Hindutva in Tamil Nadu

This is in response to S Subramanyan’s rejoinder (June 17) to M S S Pandian’s ‘Tamil Friendly Hindutva’ (May 27). Having already sworn their affidavits in favour of BJP it hardly matters to those who hold opinions like S Subramanyan as to whether they put the cart before the horse or not. As in the Maniratnam film ‘Iruvar’ the Dravidian movement as a whole stands condemned once again for a certain kind of rabidity. Be that as it may, what Subramanyan silences is the historicity of the events that led to the racialisation of what are inherently ethnic differences in Tamil Nadu.

For instance, C N Annadurai wrote his Arya Mayai (Aryan Illusion) only after the field of culture and politics in Tamil Nadu had already been discursively orientalised by the brahmins-that-be in favour of their alleged superior Aryan identity which excluded all the non-brahmins as ‘untouchable’ shudras. To assert the superiority of such a new-found identity at the turn of the century the Indo-European lineage of Sanskrit was often resorted to by such brahminism, and it even made attempts to make the learning of Sanskrit compulsory in the University of Madras.