches not with decline but with the mature phase of Harappan Civilisation (2500-1900 BCE). So, if at all we correlate R1a-Z93 with ‘Aryans’ then they were more likely to be contributors to Indus civilisation, perhaps catalysing the urban expansion of Indus cities rather than its destroyers. What is even more interesting is that along with R1a-Z93, established indigenous Indian lineages for example, H1-M52 and L-51 also showed the same expansion time, Dr Chaubey points out.

Here We Go Again

Jati system brought by Aryan/I-E speakers? Joseph then weaves a grand picture of the waves of migrants. Interestingly, the migrants of Bronze Age, created Indus Valley Civilisation and migrants, who came next brought agriculture. And then “those who came with a language called Sanskrit and its associated beliefs and practices and reshaped our society in fundamental ways”. In fact when discussing the stopping of the admixture of communities and emergence of endogamy, he gives a racial interpretation and calls it ‘shifting attitudes towards mixing of the races in ancient texts’. So essentially the ‘Aryans’ brought with them Sanskrit, associated beliefs, rituals, a patriarchal social structure and ‘reshaped our society in fundamental ways’. That is very euphemistically saying that ‘Aryans’ brought in caste system and fitted themselves at the top of the pyramid. Even pro-migration Dravidian-ologist Iravatham Mahadevan has interpreted ideograms in Harappan script as representing occupational groups like ‘functionary with priestly duty’, ‘functionary with military duty’, ‘Farmer, tiller, tenant’ and ‘servant’. The parallel with varna system is indeed hard to miss.

“Although repeatedly challenged by reformers and benevolent leaders, the literate Brahminical elites were able to dominate ritual ideology and in many cases socio-economic organization through their ability to control knowledge. In the context of the Indus state, the limited distribution of written materials and their use by elites suggest that this pattern of control may have started as early as the first urbanism in Indus cities.” Leaving aside the socio-political views of Kenoyer on the ‘Brahminical’ system, the empirical data points out that the social stratification that we see in India today can be seen as having a continuity with Indus Valley Civilisation and was not imposed by a marauding or migrating band of ‘Aryans’ from Central Asia.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Why The Persistent Bias? Some years ago, while studying the population genetics papers related to the so-called Aryan invasion/migration theories, I sent an email regarding certain issues to Dr Nicole Boivin, then with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Cambridge, (and joined Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History as director of the Department of Archaeology in July 2016), she advised me: “Do take all the genetics research with a giant grain of salt”. She had also explained in great detail the reason in her paper, ‘Anthropological, historical, archaeological and genetic perspectives on the origins of caste in South Asia’:

“Part of the reason that many geneticists prove Indo-Aryan invasions so frequently is that they give little if any consideration to other populations that have or may have entered South Asia in prehistoric and historic times. Another problematic assumption that therefore needs to be highlighted is that in much of the genetics literature, the only (or only significant) possible post-Holocene source of nonindigenous genetic material is Indo-Aryans.” Dr Boivin’s critical observation becomes significant here because it is interesting again to see that while eminent Indian geneticists like Dr Lalji Singh or Dr Partha Majumder have been able to see the problem through a complex, multi-dimensional scenario, a section of geneticists from Bamshad to Martin Richards seem to make one hypothetical event pivotal to entire demographic evolution of Indian population. A comparison of the following conclusion of Dr Partha Majumder et al in their May 2017 paper to the shrill conclusion of Martin P Richards about "strongly male-driven, consistent with the patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal social structure attributed to the inferred pastoralist early Indo-European society”, will reveal the contrast. Dr Majumder et al conclude: “A closest neighbour analysis in the phylogeny showed that Indian populations have an affinity towards Southern European populations and that the time of divergence from these populations substantially predated the Indo-European migration into India, probably reflecting ancient shared ancestry rather than the Indo-European migration, which had little effect on Indian male lineages. ... This analysis suggests that Indian populations have complex ancestry which cannot be explained by a single expansion model."

Here We Go Again

If one can feel the difference in spirit and approach to the problems between these two groups of scientists, not in a crude caricatured way but as a subtle difference emerging from their respective epistemologies perhaps, then we might have also understood, yet another subtle though fundamental difference between the two approaches and also two visions of the ancient past of India.

WHY NORTH AND SOUTH DO NOT MEET

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

T. J. S. George

ardon my parochialism (or is it realism?) but I do feel that north and south are different and never the twain shall meet. It is the Aryan concepts that make things complicated. See what Manusmriti (2nd century BCE?) says: “From the eastern sea to the western sea, the area in between the two mountains [presumably the Himalayas and the Vindhyas] is what wise men call the land of the Aryas... Beyond it is the country of the barbarians.” The view that those who are not Aryans are barbarians, is barbarian. It is that view that sustains the idea of northern superiority. In fact, in cultural and intellectual terms, the Dravidians have a maturity that enables them to benefit from it, without flaunting it to claim superiority over others. Yes, the north is north and the south is south. New light is shed on this old topic by Early Indians. Author Tony Joseph uses new data made available by advances of DNA analysis technology. The “new hypothesis” validates the old hypothesis but in a different way. According to the new data, there was no large-scale migration to India during the last 40,000 years or so. Rather “there were two very ancient populations, one located in north India and the other in south India. All of today’s populations descended from the mixing of these two groups, technically given the tags Ancestral North Indian and Ancestral South Indian.” ANI has Caucasian roots while ASI, in all likelihood, migrated from Africa via the southern route 50,000 years ago.

Why North And South Do Not Meet

History sustains the north-south divide. Indus valley/Harappan civilisation was Dravidian and it moved south following the Aryan invasion. The phrase “Aryan invasion” is anathema to the politicians of the north. They want us to believe that Aryans came from Thoothukudi and thereabouts. What is the use of history if it does not serve politicians? The Vedas are projected as the foundations of Indian civilisation. Anything that points to the possibility of a civilisation before the Vedas would therefore be a body blow to Hindutva theories of India. Ironically, Rigveda itself describes how the Aryans clashed with the Dasyus to get control of the land. Who were the Dasyus who were in control of the land before the Aryans came? Tony Joseph’s chapter “The First Indians” begins with the explanation: “How a bunch of out of Africa migrants found their way to India, dealt with their evolutionary cousins ... made this land their own and became the largest human population on earth.” He has an Appendix that explains how migration from Eurasian Steppes changed the demography in a region extending from Europe to South Asia. And yet, “there are

some who insist that the story of the Aryan invasion is a vast conspiracy.” Actually this whole thing is tied to, and sustained by, the north-south dichotomy that governs life in India. The BJP is perceived as a north Indian party (its foothold in Karnataka is seen as an aberration.) Its cultural essence is Hindi. To that extent, its appeal to the Dravidian, non-Hindi south will remain limited.

"...this whole thing is tied to, and sustained by, the north-south dichotomy that governs life in India. " How can the alienation disappear when even our epics appear in variations that suit linguistic differences? The north’s favourite Ramayana Tulsidas’ Ramacharitmanas doesn’t do well anywhere in the south. It is Kamba Ramayanam in Tamil Nadu, Dwipad Ramayanam in Telugu desam, Torava Ramayana in Kannada desa and Adhyatma Ramayanam in Malayala bhasha. Poor Valmiki is drowned in his variations.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

How do we react to a sentence like: “The Aryan race flourished in India as agriculturists and as conquerors of the aboriginal races.” Or, “the civilised race conquered the whole country from the barbarians.” Or, even the claim that the Aryan conquerors went west, settled down in Iran and composed the Zend Avesta. These were theories propounded even by renowned scholars like Romesh Dutt. But they make no sense when they ignore the inherent preconceptions in terms like barbarians. E V Ramasamy developed a whole philosophy on Ramayana being a vehicle for northern cultural domination. That notion is unlikely to change as long as Ayodhya is central to the Rama story. And, don’t forget, Ravana is seen as a southerner and as a hero. This could be a game that no one wins in the end. In fact, it can be a game in which there are only losers. Strong enough reason to pay special attention to Tony Joseph’s exhortation: “We are all Indians. And we are all migrants.”

“"We are all Indians. And we are all migrants."”

Why North And South Do Not Meet

section 3

NORTH INDIASOUTH INDIA DIVIDE - IS THERE A GROWING REGIONAL DIVIDE IN INDIA?

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Sethu Krishnan M

s there a Growing Regional Divide in India? The North India-South India Divide became a topic of debate recently when former Chief Minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah raised the issue of North developing at South’s expense.

This is what Siddaramaiah had said: “Historically, the South has been subsidizing the north. Six states south of the Vindhyas contribute more taxes and get less. For example, for every one rupee of tax contributed by Uttar Pradesh that state receives Rs 1.79. For every one rupee of tax contributed by Karnataka, the state receives Rs 0.47. While I recognize the need for correcting regional imbalances, where is the reward for development?”

North India-South India Divide?

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

North India vs South India The Geographical Division North-South India is generally represented by states to north and south of Vindhyas. The Hindi-belt of Uttar Pradesh, Madya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana is generally considered as the heartland of North India. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala is considered mainly as South India. This imaginary distinction between north-south India has a history that goes back to the pre-independence era. From time to time, this fault line becomes active, leading to the polarisation of North-South India. Politicisation of this fault line has lead to many consequences for India as a nation. Political parties of both North and South India have made this imaginary separation a plank for their political entrepreneurship.This North-South divide is characterized by various fault lines like geography, economy, politics etc. Spatially and temporally, these fault lines had been activated at various times. Currently, there is a resurgence of Dravida Nadu concept in South India. We will analyze the reason behind it. Fifteenth Finance Commission(FC) has been constituted by the Central government. But there is a lot of brouhaha regarding the Terms of Reference of this FC. We will examine the issue and how it relates to the question of the North-South divide. Finally, we will see the implications of the North-South divide and consequences caused by the frequent politicization of the issue. We then conclude by emphasizing the need for unity of North and South, and more importantly for India and steps to be taken to ensure this unity.

North India-South India Divide?

History of the N-S divide: The Dravida Nadu Concept Dravida Nadu is the name of a hypothetical â&#x20AC;&#x153;sovereign stateâ&#x20AC;? demanded by Justice Party led by E. V. Ramasamy and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by C. N. Annadurai for the speakers of the Dravidian languages in South Asia.

The concept of Dravida Nadu had its root in the anti-Brahminism movement in Tamil Nadu which demanded social equality, greater power and control in government administration. Later it had taken the hue of a separatist movement, demanding a sovereign Tamil state.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Dravida Nadu as a political idea was first floated by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy. In 1925, he launched the Self-respect movement, and by 1930s he was formulating the most radical “anti-Aryanism”. The rapport between the Justice Party and the Self-Respect movement of E.V.Ramasamy (who joined the party in 1935) strengthened the anti-Brahmin and anti-North sentiment. He came out with the slogan “Tamil Nadu for Tamils” in 1938 in response to the plan to introduce compulsory learning of Hindi across India. The demand, which was limited to Tamil Nadu in initial times, was expanded to include other Dravidian speaking states viz. Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana. “South India”, “Deccan Federation” and “Dakshinapath” were other names used for Dravida Nadu. Movement of Dravida Nadu was at its peak in 1940s-60s. Post Independence, the demand for such a pan Dravidian state declined due to various reasons: • •

•

Due to the fear of Tamil dominance, the demand was not taken up by other southern states. State Reorganisation Act 1956, which created states based on linguistic criteria, eased off the demand for separatism. Also, the government of India declared secessionism as an illegal act. Both DMK and Justice party began to reorient their demand for Dravida Nadu to cater to their own local population than giving it a pan south Indian character.

Though the demand for Dravida Nadu was faded away postindependence, the North-South fault line was not erased into oblivion. Even though it remained dormant, many issues were cropped up during the Post-Independent era which made these fault lines bleed. Also, from time to time, political parties rekindle various fractures along these fault lines to cater to their short-term political ambitions.

North India-South India Divide?

FAULT LINES ALONG THE NORTH-SOUTH INDIA DIVIDE The North-South divide is characterized by various fault lines like geography, economy, politics etc.

1. Geographical

North India has had very different historical experience than south India. Many of the invasions coming through passes of Hindukush have constructed and re-constructed the historical experience of North.

While South India was relatively immune from such invasions, the proximity of sea and trade through them had given South a distinct culture vis-a-vis North, which was influenced largely by trade through land routes, manifested in Silk Road.

2. Constitutional

Constitutional dimension of the North-South divide is largely subsumed in the larger issue of Centre-State relations and issues relating to federalism in India. These two fault lines, North-South divide and centralization of power in union government, have intertwined to make the matters more complex. Some of the provisions of the constitution that have created controversies on this front are:

• President’s Rule Since south Indian states are historically dominated by regional parties which were different from national parties occupying at centre and North Indian states, President’s rule had been used arbitrarily against South Indian states. Eg: The First communist government in Kerala was removed through President’s rule in 1959. • Schedule 7 States have a huge responsibility with meagre financial resources. This has affected all the states irrespective of the NorthSouth divide.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

•

Article 351: “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule.”

This article has created a rift between North and South, repercussions of which are still being felt across India. More on this is elaborated in the section on the cultural fault line. State’s claim for autonomy is persistently increasing as the political-economic axis of development is shifting towards regional level. After successfully ‘holding together’ for 75 years due to the flexibility of constitutional provisions, a question raises for the need to re-balance distribution of power between centre and

states based on evolving sociopolitical and economic climate. This claim is shared by both North and South, but more vigorously by Southern states.

3. Political

Political leaders from South are not given adequate

representation in political milieu of centre vis-a-vis political leaders from North. This creates a dichotomy as the economic centre of gravity is shifting towards the south at the same time the political centre of gravity is shifting north.

4. Social

India is slowly cleaving into two countries – a richer, older South and a poorer, younger North. According to Census 2011, southern states are showing a faster decline in the population growth rate as compared to the northern states. As a result of this, there is a scarcity of unskilled labour in the south which is currently filled in by migration from other parts of the country. This was also pointed out by Economic Survey 2015-16. Changing demographic patterns and migration of unskilled labourers from North to South has the potential to generate a cultural conflict in the country. For peninsular states, demographic dividend will peak in 2020. Whereas in Northern states it will peak in 2040. Urban section of the population with rapid demographic change resulting in higher female labour force participation would follow lifestyles different from other sections. This may

North India-South India Divide?

lead to conflict between North and South. Increasing violence against migrants like that of Maharashtra by Shiv Sena is an example.

5. Economical

Economic Survey 2015-16 have pointed out that: spatial dispersion in income is still rising in India in the last decade (2004-14) despite more porous borders within India than between countries internationally – the forces of “convergence” have been elusive. This spatial dispersion in income is mainly occurring along North-South divide or more broadly, along peninsular and hinterland India. Beyond the more familiar Bharat/India divide, it is the north/south divide that may prove consequential. Post-1990 reforms, there was an increase in inter-state inequality. This was mainly along the axis of the North-South divide. Thus states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh made use of the opportunities provided by reforms to develop, states like Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh left behind. This fault line has been recently energized on account of Terms of Reference of 15th FC. This will be discussed more elaborately in the end.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

6. Cultural

Language – It was and is the main axis of the divide that is charged with a great emotional appeal. There was a lot of agitation and violence around the issue of national language during post-independence times like anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu 1960s. The question on national language surfaced during constitutional assembly debates. Then a compromise based on Munshi– Ayyangar formula was adopted in which constitution did not specify any “National language” and only mentioned “Official languages” of the Union as Hindi in Devanagari script. But there were many provisions related to official language in the constitution, in Part XVII that left open the fissures for future confrontation. Such provisions include: • • • • • •

For fifteen years, English would also be used as the official language for all official purposes. (Article 343). A language commission could be convened after five years to recommend ways to promote Hindi as the sole official language and to phase out the use of English (Article 344). Official communication between states and between states and the Union would be in the official language of the union (Article 345). English would be used for all legal purposes – in court proceedings, bills, laws, rules and other regulations (Article 348). The Union was duty bound to promote the spread and usage of Hindi (Article 351) The 8th schedule included in the constitution to recognize various languages.

Parliamentary standing committee on first language commission report in 1957 opined that Hindi should be made the primary official language with English as the subsidiary one. Rajaji convened an All India Language Conference to oppose the switch to Hindi and declared “Hindi is as much foreign to nonHindi speaking people as English is to the protagonists of Hindi”. Amidst this, Nehru’s assured that English will remain as additional Official Language till non-Hindi speakers decide otherwise.

North India-South India Divide?

All over India, there was a vigorous promotion of Hindi as the deadline of Art343 came closer. Tamil Nadu started Anti Hindi agitation. There was counter agitation by angry pro-Hindi activists in North India. Members of Jan Sangh went about the streets of New Delhi, blackening out English signs with tar. Official Language Act passed in 1963. The act provides for the continued use of English (even after 1965), in addition to Hindi, for all official purposes of the Union and also for the transaction of business in Parliament. Notably, this act enables the use of English indefinitely (without any time-limit). Further, this act was amended in 1967 to make the use of English, in addition to Hindi, compulsory in certain cases. Thus the violence was temporarily controlled through Official Language Act and amendment act which guaranteed the “virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism” (English and Hindi) in official transactions. But Article 351 re-energizes the issue periodically when centre tries to promote Hindi and South Indian states opposes such imposition. Eg: the opposition to Hindi signboard in Namma Metro stations in Bengaluru.

7. Regionalism • • •

•

The growing regionalism has created 28 states in India, double the number that India had in 1956 when the States Reorganisation Act was passed in Parliament. Regionalism and threat of successionism have affected many parts of the country: Punjab-Khalistan movement, NagalandNagalim – there are so many examples. The regional aspirations of South were the most strongly articulated among all other regional claims. But after the State Reorganisation, the claim for secessionism declined. Nevertheless, regional aspirations are still strong in southern states than northern states: demand of separate state flag by Karnataka. The assertion of cultural and linguistic hegemony by the north, like the promotion of Hindi in an aggressive way, has also resulted in the heightened regional aspirations in South

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

Thus below the Vindhyas, the mood is sullen. The South thinks the North is guilty of not only arrogance and ignorance but also cultural, economic and political colonialism. There is an increasing alienation between North and South in political discourse. Thus politically-articulated cultural rift between the North and South is growing. Pratap Bhanu Mehta opines that there is a risk of a magnifying N-S divide in the current situation, as there is a national political formation that is inadequate to manage cultural difference, simultaneously party structures in states are becoming fragile.

As levers of political power are skewing towards the demographic might of north India, the South is fearful of economic and cultural hegemony by North. The rise of Hindutva in North India is creating a political dominance in the centre which is generating counter pressures from South. But politics in the south is also stagnant with entrenched caste politics, internal divisions etc. In this situation, South will try political mobilization based on North v/s South axis to carry forward their political agenda. As levers of political power are skewing towards the demographic might of north India, South is fearful of economic and cultural hegemony by North. The manifestation of this tug of war is seen in the resurgence of demand for Dravida Nadu.

15th finance commission Recently the union government constituted the 15th Finance Commission, headed by N.K.Singh, which will make recommendations for the five years commencing 1 April 2020 till 31 March 2025. Some of the terms of reference of the commission inlcude:

North India-South India Divide?

• • • •

The Commission shall use the population data of 2011 while making its recommendations. Recommending a fiscal consolidation roadmap by factoring inappropriate levels of general and consolidated government debt and deficit levels. Measurable performance-based incentives for states based on their effort in areas including expansion and deepening of tax net under GST and ease of doing business. FC is required to review the devolution formula and ascertain its impact on the fiscal capability of the Union government. (14 FC recommended devolution of 42% of taxes to states)

Till now population data of 1971 census had been used in devolving taxes. Though 14 FC used population data of 2011 census along with 1971 census, the weight assigned to the same was lower. Reason for using 1971 census rather than 2011 census is to make sure States that have worked on population control do not lose out on benefits. As mentioned earlier, Southern states have a declining trend of population, so they will be at a disadvantage if 2011 census is used for devolving taxes. Southern state sees this as though they are subsidizing the growth of the north. They consider this Term of Reference as penalizing states done well on family planning. There are other discontents shared by States in common, irrespective of the North-South divide, but vociferously being put forward by Southern states. Some of them are: • •

• •

Finance Commission should consider the effect of double policy blow of the demonetisation and GST on state finances while considering devolution to states. The Centre is stretching constitutional mandate of Finance Commission. FC has no role in deciding the path of fiscal management or imposing policies that are perceived as good for the state. The centre is using FC to impose their politicaleconomic agenda. In terms of reference, there is an exclusive privilege for ‘committed expenditure’ of centre. 15 FC is also mandated to recommend performance based devolution beyond fiscal responsibility, population and devolution to Local Self Government. This is an effort of the

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

centre to micro-manage fiscal domain of states by meddling in the day-to-day governance of states. FC doesn’t have the capacity to decide what will be a ‘populist’ measure for different states. Redistributive role of centre can’t be discounted so resources should be efficiently transferred from developed to developing regions for more balanced development. Also, the population is not the only criteria for determining devolution by FC. Good governance and other developmental matrix are also considered by FC. So no state will be at a disadvantage. However, it is to be ensured that the redistributed resources are properly utilized by all states. Also, a state’s voice should be incorporated while deciding the Terms of Reference to avoid unnecessary controversies.

THE RESURGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF DRAVIDA NAIDU In 2017, when the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change issued a notification banning the sale of cattle for slaughter, Twitter users from the Kerala state (where beef dishes are popular) protested by trending the hashtag #DravidaNadu. The hashtag also received support from Twitter users in Tamil Nadu. In early 2018, Telugu Desam Party MP Murali Mohan expressed his dissatisfaction over the Union Government’s supposed neglect towards South Indian states and warned that South India would form a separate country if the issue persisted. Further, when several heads of South Indian states expressed dismay over the Union Government’s arrangements of tax revenue distribution to various states, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M. K. Stalin expressed his support for a sovereign Dravida Nadu state, should all the other South Indian states ever share the same notion. South’s opposition to Terms of Reference of 15 FC should be seen in this backdrop.

North India-South India Divide?

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RESURGENT ASPIRATION OF DRAVIDA NAIDU Economic Survey 2015-16 (ES) had mentioned Redistributive Resource Transfers (RRT) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; gross devolution to the state adjusted for its share in aggregate GDP. As Southern states are economically more developed than Northern states, RRT for Southern states will be relatively lower than Northern states. But the distributive role of the centre is of utmost importance for nation-building. So it is natural that resources from developed states are shifted to less developed ones for holistic development. Haphazard development neither suits North nor South. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that the development of South is the result of efforts of the South alone. Policies like Freight Equalisation Policy had negatively impacted resource-rich states like Bihar, Chattisgarh etc. at the expense of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh etc. But the bigger problem is that there is no evidence of a positive relationship between RRT from the centre to states and various state outcomes, including per capita consumption, GDP growth, development of manufacturing, own tax revenue effort, and institutional quality. There is even suggestive evidence of a negative relationship. This situation can be perceived by the South, as they are subsidizing the growth of the North. The suggestion given by ES is to tie RRT more strictly to fiscal and governance efforts on the part of the states as provided for by the Thirteenth Finance Commission. ES also points out that, despite rapid overall growth, there is striking evidence of divergence or widening gaps in income and consumption across the Indian states. This raises the possibility that governance traps are impeding equalization within India. So North should try to improve their governance rather than depending on RRT through FC. Sign of progress is visible, as shown in the case of development of Rajasthan. Southern states and the more prosperous northern states depend upon migrant labour

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

as well as on resources and commodities that come from the less-developed parts of the country—mainly the large northern and central states. Moreover, as the demography of South is declining, southern states will require young labour force from north to carry forward their development agenda and also for looking after the senior citizens. So South needs North as much as North needs South. And as poorer Northern states have demographic dividend ahead, it can decrease the disparity between states. So in place of needless squabbles, the need of the hour is to make suitable policies that will cater for smooth internal migration like the portability of social securities across states. This will necessitate cooperation between North and South. Question on delimitation is the big white elephant that nobody is trying to acknowledge. Before the 42nd Constitutional Amendment of 1976, the calculations behind the number of Lok Sabha seats was based on “population as ascertained at the last preceding Census of which the relevant figures have been published.” But the 1971 Census figures showed a dramatic increase in population, after which the concept of family planning was introduced

at the policy level. This meant that States that complied with the policy would lose out on all the areas where the population was taken into account. Hence, the 42nd Amendment picked the 1971 Census as the base for all calculations and froze it till the 2001 Census. The 84th Amendment further extended that to the first Census after 2026, which will be the Census of 2031. Even if the total number of Lok Sabha seats are increased after 2031 census, South is going to lose out on its presence in parliament. A multi-stakeholder discussion is needed to face the situation and devise a solution before 2031. The concept of Dravida Nadu can’t stand on its own as inter fight between southern states are common, like the Cauvery issue between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. So Dravida Nadu is nothing more than a plank to oppose the North and centre, to take political mileage out of the issue, than a meaningful grouping of Southern states. North should be sensitive to the aspirations of South and should not create a cultural hegemony through the unintended promotion of Hindi in non-Hindi states, especially South. The cultural domination, if ever occurs, should be a result of an

North India-South India Divide?

automatic process rather than government action. Amendment of XVII part should be done, if needed, taking into account of the aspirations of all stakeholders. General mistrust between centre-state is also an issue in the recent escalation of discontent among southern states. Cooperative federalism as envisaged in GST council should be the way forward than over-centralization of Indian federalism. Political leaders should not only be fixated on short-term gains. Political leaders of Southern states should make development as a plank for contesting elections than imaginary North-South divide, like addressing the growing trend of intra-state inequality in Southern states.

Please understand, Your Excellency that India is two countries: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well-off. But the river brings darkness to India. Thus the unity of India depends on mutual trust and cooperation of all states, facilitated by the centre. Labour, resources, capital, geography, all the determinants of development is available within the borders of Indian territory. We need to leverage these through cooperative federalism, rather than mobilizing around divisive and arbitrary fault lines, through proper policy actions.

THE DRAVIDIANS OF SOUTH INDIA: THEIR DISTRIBUTION, HISTORY, AND CULTURE

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

C. K . Das

his article tries to sketch the chie: features of the culture and the homeland of the Dravidian peoples of South India. The term Dravidian as opposite to ‘ Aryan ‘ is often used loosely and vaguely.

The term Dravidian now primarily_ denotes the South Indian peoples as a group which (1) speaks one or other of a series of closely related languages, differing rndically from the Aryan Languages of North India ; (2) through the community of these distinctive languages, embodies an ancient and voluminous literature and a vast mass of suggestive folklore, and, through achievements in developing an art of their own, has developed a certain “nationality” feeling and outlook. Practically the whole of India to the South of the Vindhya Hills, except a part of the South Bombay Presidency, is at present the land of the Dravidians. Of this region the mountainous districts of the interior are inhabited by hill-tribes who, in the opinion of some ethnologists, are the prototypes of the Dravidians, while some find no such racial relation, though they have, to some extent, been influenced by Dravidian culture. The Dravidians proper occupy the whole of the Madras Presidency, including the native states of Travancore, Mysore and Hyderabad, w.ith, especially on the W. and the N.E., small tracts of outlying territory. Confined from the earliest times to the regions south of the Vindhya Hills and the high Deccan plateau, the Dravidians

The Dravidians of South India

were able to develop a culture of their own, establish kingdoms and maintain an extensive foreign trade. The Aryans in the North found it easier to extend their colonisation along the fertile and easily-acquired territories towards the east along the Gangetic plain than to send expeditions over the mountainous and forested barriers to conquer the South. This first intercourse between the two races was principally religious and commercial, with many mutual influences. The military expeditions were not undertaken until a much later date. In the latter the Aryans, or rather the particular group that settled in Rajputana and surrounding provinces, as represented by the Chalukyas, made victorious raids into the South, and established kingdoms that lasted for a few centuries. On the other hand, the Andbras (Telugus) and the Tamils made successful inroads on the N. and N.E. Despite the contact of the North and South by these means, the physical barriers in Central India have left their mark on the population of those regions. The South has imbibed a considerable amount of the culture of the North, and the North, in its turn, has been influenced by the South. But the people of the Central Indian plateaux have been little influenced by either, and they are still in a primitive state.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

The Dravidians may be divided into four main divisions according to the languages they speak, viz., Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kanarese. Tamil : This language is probably the earliest cultivated of the Dravidian languages. This is spoken, outside the area on the map by the bulk of the coolies in the tea, coffee, and rubber plantations of Ceylon, Assam, and the Malay peninsula. Many of the labourers in the sugae plantations of Mauritius, the West Indies, and British Guiana are Tamils. Most Indian labourers in the-Transvaal and Natal are Tamils. Of all the Dravidian languages, Tamil has the most varied and the most extensive literature. The Tamils had cultivated the art of poetry to a very high degree of excellence. Among the earliest works which were without Sanscrit influence are some of the best poems on varying themes from pure grammar to epic, ethical, epigram, and devotional mystic poetry. The epics recount tales calculated to impress the glories of virtue. In its ethical and devotion·at poetry, Tamil stands supreme. No language in the world posseses a richer devotional literature or one more instinct with brilliance of imagination, fervour of feeling,

and grace of expression.” The influence of Sanscrit destroyed the originality and vigour of this ancient literature, but a revival of Tamil learning produced some first-rate poets, who, though they borrowed from Sanscrit epics and tales, made them so entirely their own and treated them according to the best traditions of the pure Tamil literature, that they successfully rival their Sanscrit originals. The most outstanding instance of this is the “ Ramayana “ of the Tamil poet Kamban, which, except for the outline of the story borrowed from the Sanscrit poet, Valmiki, is entirely Tamil in spirit and treatment.

Of all the Dravidian languages, Tamil has the most varied and the most extensive literature. Malayalam is spoken along the Malabar coast from near Mangalore southwards to Trivandrum. This language may be considered an offshoot of Tamil, having grown out of it by absorbing a considerable amount of Sanscrit. In the earliest references to the regions of South India, Malayalam is not separately mentioned,

The Dravidians of South India

but is included in the Tamil. Chera, one of the three ancient Tamil kingdoms, was later on divided into two, the portion lying to the west of the Vil. Ghats becoming the Malayalam country, and the inland district comprising Salem, Coimbatore,. and a portion of Mysore. Its literature is modern and influenced by Sanscnt. Telugu: “In respect of antiquity of culture and glossorial copiousness. Telugu is generally considercd as ranking next to Tamil in the list of Dravidian idioms, whilst in point of euphonic sweetness it justly claims to occupy the first place. Telugu is spoken along the coast from Pulicat northwards to Chicacolc, a little to the north of Vizagapatam, and extends inland to the Maratha country and Mysore, including the Ceded districts, a considerable part of the Nizam’s dominions, and a portion of the Nagpur country and Gondvana. The Telugu people form the most numerous branch of the Dravidian race. The people are called Andhra by Sanscrit writers. There are various references to the Telugus in the early writings: the Kalingas, important in commera, and war on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, were probably Telugus. The Telugus have strong

national feeling, and have been working ceaselessly towards creating an Andhra province. They wish to create an Andhra University with its centre at Rajmundry. We may see, possibly at an early date, a few universities in South lnd;a, distributed according to language, with perhaps a reformed premier university at Madras. Kanarese is spoken throughout Mysore, in the Southern Maratha country, and in the western districts of the Nizam’s dominions. It possesses classical and colloquial forms with the different inflexional terminations. Kanarese is the state language of Mysore, and Mysore University is really a Kanarese University. Kanarese possesses some ancient literature and a vaststore of folklore.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

The direct evidence for ancient Tamil ascendancy in trade is most abundant, though their neighbours were also active. South India has traded in early times with the Phrenicians, Jews, Assyrians, Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and, in modern times, with the Tt.trks, Venetians, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. The assertion of Dr. Sayce that S. India exported teak to Babylon about 3000 B. C. is not accepted by all authorities. According to Kennedy, there is no archreological or literary evidence for maritime trade between India and Babylon prior to the seventh century B.C., but direct evidence is available for the s,ixth. The Indian cedar beam (teak) found in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar (604-502 B.C.) and two logs of wood apparently of teak in the temple of the Moongod at Ur rebuilt (~38 B.C.), must have been taken from S. India. Certain Indian commodities, e.g., rice, peacocks, sandalwood, were known to the Greeks and others under their Tamil names, in the fifth century B.C. Rhys Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dates this seaborne trade from the eighth to the seventh centuries B.C. He also mentions that the mariners took advantage of the monsoons and traded between the ports on the S. W. coast of India and Babylon. There are several references in the Bible to the trade with S. India, whence the princes and merchants of Palestine obtained spices, etc. The most telling evidence for this trade with Palestine is preserved in the adaptation of purely Tamil words to denote commodities obtained from South India in the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Dravidians of South India

In Ctesias’ “ lndica,” the earliest Greek treatise on India, mention is made of “ Karpion “ (meaning cinnamon), which is directly derived from the Tamil word “ Karuppa “ or “Karnppu.” Numismatic evidences point unmistakably to the growth somewhat later of an active Indian commerce with the west, chiefly Rome. The large find of Roman coins in the Tamil country is evidence, and we note the device of a two-masti,d ship on somi, Andhra coins. The Indian trade with Rome flourished in the period from Augustus to Nero. Pliny laments “ the wasteful extravagance of the richer classes and tlu!ir reckless expenditure on perfumes, unguents and personal ornaments,” declaring that there was “ no year in which India did not drain the Roman Empire of a hundred million sesterces. Even in the seventh century B.C. the S. Indian mariners were aided by the monsoons, but the discovery of their regularity is said to have been made in 47 A. D. by a pilot named Hippalus ; and from that time ships sailed in their season direct to the Malabar ports. The Western merchants brought with them wine, brass, lead and glass for sale, and in return took pepper, ivory,, pearls, beryls and fine muslins. The Indian articles were obviously of more value, for a large amount of Roman species was brought into India, in addition to the wares of Europe. The latter were necessaries of life, and exchanged for the luxuries produced by India or imported by her from China and the East. Silk was obtained from China, spices from India, pearls from the sea skirting the South coast, beryl from Padiyur in the Coimbatore district and from Vaniyambadi in the Salem district. The beryl obtained from these mines was the best in the world. Roman coins are found in numbers near these mines. After Nero the Romans returned to a life of moderation, and the few Roman coins of later date are in cotton districts, the mines being practically deserted. In 408 A.D, Rome’s ransom paid to Alaric included 3,000 pounds of pepper. There were colonies of ‘Yavanas’ (Romans, Greeks, etc.), who were either warriors in the service of the Tamil kings or merchants. Reference is made to “ the importation of Yavana ware, lamps and vases, and Nilgiri megalithic tombs have numerous bronze vessels of the early centuries of the European Christian era.” Of the literary evidences for the sea-borne trade with Europe there are two kinds, viz.. , mention in foreign works and in Tamil books.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

The ‘Periplus of the Erythrean Sea’ (100 A.D.) and Ptolemy’s Geography (140 A. D.) are the chief reliable foreign books. ‘The Periplus’ is a kind of marine handbook, written apparently by a mariner who had sailed the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and who lived for a longtime in Barygaza-Bharoach, the principal distributing centre on the West Coast. He mentions the Indians brading with their own vessels, some of them large. They sailed to East Africa for gold, to Arabia for gums and incense. There were Hindu settlements on the north coast of Socotra . Ptolemy’s Geography describes tile whole of the coast from the mouths of the Indus to those of the Ganges. He has accurate details of the places on the W. and S. E. coast, but is less reliable on the Ganges region. Tamil works give picturesque details of trade in South lndia in early centuries of the Christian era. Kaviripaddinam was built “ on the northern bank of the Kaveri River, then a broad and deep stream, into which heavily laden ships entered from the sea without slacking sail. The town was divided into two parts, one of which, Maruvurpakkam, adjoined the sea-coast. Near the beach were raised platforms and .’ godowns ‘or warehouses, where goods landed were stored and stamped with the Tiger, the emblem of the Chola (Tamil) Kings, after payment of customs duty. They were then passed onto merchants’ warehouses. Close by were the settlements of the Yavana merchants. There were then rows of shops where the vendors of spices predominated. Artisans of all kinds had their habitation there.

The Dravidians of South India

It is worth while noting that in these Chola parts there were lighthouses buillt of brick and mortar which exhibited blaz.ing lights at night to guide ships to port. The first two centuries of the Christian era found the Chola ports carrying on active commerce with Bengal and the isles of the Malay Archipelago. Lower Burma was conquered by emigrants from the Telugu kingdoms. The Tamil states maintained powerful fleets, and the rulers took a personal interest in the welfare of the trade. With the fall of the Tamil kingdoms about the thirteenth century A. D., the Dravidian trade declined because the conquerors cared little for either inland trade or sea-borne commerce. The fleets dwindled ; the harbours were left desolate and were gradually submerged by the sea, and are at present marked by vast mounds of sand, with perhaps a lonely village at the site. From early times Dravidians, and especially Tamils, have founded colonies. The earliest was the Tamil colony of Jaffna in the north of Ceylon. The Tamils settled there about 204 B.C. 14 There were Tamil kings iti Jaffna until 1617 A.D., when the Portuguese took possession of the place. There has long been the closest connection between the Jaffoa Tamils and their kinsman on the mainland. This conservation of Tamil tradition characterises the Tamil peoele wherever they go. The greatest effort was the colonisation of Java. The earliest Indian peoples to reach the island were the Klings, the people of Kalinga. The Andhra country, i.e., the land of theTelugus, was called Kalinga. It is almost certain that the Klings that went over to Java were Dravidians, probably belonging to the Telugu branch. This, .according to tradition, was about the year 78 A.D. About the 7th century A.D. there were political disturbances in India consequent upon the ‘Hun’ invasions and the consolidation of the Empires by Harshavar-dhana in the north and by Pulikesin II Chalukya in the Deccan. As a result of the chaotic state of the coqntry and the insecurity of life, it is believed, a numerous·body of colonists emigrated from the districts around Gujerat to the islands of Malay Archipelago. One branch of these colonists is said to have arrived in Java. If they did, they did not leave any lasting impress on the island. On the other hand, we see from archreological evidence and Javanese art that the influence of the Dravidians.

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

100

on Javanese culture has been marked and permanent. Recent investigations” have conclusively proved that the architecture of Borobudur {7th and 8th. centuries, A.D.) is entirely Dravidian. J.W. ljzerman, a Dutch engineer, contends that Ferguson was misled by inaccurate drawings. The Javanese temples, with the solitary exception of Chandi-Bima in the Dyeng, are Dravidian and not Chalukyan. Vincent Smith holds that the character of the sculpture and the details of ornamentation in the) later caves of W. India {Chalukyan) do not appear to be “so nearly identical with what is found in the Javan monument” as Fergusson affirms. The difference rather than the resemblance impresses the mind. The Indian sculptures which most nearly resemble the Javanese work are those executed under Chola (Tamil) patronage in the 11th century. The Dravidian system of enclosure within enclosure with pillared corridors was also carried to Siam and Cambodia, where the largest and most magnificently sculptured temples were executed in the Dravidian style. The later influence of Brahmanism on Java has led many to believe that the Javan civilization was the result of Aryan influence. This is, however, disproved by the fact that even Sanscritised names of places in Java have been derived from the Dravidianised forms of Sanscrit names. Thus the ‘ Aryan ‘ or Sanscrit influence in Java came immediately from South not North India. It is all the more certain, therefore, that even the Brahmanic element in Java was introduced mainly through the agency of the Dravidians. Burnell holds that the Kawi (Javan) alphabet has descended from the Vengi (Telugu) and Pallava (Tamil) alphabets, and regards Pallava as the original of the Javan script. Dravidian words that occur in Kawi and Javanese are apparently all Tamil. The Dravidians are still great colonisers. They are an enterprising race, and do not hesitate to look for work in foreign countries, provided they are paid decent living wages and allowed to keep to their customs and live their own mode of life. In the development of the tropics, particularly where there is need for agricultural employment, they play a great part, and their role will be still more needed in the near future. It is to be regretted, however, that the treatment to which these peace-loving people are subject in many instances has discouraged many from emigrating. The

The Dravidians of South India

cond,tions of the Indian labourer that obtain in colonies like S. Africa cannot be too harshly commented upon. This, together with the unquenchable desire of the Indians to find their last rest in their own country, induces many of the labourers to return home after their period of work has expired. The S. Indian people are skilful agricultural labourers, and carry all before them in that line. The colonist competes with the indigenous workmen and easily beats them. This is only natural, for in his own country he has to struggle to wrest food from a not too fertile land, to support an overcrowded, half-starving population. Having been trained in such a stern school, he finds it easy to holcl his own against the labour of indigenous tribes who are blessed by a more bountiful nature. Unfortunately, when the Dravidian colonist saves money and sets up a small business, the very men that so eagerly took him to work grow jealous, though his influence is acknowledged to be good by all experts.

101

The Journey To Tamil Graffiti

102

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part II

103

The Journey to Tamil Graffiti

Articles inside

SECTION

SECTION

SECTION