LETTER PUBLISHED IN THE HANS INDIA ON 8TH JANULARY, 2023
‘Language is the life of a race,’ declares Stalinji at a literary festival. Sociologists, geneticists, and scientists the world over have condemned race as a concept to the dustbins. If we want any semblance of unity in the country and the world, politicians and intellectuals of all hues including those in the media should simply drop the use of the word race. The Dravidian movement, initiated by EV Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar), is singularly responsible for the most divisive narratives in India based on some wrong notions of race and the dubious Aryan Invasion Theory which turns most North Indians and Brahmins into descendants of the invading Aryans and Tamils as the indigenous Dravidians. Their political usage pits a “Dravidian culture and race” against the separate so-called “Aryan” culture.
Archaeology, epigraphy (study of inscriptions), numismatics (study of coins), literature (the Sangam literature) clearly shows that culturally the people of the South and the North were indeed one. The coins and the rich Sangam literature (300 BCE to 300 CE) show not only extensive references to Vedic sacrifices but a complete absence of any mention of a great clash between Aryans and Dravidians. Vedic and Puranic themes inextricably weave into the most ancient culture of the Tamil land known to us. Today, as is usual of most languages, Tamil language has assimilated and uses between 20-40% of the commonly used vocabulary from Sanskrit.
Surprisingly, there are no references to the word “Dravida” in Tolkappiyam- the oldest surviving work on Tamil grammar. The first use in Tamil is in the 18th century. In the Vedic-Puranic-Itihaasic literature, “Arya” denoted a noble person and “Dravida” was in a purely geographical sense. As one scholar shows, “Dravida” is not of Tamil origin at all because Tamil grammar neither provides for a word beginning with a sonant (hence cannot begin with d) nor with a half-syllable. The word has most likely Prakrit or Sanskrit roots.
Without conflict, there was every sign of a deep cultural interaction between North and South. In reverse, the genius of Tamil land has contributed extensively by way of temple architecture, music, dance, and literature to the North and other South Asian countries too. “Dravidian” has a meaning either in the old geographical sense or in the modern linguistic sense; racial and ‘cultural’ (as a separate culture that is, wholly different from the Indian culture) meanings are unscientific and irrational and are simply a manifestation of a divisive colonial mindset. In the Dravidian accomplishments developing to its own genius there was never a loss of the central Indian spirit and culture.
RANDOM MUSINGS 