Coromandel – A Personal History of South India

Title: Coromandel – A Personal History of South India

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9781408705391

Pages: 411

 

South India is in many ways different from the north such as in language, costumes, social organisation and political outlook. While the north was always susceptible to invasions from the northwest frontier, the south interacted with foreign powers mostly as trade partners rather than opponents in the battlefield. Whatever invasion the south had to endure was from those foreign powers that had subdued the north. Even though the differences between the two regions appear formidable to some, even a cursory examination would prove that it is only skin-deep and the same culture runs through the veins of both the north and the south. However, the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu blows these petty differences out of proportion as something fundamental in nature and harps on the distinctness of the south. They have not yet been successful in convincing even their brothers in the southern states other than Tamil Nadu. Sane people find it difficult to palate their fanciful claims that Tamil was the original language spoken in the world in a now submerged continent of Lemuria. In spite of this, they find support from some foreign NGOs and evangelist groups. This book is also a clear marker of support to the movement. It is based on the personal travels the author and his wife had made to the south in a number of years. There is no chronology, story line or structure for the content and any chapter can be read independently without loss of context. Charles Allen was born in India during the last days of British Raj as the son of a civil servant. He is the author of many bestselling books on India and the colonial experience elsewhere.

 

A crucial distinguishing factor that sets apart the south in academic circles is the Dravidian identity. Even though the term was coined and used to denote the southern language group, Tamil supremacists denote a human race by it who was the founders of the Harappan Civilization. But here the author refutes Mortimer Wheeler’s Aryan Invasion Theory. Wheeler uncovered a number of skeletons from Mohenjo-daro and declared them to be victims of a massacre of Harappans by invading Aryans. This violent invasion theory has since been disproved by more solid archeological evidence which points to the arrival of predominantly pastoralist people by degrees and over an extended period (p.56). Allen then makes a leap of faith by assuming that the Aryans displaced the Dravidians. He goes on to say that to understand the huge cultural gulf between the Harappans and Aryans, you have only to consider what is and is not to be found in the Rig Veda! But Harappan script is not yet deciphered and we can only guess at the content of Harappan thought. Later Aryan texts show loss of importance to some objects such as soma. Does he mean to say that the plant had gone extinct in Punjab? The sole source of such arguments is the leftist historians such as D. D. Kosambi and Romila Thapar. Allen then works overtime to establish the Aryan out-of-India theory. He suggests the Harut River in western Afghanistan as the Saraswati and that neighbourhood as the Aryan homeland. As in North America, the autochthonous people were demonized as savages in the victor’s literary texts. This comparison, however, is outright bunkum. The present Hindu pantheon is a smooth assimilation of Vedic and non-Vedic divinities, with the non-Vedic ones gaining predominance. Now, who has heard of Red Indian gods being worshipped by whites in America today?

 

The book gives a short survey of the origin of the Dravidian Movement and how it sought to rewrite Tamil history to suit their needs. The term ‘Dravidian’ was coined by the maverick British civil servant Francis Ellis and the Christian missionary Robert Caldwell. Both were ardent supporters of British colonialism and Protestant Christianity. The most ironic fact is that Ellis chose ‘Dravidian’ as it was already used by Sanskrit philologists to denote the south Indian people and languages. In short, the word ‘Dravidian’ itself comes from Sanskrit! The author blindly accepts the colonialist argument that Brahmins introduced idol worship, ‘Puranic’ system of religion, caste system and undermined and reduced the status of Tamil literature by replacing it with Sanskrit. As you can see, the Dravidian Movement was kindled by the ideas of missionary Caldwell who tried his best to drive a wedge between various sections of people and persuade some of them to convert. Allen presents a few fanciful examples – most of them not sufficiently authentic – of how Jainism and Buddhism were replaced by Hinduism in the south and alleges that this was a clever ploy of the Brahmins to impose their religion on the natives. However, he fails to consider that both those religions were not indigenous to the south and that they too had come from the north!

 

Charles Allen seethes with a severe variant of anti-Hindu bias. His handling of Sabarimala which is one of the most popular Hindu pilgrimage sites in South India proves this point. The author is so hostile to the temple and its devotees whom he describes as ‘looking alarming at first and can be mistaken for rowdies who have had too much country liquor’. He then puts forward the nonsensical claim that the temple administration has installed a scanning machine that detects menstruating women (p.106). The book purports to associate Brahmins with every kind of misfortune or misdeed the southern society had had to endure. The second century BCE Chola king Elara conquered Sri Lanka. He placed a bell outside the court room which a person seeking justice was free to ring. One day, a cow rang the bell and complained that her calf was run over by the prince’s chariot. In the interests of justice, Elara ordered his son to be killed in the same manner. Allen claims this story to denote the beginning of Brahminical influence. Pathetically, he forgets that this was taken from the Buddhist text Mahavamsa and that Jains and Buddhists were as much against cow slaughter as the Hindus.

 

This book presents many ideas which were in circulation for a long time, but have since been discarded in the light of new discoveries and consensus. Tamils were said to inhabit a continent named Lemuria which submerged in the Indian Ocean. They were the progenitors of all world cultures. The amazing truth is that this ridiculous idea is still taught in Tamil Nadu as established history! For this to be true, mankind should have evolved into existence at the time when continents were drifting across the earth’s crust and sea level much below what it is today. Similarly a sect among Kerala Christians believes that they were the descendants of Brahmins converted to Christianity by no less a person than the Apostle Thomas a few years after crucifixion in the first century CE. This theory has also been rejected by historians. However, the author claims that since there were many Roman settlements in Muziris which is now in Kerala, ‘one of these Roman citizens could well have been the Christian missionary Judas Thomas in 52 CE’ (p.179). To bolster this outrageously pseudo-historical comment, he remarks that hoards of Roman coins were found near two churches believed to have been built by Thomas.

 

As is the usual practice by left historians to discount atrocities by Muslim invaders, the author claims that though the Jagannath Temple at Puri was destroyed sixteen times by Muslim generals, they were ‘for the most part motivated by politics rather than religious fanaticism’ (p.220). How can these scholars pronounce such outright lies? Dravidian fundamentalists usually consider Brahmins and north Indian Hindi-speakers as having oppressed the Tamils in various ways over the centuries. But this book describes the greatest plunder of the Tamil country in the fourteenth century when Sultan Ala-ud-din Khilji invaded the south. He removed 9600 maunds of gold (anywhere between 1000 to 6000 tons in modern measure). When paraded in triumph through the streets of Delhi, along with 612 captured elephants and 20,000 horses, this booty created such a sensation that it passed into folk lore within the Muslim world, eventually to be transformed by way of the Arabian Nights into Aladdin’s Cave (p.258). Anyway, today’s Dravidians are okay with this particular loss!

 

The author professes himself to be an atheist/agnostic but consciously or not, his scholarly outlook so closely matches the colonial evangelist viewpoint that we would suspect the book to have been written a century ago. This book is only as authentic as an Amar Chitrakatha designed for kids. His fixing of the site of Kalinga war is amusing. Mark Shand, an elephant enthusiast, rode on his elephant through the fields of Dhauli in Odisha. This elephant refused to go forward when it reached a particular place. Whatever Shand and the mahout did could not persuade the animal to cross the open ground in front of them. Hundreds of elephants were killed in the Kalinga war and Allen ascribes the elephant’s behavior to ancestral memory! So much for the authenticity of the narrative! The Vijayanagara Empire is not even mentioned in this history of the south. The author is highly critical of Hindu influence and even its mere presence in South Indian culture though this is caused mostly by ignorance than mal-intent. Though knowledge of established facts is very superficial, the author often assumes the airs of a scholar.

 

The book is recommended only for very light reading, such as when you embark on a long train journey and have nothing worthwhile at hand to spend your time.

 

Rating: 2 Star