Title: Breaking
India – Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Fault Lines
Author: Rajiv Malhotra, Aravindan
Neelakandan
Publisher: Amaryllis, 2013 (First
published 2011)
ISBN: 9788191067378
Pages: 650
When the British replaced
the Mughals as the sovereign of India in the eighteenth century, they wanted to
have in place a legal system in consonance with the liturgical principles of
the subject nation. Many British scholars studied the Hindu religious and
secular texts in Sanskrit. They were astonished to find striking similarities
in the structure and vocabulary of Sanskrit and European languages. This common
origin of languages implored thinkers to postulate a common race called the
Aryans who were the ancestors of Europeans. This race was supposed to have
invaded and conquered India in the distant past just like what the British had
done in recent history. About a century later, Christian missionaries working in
South India conjured up another construct called Dravidians in order to
establish a dichotomy between the north and south in the anthropological arena
so as to correspond to a few differences in linguistics. This racial theory was
held as sacrosanct till genetic studies among the people tore it to pieces.
However, the Dravidian idea took a life of its own when it gained political
centre stage in Tamil Nadu. Dravidian and Dalit identities are exploited to the
hilt by western organisations intent on Balkanizing India because the concept
and unity of India in the face of diverse societies, languages and customs is
so alien to the ideals these troublemakers cherish. This book handles invented
histories, identities and racial categories that was formed and nurtured by
colonial powers as it gave cultural superiority, economic advantages and
political dominance over the controlled civilization. Rajiv Malhotra is a
public intellectual on current affairs, world religions and cross-cultural
encounters between East and West while Aravindan Neelakandan is working with an
NGO in Tamil Nadu serving marginalized rural communities in sustainable
agriculture.
Malhotra explains the
compulsions which led the colonial bureaucrats to delve into Indian
linguistics. European romanticists of eighteenth century needed a historical
basis for their views to escape the rigid framework of Judeo-Christian
monotheism. Similarity of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin were quickly noted by
early Indologists. This so pervaded the colonial mind as to create a notion of
Aryans as harbingers of civilization to all humanity. Europe spun a wide and nauseous
web of Aryan master race theory that engendered Nazism and the Holocaust. It
was Max Muller who first applied the word 'Arya' as the name of a family of languages
and of the people who spoke them. Muller did try to propose an amicable divorce
between philology and ethnology, but only after his work had found its way into
race sciences. However, after the Second World War, European academics and
social institutions made a great effort to exorcize the Aryan race theory from European
psyche, but they still continue to apply these ideas to India.
Many Indians are
thankful to Max Muller for his in-depth study of classical Sanskrit literature.
It is beyond dispute that Muller’s studies still illuminate the path of
Sanskrit scholars. This book notes a lesser known aspect of Max Muller. He
served as a functionary of evangelists and observed thus: "the Veda is the
root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, the only
way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years”. On
another occasion, Muller wrote: “the ancient religion of India is totally
doomed and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?” (p.26)
After creating the Aryan
myth, the colonialists created another myth to oppose and hence to balance it.
The authors claim that evangelical and colonial interests worked in tandem with
ethno-linguistic scholarship to fabricate the Dravidian identity. In that sense,
Bishop Robert Caldwell may be thought of as the father of Dravidians. This
missionary scholar of the Anglican Church created the ‘Dravidian race’ through his
studies. He proposed the existence of Dravidians before the coming of Aryans, but
got cheated by Brahmins who were agents of the Aryan. Simple-minded Dravidians
were kept in shackles by the Aryans through exploitation of religion who needed
to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of
Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind is free of the Aryan
superstitions, Christian evangelism would reap the souls of Dravidians, or so
he thought. In parallel with the creation of a Dravidian separate identity in
South India another similar mischief was going on in Sri Lanka. A new alien
identity was off loaded onto Sinhalese shoulders by using Buddhism as the
religion, Sinhalese as the language and Aryan as the race. We have seen the
gruesome bloodshed this wicked categorisation has caused in that small island.
G U Pope, another Christian scholar, claimed that Thirukural was the result of
Christian influence of the Alexandrian school. Other missionary scholars
attributed Thirukkural to Jain origins, with the conviction of the ethnic
inferiority of Tamils as Caldwell surmised that a treatise on ethics with such
lofty ideals couldn't have originated from within the indigenous Tamil
tradition.
Evangelists and
Christian missionaries try to appropriate Tamil culture as their own in a
bizarre theological experiment by claiming powerful Christian influence in the
development of Tamil culture. To buttress this claim, they proposed the myth of
Saint Thomas as the apostle who came to India in 52 CE. There is absolutely no
historical evidence for this but the evangelists propagate that the Tamil
classics were composed under his influence. To add force to the argument, they
also propose that Tamil spirituality later got infiltrated by ulterior Aryan
influence. This book includes the profile of several evangelists who carp on
Aryan invasion and Dalit suppression. Deivanayagam and his daughter Devakala
have put forward another outlandish theory to ascertain the primacy of Tamil
culture. It is said that Tamil race originated from the sunken continent of Lemuria
- also called Kumari Kandam in Tamil - and that Tamil civilization and language
is the true source of all world developments.
The authors point out
liberal discourse on Dalits exceeding the limits and stray into seditious
ground. Dalits were severely oppressed in all parts of India in the past. This
atrocity still continues at some places, but now there are enough safeguards to
fight this menace from inside the system. Still, the academic Dalit studies
encourage Dalit writing only from a separate and divisive perspective and not
as an important contribution to mainstream Indian literature. Double standards
are also at play here. While the sense of national identity in the West is
getting stronger, in the less developed countries, scholarship is encouraged toward
self-deconstruction. Colonial anthropology transformed Indian community units
that were distinguished by their occupational roles into racial groups. Caste
is erroneously equated to race and such academics invite the international
community led by the US and EU to take punitive action against India according
to international laws on racism. Evangelists desire to drive a wedge between Dalits
and the rest of Indian society with a design to engineer conversions upon the
former. Numerous US institutions take the atrocity literature being produced by
evangelists-funded entities, repackage it in a professionally compelling style
and feed it to the policy makers of the US centres of power.
This book attempts to
look at the historical origins of the Dravidian movement, Dalit identity and
the role of the West in exploiting them with a view to divide India into
pieces. The book’s right wing leaning is undeniable but the authors have made a
thorough objective study to bring all contemporary aspects of the interminable
flow of foreign funds to India for religious conversions and stoking sectarian dissent
by building up strife where none existed before. The book’s very informative Appendix
B on ancient Tamil religion in Sangam literature clearly spells out the basis
of Tamil religion on Vedic culture. Many examples from Sangam literature are
also listed.
Readers who close this
book after reading it are reminded of a clear warning that pervades the book’s entirety
- that the forces of dissolution co-opts Indian intellectuals at various levels
ranging from lowly data gatherers to identity-engineering programs in the murky
backwaters of Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), to mid-level scholars in
India, all the way to Indian Ivy League professors and award-winning
globetrotters. This is the author's mission statement. Each chapter begins with
an ideogram that succinctly puts the main points of discussion in the chapter
in graphic form, similar to an algorithmic flowchart. It also lists prominent
academics and evangelists as well as profiling major foreign and local advocacy
groups who strive to Balkanize India.
The book is highly
recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
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