Dravidianist Movement

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Robert Caldwell and Dravidian Movement


<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Robert Caldwell is the Scotish missionary who came to India and supposedly pioneered the study on Dravidian Languages, mainly tamil. Here is an effort to view his works from nationalist perspective.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There was a continuous effort by Portugal missionarys to christianize India by using the power of state, which is termed as Goa Inquisition. Later, many clever missionaries soon found out that India cannot be converted by force because India inherently has strong Hindu way of life which assimilates all sects and cultures in India. They tried to find a way to seperate Hindus by telling the people have different roots.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->



<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dravidian Movement: Caldwell profounded a theory that the culture and civilization of south Indian (Tamil people, per se) whom he termed as "Dravidians" is intrinsically different from North Indian. This hypothesis states that the origin of Tamil and other languages in south India is different from that of Sanskrit and other north Indian languages. It also claims that south Indians are part of a different race than north Indians. This theory lead to anti-caste movement in the starting and later to a seperatist movement by people like Ramaswamy Naiker(Periyar) who were inspired by Caldwells Ideology.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Evangelistic Efforts: For him, the the idolatry and the Sanskritic culture of the articulate Brahmins was a spiritual threat to the propagation of the Gospel, <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->




<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->b. Robert Caldwell had a strong anti-Brahmin bias which is non-existent in Tamil literature and culter.He was the first and foremost christian missionary who always believed that Brahmins are stumbling block for christian evangelization.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Linguistic Evangelism:

His efforts not only discouraged the study of sanskrit in Tamilnadu, but also drove to a cleansing of Samskrit words from Tamil vocabulary.His literary works are considered as the 'theoritical foundation for Dravidian movement' in Political, Academic and cultural perspective.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->



<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->However Caldwell and his descendants effort was a success story of anti-national movement. Many districts of Tamilnadu are now christianized to an extent of 45%. TamilNadu is getting ruled by two parties who follow this Dravidian theory with minor modifications. Tamilnadu has the maximum number of missionaries now. We can infer from history that once the percentage of Non-hindus increases in a territory it finally leads to seperatism. "Dharmantaran" leads to "Rashtrantharan" as we can see in the states like J&K and Nagaland.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Conclusion:

It is absolutely necsessary to build a Hindu consciousness among Tamilians and bring them back to Hindu fold. The schemes like "Ghar Wapasi" through which Christians who got converted by hook or crook can be reconverted back to Hinduism would help in this regard. The whole Tamil language grammar needs to be re-discovered on nationalist grounds. Tamilians should be educated with the fact that they are part of one of the greatest culture in world and they were integral part of Bharath for thousands of years. This will not only help for the suppression of seperatist movement also to bring back the Hindu revival.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->