Dravidian origins

[Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan]

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000 00:45:57 +0100, Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos at GMX.LI> wrote:

>Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan schrieb am Wed, 27 Dec 2000:
>
>> The point to note is that it was
>> a healthy reaction on the part of ordinary Indians to object to those who
>> came to rule the country with the aim of plundering it (and within whose
>> ruling classes Rev.Caldwell firmly belonged) and  who thought that
>> racially, religiously and politically Indians were inferior , and as an
>> ultimate insult start to define, who the Indians are and what their
>> identitiies should be.
>
>Interesting remarks. If what Caldwell (whose importance for Indian
>linguistics is beyond debate)

But he went beyond linguistics.


 wrote really was so offensive, why did it
>take _twenty years_ after its publication for an 'agitation' to be
>started against it?

They were not days of internet, CNN or instant communication. The book was
written in English and just a handful of  english educated shanars would be
around who normally would not have taken much interest in such matters and
would have least expected remarks from such a quarter. It would have taken
sometime to digest what Bishop Caldwell wrote, and sometime to explain to
other people and organize things.

 Is this an early example of a non-issue that was
>picked up by certain political forces and turned into an issue, like
>the Babri Masjid, or the sudden increase in militant interest in recent
>years in Christians?


What is a issue or a non-issue depends on the subject and not a third party.


 Ganesan's remark about joining "the Aryan country
>club" looks like a good starting point for explaining the time gap and
>the social


True, Ganesan's remark carries more weight than he realises. When the
colonial masters themselves began to be interested in Aryan country club,
naturally the colonised have to be edged out of it slowly just as the entry
into real British clubs were verboten for Indians well till recently.

>
>The British evilly destroy identities? When I met Dr. H.C. Bhayani (one
>of India's most important linguists of the past century, whose sad
>demise was mentioned on this list recently) over tea in Bangalore in
>1990, he told me that he was happy that the British had ruled.

One can rationalise individual success and failure in a quixotic way, but
that does not change the the British Indian empire as a loot-raj. The same
would be reaction so many zamindars the colonial rule created to make
efficient tax collection



 "Before
>they established their rule, there was a different order, and in that
>order I never would have become a scholar, because I was just a rotten
>Baniya and it was said that it was my holy duty to sit in a shop and
>sell things. Thanks to the British, I could study."

The coveted education and jobs in India now are to become "rotten baniya to
sit in a shop and sell things" to which those who aspire are mostly non-
baniyas.



 We know that the
>British did some nasty things in South Asia. But let us realise that
>they also did some beneficial things - including, in some cases,
>bringing out into the open some data or introducing ideas that helped
>undo 'identities' that had been constructed for certain Indian people
>by certain other Indian people, of whom the latter also thought (and
>still think) that their fellow countrymen are "racially and religiously
>inferior"...


Romanticizing colonialism does not help. The last remark does not carry
much weight. Race was an unknown concept in India. As far as religion is
concerned there was no idea of One True Male God and all religious paths
were considered by and large valid

>
>I fear that chauvinistic recriminations against 'padris', the
>British, etc. contribute little to the advancement of knowledge.


BTW, there is nothing chauvinistic about 'padiri' which is a Tamil
corruption of Padre. I was not singling out padiris but the whole gestalt
of colonialism of which Bishop Caldwell was a cog in a wheel

>
>RZ, München
>(who is neither British, nor Christian, nor a relative of Caldwell,
>nor involved in neo-colonialist conspiracies, and who wishes all the
>list members a happy 2001)

Happy 2001