By Express News Service
To honour Caldwell, the State had setup a memorial at Idaiyangudi in Tirunelveli and installed a bust-size statue during the DMK regime.
The centenary celebrations on February 27 will help recollect such heritage for Tamils.
Chandra Mallampalli, explains : ' South Indian political culture of non-Brahminism drew its inspiration from Dravidian ideology : this ideology posited a distinct linguistic and racial identity for South Indians. Non-Brahmin agitators pitted Dravidian culture, which most often championed the Tamil language, against Hindu, Aryan or Sanskritic cultures from the North. Champions of Dravidianism and non-Brahminism drew upon the cultural and linguistic resources provided by the missionaries such as Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope'. Missionary scholarship stimulated a new local identity, which was
instructed to reject its Hindu nature. It became strategic to show that Tamil religion had strong ethical underpinnings, on par with 'civilized' religions, and that 'civilized' meant MONOTHEISTIC. These positive features were isolated and claimed to be indigenous to the Tamils, and shown to be in opposition to the 'foreign' traits that were attributed to the Aryans. Historical and philological works were produced to 'discover' that quasi-Christianity had already existed in the earliest Tamil literature. Among these 'discoveries' emerged the MYTH that Saint Thomas had preached Christianity in South India shortly after the death of Christ, an idea promoted mainly by the Catholic Church to bolster its standing ".
Jai Ho !!
Vande Mataram
Warm Regards
H.Balakrishnan
(TNIE- The New Indian Express).
24 Feb 2012 01:56:17 AM IST
Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration
CHENNAI: DMK chief M Karunanidhi on Thursday explained that the Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration was to commemorate the factual history of the movement. In a release, Karunanidhi said that Robert Caldwell, a linguist, coined the term ‘Dravidian’ to denote that all those who speak Dravidian languages belonged to the Dravidian race.
To honour Caldwell, the State had setup a memorial at Idaiyangudi in Tirunelveli and installed a bust-size statue during the DMK regime.
The centenary celebrations on February 27 will help recollect such heritage for Tamils.
Fwd.
From: balakrishnan hariharan
Date: Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:59 PM
Subject: THE 21 st CENTURY "DRAVIDIAN CALDWELL" !!! - LETTER TO TNIE
Dear Sir,
Reference the report - " Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration " - (TNIE - 24 Feb).
The report had attributed a statement to "Gopalapuram" (jobless these days !!) :
" DMK chief M Karunanidhi on Thursday explained that the Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration was to commemorate the factual history of the movement. In a release, Karunanidhi said that Robert Caldwell, a linguist, coined the term ‘Dravidian’ to denote that all those who speak Dravidian languages belonged to the Dravidian race ".
[http://expressbuzz.com/
Evidently 'chronic senility ' has overtaken the DMK patriarch !!
In their well researched treatise - " Breaking India : Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines " (Released in Chennai on 03 Feb 2011) - co-authors - Rajiv Malhotra & Aravindan Neelakandan had written:
" The fabrication of South Indian History is being carried out on an immense scale with the explicit goal of constructing a Dravidian identity that is distinct from that of the rest of India. From the 1830s onwards, this endeavours key milestones have claimed that South India : is linguistically separate from the rest of India; has an un-Indian culture, aesthetics and literature; has a history disconnected from India's; is racially distinct; and, consequently, is a separate Nation. Tamil classical literature that predates the 19th century reveals no such identity conflicts especially with 'ALIEN' peoples of the North, nor does it reveal any sense of victimhood or any view of Westerners or Christians as 'LIBERATORS'. This identity engineering was begun by the British colonial and Missionary scholars, picked up by politically ambitious South Indians with British backing, and subsequently assumed a life of its own. Even then it was largely a 'secular' movement for political power (albeit with a substratum of racist rhetoric). In recent decades, however, a vast network of groups based in the West has co-opted this movement and is attempting to transform Tamil identity into the 'DRAVIDIAN CHRISTIANITY' movement premised on a fabricated racial-religious theory. This re-writing of history has necessitated a range of archaeological falsities and even epigraphic hoaxes, blatantly contradicting scientific evidence. Similar interventions by some of the same global forces have resulted in genocides and civil wars in Sri Lanka, Rwanda and other places ".
They further wrote :
" Colonial administrators and evangelists were able to divide and rule the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, based on imaginary histories and racial myths - to the extent of inventing an entire race called 'Dravidians'. This application of Race Science to India included many conflicting concepts and contradictions that are too numerous and preposterous to explore in great detail here. Instead, this Chapter [Ch-6] traces how evangelical and colonial interests worked in tandem with ethno-linguistic scholarship to fabricate the Dravidian identity ".
Again. " But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian Race' was a missionary scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814 - 1891), an evangelist for the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian Race in his 'Comparitive Grammar of the Dravidian Race', which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidinists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in Indian before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryans. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by the Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstions imposed by Aryans,
Christian evangelization would reap the souls of the Dravidians ".
" Bishop Caldwell became one of the pioneering missionaries in South India who shaped what now flourishes as the 'Dravidian identity'. At the age of twenty four, he arrived in Madras with the London Missionary Society, and later joined the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel. He divided Indians linguistically and religiously, and mapped some of these religions on to the Biblical frameworks. He became the Bishop of Tirunelveli, and his extensive research resulted in one of the most influential books on South Indian identity : ' A Political and General History of the District of Tirunelveli (1881) ', published by the East India Company's Madras Presidency. His work had far reaching consequences. It established the 'theological' foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art - forms of South India. The concept of dissciating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization. Eighty years after his death, a statue of Caldwell was erected in Chennai's Marina Beach alongside the statue of another missionary scholar, G.U. Pope. It is a major landmark in that city today ".
And. " The missionaries' strategy was two-pronged. First, they intensely studied the devotional Tamil literature and praised it in glowing terms to Tamil scholars. Second, they projected the Tamil culture as being very different and totally independent from the rest of India. Their work provided the ideological underpinnings of later Tamil racist politics.
From: balakrishnan hariharan
Date: Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:59 PM
Subject: THE 21 st CENTURY "DRAVIDIAN CALDWELL" !!! - LETTER TO TNIE
Dear Sir,
Reference the report - " Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration " - (TNIE - 24 Feb).
The report had attributed a statement to "Gopalapuram" (jobless these days !!) :
" DMK chief M Karunanidhi on Thursday explained that the Dravidian Movement’s Centenary celebration was to commemorate the factual history of the movement. In a release, Karunanidhi said that Robert Caldwell, a linguist, coined the term ‘Dravidian’ to denote that all those who speak Dravidian languages belonged to the Dravidian race ".
[http://expressbuzz.com/
Evidently 'chronic senility ' has overtaken the DMK patriarch !!
In their well researched treatise - " Breaking India : Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines " (Released in Chennai on 03 Feb 2011) - co-authors - Rajiv Malhotra & Aravindan Neelakandan had written:
" The fabrication of South Indian History is being carried out on an immense scale with the explicit goal of constructing a Dravidian identity that is distinct from that of the rest of India. From the 1830s onwards, this endeavours key milestones have claimed that South India : is linguistically separate from the rest of India; has an un-Indian culture, aesthetics and literature; has a history disconnected from India's; is racially distinct; and, consequently, is a separate Nation. Tamil classical literature that predates the 19th century reveals no such identity conflicts especially with 'ALIEN' peoples of the North, nor does it reveal any sense of victimhood or any view of Westerners or Christians as 'LIBERATORS'. This identity engineering was begun by the British colonial and Missionary scholars, picked up by politically ambitious South Indians with British backing, and subsequently assumed a life of its own. Even then it was largely a 'secular' movement for political power (albeit with a substratum of racist rhetoric). In recent decades, however, a vast network of groups based in the West has co-opted this movement and is attempting to transform Tamil identity into the 'DRAVIDIAN CHRISTIANITY' movement premised on a fabricated racial-religious theory. This re-writing of history has necessitated a range of archaeological falsities and even epigraphic hoaxes, blatantly contradicting scientific evidence. Similar interventions by some of the same global forces have resulted in genocides and civil wars in Sri Lanka, Rwanda and other places ".
They further wrote :
" Colonial administrators and evangelists were able to divide and rule the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, based on imaginary histories and racial myths - to the extent of inventing an entire race called 'Dravidians'. This application of Race Science to India included many conflicting concepts and contradictions that are too numerous and preposterous to explore in great detail here. Instead, this Chapter [Ch-6] traces how evangelical and colonial interests worked in tandem with ethno-linguistic scholarship to fabricate the Dravidian identity ".
Again. " But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian Race' was a missionary scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814 - 1891), an evangelist for the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian Race in his 'Comparitive Grammar of the Dravidian Race', which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidinists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in Indian before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryans. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by the Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstions imposed by Aryans,
Christian evangelization would reap the souls of the Dravidians ".
" Bishop Caldwell became one of the pioneering missionaries in South India who shaped what now flourishes as the 'Dravidian identity'. At the age of twenty four, he arrived in Madras with the London Missionary Society, and later joined the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel. He divided Indians linguistically and religiously, and mapped some of these religions on to the Biblical frameworks. He became the Bishop of Tirunelveli, and his extensive research resulted in one of the most influential books on South Indian identity : ' A Political and General History of the District of Tirunelveli (1881) ', published by the East India Company's Madras Presidency. His work had far reaching consequences. It established the 'theological' foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art - forms of South India. The concept of dissciating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization. Eighty years after his death, a statue of Caldwell was erected in Chennai's Marina Beach alongside the statue of another missionary scholar, G.U. Pope. It is a major landmark in that city today ".
And. " The missionaries' strategy was two-pronged. First, they intensely studied the devotional Tamil literature and praised it in glowing terms to Tamil scholars. Second, they projected the Tamil culture as being very different and totally independent from the rest of India. Their work provided the ideological underpinnings of later Tamil racist politics.
Chandra Mallampalli, explains : ' South Indian political culture of non-Brahminism drew its inspiration from Dravidian ideology : this ideology posited a distinct linguistic and racial identity for South Indians. Non-Brahmin agitators pitted Dravidian culture, which most often championed the Tamil language, against Hindu, Aryan or Sanskritic cultures from the North. Champions of Dravidianism and non-Brahminism drew upon the cultural and linguistic resources provided by the missionaries such as Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope'. Missionary scholarship stimulated a new local identity, which was
instructed to reject its Hindu nature. It became strategic to show that Tamil religion had strong ethical underpinnings, on par with 'civilized' religions, and that 'civilized' meant MONOTHEISTIC. These positive features were isolated and claimed to be indigenous to the Tamils, and shown to be in opposition to the 'foreign' traits that were attributed to the Aryans. Historical and philological works were produced to 'discover' that quasi-Christianity had already existed in the earliest Tamil literature. Among these 'discoveries' emerged the MYTH that Saint Thomas had preached Christianity in South India shortly after the death of Christ, an idea promoted mainly by the Catholic Church to bolster its standing ".
"Breaking India" has now been translated into Tamil is on sale in Tamil Nadu. It is proving to be extremely popular among the Tamil people !!
In a most readble treatise - " SARASVATI RIVER AND THE VEDIC CIVILIZATION : HISTORY, SCIENCE AND POLITICS " - the author, Dr. N.S. Rajaram wrote :
" The question next is who really are the 'Dravidians' ? As far as Indian sources go 'Dravida' is simply a geographical term describing roughly the geographical South or Peninsular India. Tradtionally, the 'Pancha Dravida' are - Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra and Dravida (T.N.). These refer to the people living in the present day states. That is to say it is strictly a geographical designation but with some overlapping of language and culture.
The idea of dividing the people of the 'Dravidian' South by pitting them against the 'oppressive' Aryans of the North was a missionary tactic. As previously noted, the most influential figure in this was Robert Caldwell, Bishop of Tirunelveli, who wrote the highly influential 'Comapritive Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages'.
His theory claimed that the Dravidians were Scythians who brought a Scythian language which later became Dravidian. In effect it was a 'double invasion theory' - a Scythio - Dravidian invasion followed by the Aryan Invasion.
As with everything else that originated in the colonial period, it was rooted in politics rather than scholarship. It was part of the missionary - colonial agaenda to divide the people of India into antagonistic groups under labels like Aryan and Dravidian to facilitate colonial rule and conversion to Christianity. Caldwell himself admitted it ".
Its a different matter that the 'Aryan Invasion Theory' has been trashed by archaeology and genetics !! Never mind if 'no-gooders' like 'Gopalapuram' still cling to outdated 'Myths' !!
The statement of this 'jobless worthy' reminded me of a Tamil proverb taught to me by my grand-mother :
" Velai Ilatha Ambattan, Punaiyai Saraithan ". Translated :
'A jobless barber tonsured a cat' !!" The question next is who really are the 'Dravidians' ? As far as Indian sources go 'Dravida' is simply a geographical term describing roughly the geographical South or Peninsular India. Tradtionally, the 'Pancha Dravida' are - Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra and Dravida (T.N.). These refer to the people living in the present day states. That is to say it is strictly a geographical designation but with some overlapping of language and culture.
The idea of dividing the people of the 'Dravidian' South by pitting them against the 'oppressive' Aryans of the North was a missionary tactic. As previously noted, the most influential figure in this was Robert Caldwell, Bishop of Tirunelveli, who wrote the highly influential 'Comapritive Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages'.
His theory claimed that the Dravidians were Scythians who brought a Scythian language which later became Dravidian. In effect it was a 'double invasion theory' - a Scythio - Dravidian invasion followed by the Aryan Invasion.
As with everything else that originated in the colonial period, it was rooted in politics rather than scholarship. It was part of the missionary - colonial agaenda to divide the people of India into antagonistic groups under labels like Aryan and Dravidian to facilitate colonial rule and conversion to Christianity. Caldwell himself admitted it ".
Its a different matter that the 'Aryan Invasion Theory' has been trashed by archaeology and genetics !! Never mind if 'no-gooders' like 'Gopalapuram' still cling to outdated 'Myths' !!
The statement of this 'jobless worthy' reminded me of a Tamil proverb taught to me by my grand-mother :
" Velai Ilatha Ambattan, Punaiyai Saraithan ". Translated :
Jai Ho !!
Vande Mataram
Warm Regards
H.Balakrishnan
(TNIE- The New Indian Express).
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