See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/320323814

The Limits of Inventing Tradition: The Dravidian Movement in South India

Article  in  Australian Religion Studies Review · January 2007

CITATIONS READS

0 1,880

1 author:

Richard S Weiss
Victoria University of Wellington
18 PUBLICATIONS   72 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Dravidian Nationalism View project

Siddha Medicine View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Richard S Weiss on 11 October 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

ARSR 20.1 (2007): 59-75
ISSN: 1744-9014

The Limits of Inventing Tradition:

The Dravidian Movement in South India

Rick Weiss

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers’ influential volume, The Invention of
Tradition, remains a milestone in scholarly approaches to the study of tradi-
tion. However, in emphasizing conscious manipulations of tradition, and in
employing a notion of invention that lacks nuance, the authors of that volume
do not sufficiently acknowledge the degree to which invented traditions draw
from prior traditions. I explore here the limits of conscious constructions of
tradition, arguing that traditions that serve as powerful touchstones for identity
cannot be invented ex nihilo. I look at an instance of elite formulation of tradi-
tion, the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu, South India, in the first half of
the twentieth century, which articulated a new formulation of Tamil tradition
based largely on European models and ideals. The leaders of this movement
envisioned an ancient Tamil community that was egalitarian, scientific, and
non-Hindu, and they employed this vision in their development of policies for
education, religious institutions, and industrialization. Their failure to mobilize
popular support for their cause was repeatedly demonstrated in their electoral
defeats at the hands of the Congress Party, which promoted a reformist tradi-
tion based on Hindu symbols and ritual practices. I argue that the Dravidian
Movement failed to win political support because they discarded nearly all the
components of prior Tamil tradition, and the novel tradition they authored in
turn was unrecognizable to ordinary Tamils.

Introduction
The publication of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers’ now classic vol-
ume, The Invention of Tradition, marked a major advance in scholarly
approaches to the study of tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Rather
than conceiving of traditional practices as those which imitate the past,

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW.
60 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

either consciously or unconsciously, the essays in that volume highlight the

ways in which novel practices and discourses are celebrated as ancient,
even original, expressions of community. However, their focus on blatant
instances of elite, conscious manipulation of tradition led them to ignore the
continuity of even the most novel of traditions, and to overlook the degree
to which authors of tradition are themselves implicated in the discourses
which they dispense. I will here suggest a more subtle model of tradition,
one that attends to continuity and innovation, and to agency and structure. I
will focus on a twentieth-century political and cultural movement in South
India that formulated a novel tradition of the Tamil-speaking people, a for-
mulation that ultimately failed to capture the imaginations of Tamil voters.
In his densely argued introduction, Hobsbawm defines an invented tradi-
tion as ‘a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted
rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain
values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies
continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to
establish continuity with a suitable historical past… However, insofar as there
is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of “invented” traditions is
that the continuity with it is largely factitious’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983:
1-2). Hobsbawm further defines tradition through two questionable distinc-
tions. First, he contrasts tradition from custom. While tradition insists on
invariance, custom does not, because it is immediately intertwined with the
functioning of society. ‘ “Custom” is what judges do; “tradition” (in this
instance invented tradition) is the wig, robe and other formal paraphernalia
and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action’ (1983: 2-3). He
further distinguishes tradition from ‘convention and routine’, which are not
invented traditions because their ‘functions, and therefore their justifications,
are technical rather than ideological (in Marxian terms they belong to “base”
rather than “superstructure” ’; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983: 3). Thus, tradi-
tion is neither substantial action, nor does it serve a technical function for
society.
Hobsbawm’s impoverished view of tradition emerges, it seems to me, out
of a simplistic extension of Marx’s notion of ideology as comprised of the
ideas of the ruling class, which are established in society by a segment of
that ruling class, the ideologists, whose livelihood is to articulate elite inter-
ests as the common interest of all classes (Marx and Engels 1995: 65-66).
Hobsbawm’s treatment of tradition shares much with Marx’s analysis of
ideology as conscious manipulation and elite practice, and so he overlooks
the degree to which the success of these invented traditions depends on
audience acceptance. Like the essays in that volume, I will also look at an
instance of elite construction of tradition, but one that was ultimately unsuc-
cessful in winning the hearts of a widespread audience. In looking at this

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 61

failed attempt to invent tradition, I hope to demonstrate the limits of the

wholesale fabrication of tradition, arguing that the widespread acceptance
of new formulations of tradition depends on the creative use of past
formulations.

The Dravidian Movement in South India

The political scene in Tamil-speaking South India in the first half of the
twentieth century was characterized by the contestation of jobs, political
power, the shape of future sovereignty, and competing formulations of
Tamil tradition. One influential faction was the Dravidian Movement, led by
a group of elite non-brahmans who articulated a Tamil renaissance and a
specific construction of an ancient Tamil identity.1 This constituency, with
some change of leaders and ideas, yet consistently drawing on essentially
the same version of Tamil tradition, transformed itself into a political lobby
for a separate Tamil nation. They opposed the articulation of tradition, and
the political agenda, of Gandhi and Nehru’s Congress party, which was
working to build a unified India. I will focus here on the vision of Tamil
tradition formulated by E.V. Ramasami Naicker (hereafter E.V.R.), who
played a leading role in both the legislative politics and the cultural imagin-
ing of Tamil nationalism.
One of the driving issues in my analysis is the failure of the E.V.R.’s
Justice Party, the most important political vehicle of Tamil separatism, to
win at the ballot box. I will suggest that the respective articulations of Tamil
tradition, most importantly the Justice Party’s anti-brahmanism and atheism,
and the Congress Party’s incorporation of Hindu idioms, significantly influ-
enced their relative political success. While their formulations of tradition
were both novel expressions that responded to new political and social
realities, the Congress party drew on Hindu practices and concepts that
predate the advent of colonialism. The Dravidian Movement, and especially
E.V.R., largely discarded prior idioms of tradition, envisioning Tamil tradi-
tion as distinct from and largely oppressed by orthodox, caste Hinduism.
They narrated a history in which Aryan brahmans from the north destroyed
a glorious, primordial Tamil tradition, and they celebrated the values of
egalitarianism, secularism, and scientific rationality as the lost bases of
ancient Tamil society.2

1. ‘Dravidian’ is strictly defined as a family of South Indian languages that shares many
common characteristics but which differs from the North Indian language complex. However,
the term Dravidian came to be used to designate a somewhat artificially unified South Indian
culture, and also a community, comprised of all Dravidian-speaking people. Tamil is one of
several Dravidian languages.
2. Perhaps the most utopian vision of this ancient Tamil society placed it on a lost
continent that was later submerged. See Ramaswamy 2004.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

62 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

E.V.R. was born a non-brahman in 1879. His family was of the Naiker
caste, a land-owning caste which followed rigid standards of ritual purity.
While in school, he was exposed to caste discrimination, observing that his
teachers were careful to ensure that eating and drinking strictures were
observed by the children (Ramasami 1982: 3-7). Concerned at this early
age with the injustices of social inequality, he often broke caste rules, having
friends of relatively low caste and freely eating and drinking in their homes
(Visswanathan 1983: 19). In 1904 he became an ascetic, wandering through
Hindu pilgrimage sites in northern India, where he repeatedly witnessed
caste discrimination. Disillusioned with the caste inequalities of Hinduism,
he subsequently gave up the religious life (1983: 20-21). He joined the
Congress Party in 1919 with the purpose of fighting social inequality in
Indian society (Barnett 1976: 37). However, in 1925 he left Congress after
witnessing eating facilities in a Congress school which segregated non-
brahmans from brahmans. He declared that ‘hereafter my work is to dissolve
the Congress’ (1976: 37). He helped to found the Self-Respect League in
1925, and became its most influential member. He founded the Dravida
Kalakam (DK) in 1944, urging non-brahman Hindus, Muslims, and Chris-
tians to unite against brahman domination (Jaffrelot 2000: 761).
The Self-Respect League was created as the cultural and social front of
the Justice Party, a political party that fought caste distinctions and brahman
hegemony. The two groups had many leaders and members in common,
and although many of their objectives were the same, their programs were
quite different, as the Self-Respect League’s work was not explicitly political.
In service of its goal to create change in South Indian society and culture,
the Self-Respect League propagated many cultural and social mythologies.
Their major instrument of propaganda was a weekly publication called Kuti
Arasu (Rule of the People), which was started by E.V.R. and which printed
many of his articles. The League also sent out a core group of ten propagan-
dists to the rural districts of Madras in order to spread their values and goals.
The primary purpose of these instruments of propaganda was to propagate
a particular construction of Tamil tradition, to tell Tamils who they are, or
more accurately, who they should think they are.
At the first provincial Self-Respect Conference, W.P.A. Soundrapandian,
a Justice Party Leader, stated many of the central characteristics of ancient
Tamil tradition before its destruction by Aryan brahmans:
Let us contemplate for a moment the condition of ancient Tamilian society…
Caste distinctions, religious dissensions and class disputes were absent… Love
was their watchword and hatred never found a place in their hearts. They
worshipped nature and led a life of utter simplicity resulting in true happiness.
Ever since the days when the Aryans penetrated the South and attempted to
strengthen and consolidate their position a great calamity overtook the
country. (quoted in Barnett 1976: 44)

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 63

‘Love’ played a central role in the lives of the Tamils, perhaps a reflection of
missionary attempts to establish love as the quintessential religious emotion.3
Tamils worshipped nature, not Hindu gods, a theme perhaps derived from
Orientalist sources, especially those who theorized the roots of religion in
animism, and saw South India as the source of snake and tree worship
popular in contemporary Hinduism (Elmore 1925). The result of this wor-
ship was ‘true happiness’, completing a utopian vision of Tamil society that is
couched in religious imagery that is consciously non-Hindu. This harmony,
however, was not to last, shattered by the ‘calamity’ of an Aryan invasion
from the North. The calamity of which he speaks is the corruption of pristine
Tamil culture with Hindu mythologies, beliefs, and practices, especially caste
strictures, and he identifies the Aryan invaders as the ancestors of contem-
porary Tamil brahmans.
The leaders of the Self-Respect League drew significantly from Orientalist
sources for their articulation of a primordial Tamil community. British San-
skritists ascertained the connection between Sanskrit and ancient European
languages through philological studies demonstrating that Sanskrit, Latin,
and Greek belonged to the same family of languages (Inden 1990: 44). Later
Orientalists speculated that groups of Aryan invaders migrated down into
India from the North, and conquered the indigenous people (e.g. Mueller
1985 [1869]: 63-64). Although it is unclear who these native people were,
many imagined that they were ancient Dravidians on whom the Aryans
imposed their religion and culture, an interpretation that later Tamil nation-
alists utilized to advance their social and political agenda.
Christian missionaries were influential in taking up Orientalist research,
and missionaries in South India were the first to create a pseudo-scientific
history of Aryan oppression of Dravidians. The Scottish missionary Robert
Caldwell spoke of the pristine nature of pre-Aryan Tamil culture, asserting
that this culture was corrupted by Aryan colonists, who introduced Sanskrit
along with the worship of idols and other superstitions. Calling the native
Tamils ‘shudras’, that is, servants, and referring to themselves as ‘brahmans’,
these Aryans secured ritual and social superiority (Caldwell 1998; Trautmann
1997).
The work of these nineteenth-century Orientalists and missionaries formed
a central part of the ideology of the political and social movements of Tamil
revivalism. Dravidian leaders shaped these ideas into a coherent mythology
that provided the impetus and justification for much of the agenda of the

3. This could also be a reference to early Tamil poetic literature, anthologized as ‘sangam
literature’, of which one of the primary genres is ‘aham’ poetry or poetry of inner emotion, often
love. If this is the case, however, one should also take into account the other major sangam
classification, the ‘puram’ poems that detail public exploits, often the martial adventures of
kings. See Hart and Heifetz (trans.) 2002.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

64 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

Justice Party and the Self-Respect League. Bharati Dasan, a well-known

Tamil poet who was involved in the League, gave typical expression to this
mythology in a poem written in 1930:
The Tamils ruled this country. Afterwards the Aryans came and settled here.
Showing their white bodies, showing the sweetness of vain talk, they commit
[sic] fraud. They spread their ideas like someone who pierces an earlobe while
diverting a child with a piece of fruit. Then [the Aryans] said ‘This is the place
for us to live’, and changed our lovely country into a place of murder. They
established laws and made caste divisions in order to raise themselves up.
(quoted in Irschick 1986: 94)

The Tamil revivalist newspaper Nyaya Dipika (The Torch of Justice), in its
25 January 1923 issue, wrote:
The Brahmans are also foreigners to India as are the British… The Brahmans,
coming into India from Central Asia three thousand years ago, put down the
ancient inhabitants of the country, have created disaffection among them by
bringing into being racial, religious, and caste differences, and have been
commanding the Indians ever since. (quoted in Barnett 1976: 27)

Depicting contemporary Tamil brahmans as these ancient Aryan intruders,

authors of Tamil identity drew racial lines between brahmans and non-
brahmans. They argued that brahmans were not Tamils, and that their
hegemony was one of foreign domination won through deceit and corrup-
tion, blaming them for the abject status of lower castes. This vision of history
espoused by Tamil revivalists had important political ramifications, provid-
ing a central ideological paradigm to mobilize non-brahmans against an
articulated threat of worsening brahmanic domination.

E.V.R.’s Construction of Tamil Identity:

Rationality, Superstition, and the Demonization of Hinduism
E.V.R.’s leading position in the Self-Respect League established him as one
the most influential cultural critics of Aryan oppression of Dravidians. His
primary target was brahmanical, ritualized Hinduism. He offered ‘man and
his wisdom rather than talk of God and his power’ (Diehl 1977: 55). In a
1947 speech, E.V.R. asserted that atheism and rationalism are a ‘scientific
alternative to religion. Man’s reason alone can further true progress’ (Diehl
1977: 55). He viewed religion as essentially superstitious and thus in opposi-
tion to rationalism. While many Tamils think of themselves as Hindus, their
‘gods and goddesses were imported from foreign soil’ (Ramasami 1996: 49).
He advocated education as the means to spread rational principles, believ-
ing that education provided the key to the abolition of religion, caste, and
brahmanic hegemony (Diehl 1977: 56).4

4. For more on the atheism of E.V.R., see Anaimuthu 1980.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 65

E.V.R. waged his attacks on Hinduism in speeches, pamphlets, and public

displays, asserting that Hinduism ‘is founded by a small group for their own
power interest and built on the ignorance, illiteracy and exploiting of the
people’ (Diehl 1977: 41). Religion is a device used to uphold class inequality
by masking social injustices and creating the impression that hierarchy is a
natural part of the social order. E.V.R. found the primary source of these
injustices in ancient Sanskrit texts, and so these become the symbolic targets
for his polemical writings. In 1922, he first advocated the burning of
Manusmriti and Ramayana, an act that he periodically carried out for the
next several decades (Barnett 1976: 37; Irschick 1969: 339; Richman 1991:
175-76). He also wrote widely distributed treatises on these two texts. I will
focus here on his treatment of the Ramayana.
Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana relates what is certainly the best-known epic
myth throughout India today.5 Valmiki valorizes Rama, an incarnation of the
Hindu god Vishnu who takes birth as a northern king to rid the universe of
the demon king Ravana. Valmiki’s version stresses the religious and noble
character of Rama, while demonizing Ravana as violent and full of passion.
In the end, Rama kills Ravana and rescues Sita.
E.V.R.’s revision of the meaning of the text describes Rama as an Aryan
oppressor who unfairly destroys Ravana, a native Tamil and king of the
Tamils, and his kingdom. His tale is one of the destruction of a pristine
Dravidian civilization, which is replaced by a society marked by caste
inequality. E.V.R.’s interpretation was not unprecedented. In the June 1909
edition of the Malabar Quarterly Review, T. Ponemballem Pillai argued that
the Ramayana was written to ‘proclaim the prowess of the Aryans and to
represent their rivals and enemies the Dravidians, who had attained a high
degree of civilization at that period, in the worst possible colour’ (quoted in
Irschick 1969: 283). E.V.R.’s version, however, took on a character all its
own, and was presented in his typical fashion, calling on the reader to view
the text rationally. After all, superstition, according to E.V.R., is not simply
naive belief but is the instrument of oppression.
First published in 1930 as Iramayanappattirankal (Characters of the
Ramayana), his critique was translated into English and published in 1959
as The Ramayana (A True Reading) (Richman 1991: 180). In his preface, he
clearly sets up the central identity association on which his text is based.
‘Rama was not a Tamilian nor did he belong to Tamil Nadu. He was a
Northerner. Ravana who was killed by him was the king of Lanka, i.e.,
Southern Tamil Nad’ (Ramasami 1982: iii). Thus, he makes a connection
between the demons of the Ramayana and the Tamil people, an association

5. For a relatively recent English translation of the critical edition of Valmiki’s Sanskrit text,
see The Ramayana of Valmiki (1991).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

66 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

which Valmiki does not make, and identifies Rama as a foreign intruder in
the Tamil country, not a god to be worshipped.
It is significant that E.V.R. did not believe that the story relates an actual
historical invasion of the South by Aryans. ‘We do not give credence to the
events that are alleged to have taken place. They could not have really
taken place at all’ (Ramasami 1982: 3). While he does not deny that an
historical invasion occurred, he denies that it took the form as represented in
the Ramayana. E.V.R. is acutely aware of the power of ideas and mytholo-
gies, that is, the components of tradition, to shape the identity and self-
understanding of a people, and thus its political and social realities. Indeed,
at times he depicts the invasion of Aryans as more importantly ideological
than physical. The story of the Ramayana does not relate a true story of
oppression—it is itself the instrument of oppression.
Ramayana and Baradham are the foremost of the manifold romances
manipulated by the Aryans. They are designed to lure the Dravidas into their
snare, to wipe off their sense of self-respect, to blunt their discretionary faculty
and to destroy their humanity… These myths are written so that ‘Brahmins’
may look great in the eyes of others, that the women folk be subdued and
subordinate, that their [Brahmins’] dogmas and the code of Manu, that are
derogatory to the Tamil, enforced into usage and their existence—unwanted
existence—eternalized. (Ramasami 1982: 1-2)

These Aryan ‘romances’ play on the emotions of the undiscerning reader

to instill, in the Dravidian, a sense of inferiority with respect to brahmans. In
its valorization of Aryan society, the story creates the illusion of a legitimate
basis for the rules and strictures of brahmans, strictures of caste oppression
which are made eternal by the nature of the mythology. This is done by
assigning a religious character to these myths, whose purported sacredness
and illusory eternal, invaluable character fool uneducated and educated
alike (Ramasami 1982: 2). For E.V.R., the myth’s effect is clear: it deludes
Tamils into accepting caste oppression.
E.V.R. saw his work as that of an educator, and he considered the lack of
education among Tamils a weakness that left them open to ideological
domination.
Ninety percent of the Tamils are illiterate and of the rest ten who profess to be
literate most of the people are superstitious scarcely using their discretionary
power. They believe in the other worlds of the Aryans and enslaved by this
belief they acknowledge the commands of the Aryans and act up to their
dictates. To put it briefly all Tamils except the Muslims and Christians are the
devout followers of Ramayana. That the Tamilian may have a clear perspec-
tive, that this foolishness and foolish beliefs may be wiped off, that he may
develop his sense of self-respect, that he may liberate himself from the Aryan
yoke, it is preemptory that the vicious motives and nature of the legends and
puranas be disclosed. (Ramasami 1982: 3)

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 67

The way in which he proposes to accomplish this is to point out the text’s
valorization of Aryans and the deprecation of Tamils, in order that the Tamil
reader becomes aware of the lack of self-respect which adoration of the text
implies.
E.V.R.’s rejection of classics of Hindu orthodoxy and popular Hindu texts
like the Ramayana left a gap in sources available to him to imagine a Tamil
tradition. Unlike other, more reformist formulations of Tamil and Hindu
tradition, such as that espoused by the Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta movement,
E.V.R. considered nearly all components of Tamil tradition to be tainted
with superstitious ideals (Venkatachalapathy 1995).6 Thus, he took the
industrialized countries of Europe as models for Tamil society. He relent-
lessly compares the progress of other nations to his own country, where
‘men believe only in rituals and ceremonies, in God, in religion and such
other rubbish’ (Ramasami 1985: 15). A sort of creed of self appeared in an
introductory note to a collection of E.V.R.’s sayings: ‘I, E.V. Ramaswamy,
have taken upon myself the task of reforming Dravidian Society so that it
shall be comparable to other societies of the world, in esteem and enlighten-
ment, and I am solely devoted to that service’ (Ramasami 1985: xl).
Deluded by the brahmanic program called Hinduism, and prevented from
rational thought on account of belief in Hindu superstitions, Tamil society
was falling behind the progress of other countries. E.V.R.’s prescription was
a large dose of rational education, a project which he pursued in his critique
of Sanskrit texts. He hoped that if the Tamil people saw through the illusions
of Hinduism and accepted rational principles, they would again return to the
road of progress that characterizes countries steeped in secular principles.
Scientific rationality was central to the Self-Respect League’s notion of
what shape Tamil revivalism should take. If science was to be assimilated
into the Tamil language, then a technical Tamil vocabulary had to be intro-
duced. Cami Citamparanar, a leading figure in the League, advocated that
the scope of literature in Tamil, until then dominated by works on religion,
be extended to include ‘modern sciences’: biology, economics, chemistry,
and so on, a prescription repeated by many others (Arooran 1980: 166). A
Tamil pundit and Self-Respect member tried to introduce reform on the
legislative level, proposing that Tamil literature be purged of the devotional
Tamil puranas, and that temple festival funds be diverted to Tamil schools
with a rationalist agenda (1980: 166-67). E.V.R. called for the development
of literature that is ‘far removed from religion and God, and a literature that
is to do with irrefutable science’ (Ramasami 1985: 49). These authors cele-
brated science not only as eternal and rational, but also as essential aspects
of pre-Aryan Tamil tradition. They articulated a vision of tradition in which

6. A rare exception is Valluvar’s Tirukkural, a text of ethical teaching. See Ramasami

1985: 50-51.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

68 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

science and rationality were principles most valued by ancient Tamils, so

they depicted the pursuit of a Tamil society along these lines not as an
imitation of the British, but as the re-establishment of the true character of
the Tamil nation.
Besides calling for a Tamilization of science and a rationalization of Tamil,
Self-Respectors, led by E.V.R., petitioned for change on the level of produc-
tion and industry. This contrasted sharply with Gandhi’s rejection of indus-
trialization. At a Self-Respect conference in April 1931, a resolution was
passed criticizing Gandhi ‘for his opposition to the spread of the use of
machinery in all trades’ (Arooran 1980: 176). Consistently, resolutions in the
League were passed that argued for industrial development, criticizing the
Congress’s efforts to expand cottage industries. K. Nambi Arooran para-
phrases an article that E.V.R. wrote in the League’s Tamil weekly Kuti Arasu:
all the activities concerning the propaganda, publicity and sale of khaddar
[hand-woven cloth] would only retard the progress of Indian civilization, that
the khaddar policy would lead the people to a primitive stage of life, and that
the encouragement of cottage industries instead of heavy industries would
reduce leisure and mental development and that on the other hand industri-
alization should be speeded up through co-operatives. (Arooran 1980: 176-77)

Gandhi’s call for a return to tradition and E.V.R.’s argument for progress
through industrial development are aspects of broader discourses about the
identity of the people of India. Gandhi sought a return to a particular notion
of tradition, pointing to an essence of Indian-ness exemplified in ancient
Sanskrit texts. E.V.R.’s notion also depended on ‘tradition’: the tradition of
an ancient Tamil society that was rational and scientific. Far from asserting a
dichotomy of Congress/Justice formulations along traditional/modern lines,
both must be viewed as articulations employing the idiom of tradition in
order to posit a natural, continuous essence of identity.
The goals of the Dravidian articulation of Tamil tradition, the technical
education of Tamils and the industrial development of India, were in line
with the colonial project, leading to a linking of the colonial and Justice
Party agendas, a fact often derided by opposing parties. Tamil revivalist
agenda also took on the goals of colonial education. For E.V.R., education
should lead to a ‘proper understanding of politics, economics and industry’
(Ramasami 1985: 36). Thus, schools should teach employment skills, a
stipulation that expressed E.V.R.’s concern with the ability of non-brahmans
to compete with brahmans in the job market. Schools should also inculcate
the irrationality of caste inequality, teaching ‘self-respect, dignity, and equal-
ity’ (1985: 36). E.V.R.’s education proposals were particularly directed
towards non-brahman Tamils. In line with the Self-Respect agenda to
inculcate in Tamils a sense of their proud and unique tradition, he called for
the teaching of the importance and beauty of the Tamil language. He

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 69

specifically advocated teaching the poetry of Bharati Dasan, the Tamil poet
quoted earlier, an outspoken critic of Aryan oppression and one of the major
figures who articulated Tamil identity along Self-Respect lines (1985: 39).
Thus, in addition to teaching caste equality and job skills, schools should
also impart the fundamentals of a particular version of Tamil identity.
E.V.R. refers to the major target of education as ‘the masses’, which for
him meant non-urban Tamils, low-caste shudras or dalits, who were most
immersed in religious ideals and least familiar with the colonial influences of
formal scientific education, modern industry, and the dynamics of colonial
bureaucratic government. Acutely aware that they were primarily an urban
and educated minority, Tamil revivalist leaders realized that they must
extend their influence into rural areas among uneducated Tamils in order to
win votes. Their emphasis on education also suggests a self-recognition that
their message advocating the replacement of religion with scientific rational-
ity had greatest appeal among educated classes like themselves: by educating
the masses in the sciences, their message would be more broadly accepted
in rural areas. In other words, the propagation of the message was not
enough to win votes—a revolution in the views of religion held by unedu-
cated populations had to be effected. In admitting the need of a shift in
religious belief through education, Tamil nationalists highlighted that their
articulation of a Tamil identity was limited, excluding the majority of Tamil
speakers whose votes they needed. This diversity within the Tamil-speaking
population, and the inability of the Tamil nationalists to formulate a notion
of identity that appealed to various communities within this diverse popula-
tion, was to have serious consequences for their electoral success, crucial as
it was at the time of the impending transfer of power to Congress with
Indian Independence.

Religion, Identity, and the Success

of the Indian Nationalist Project
In elections from the 1930s through to the late 1960s, the Justice Party and
its later incarnation, the DK, were soundly defeated by the Congress. Part of
the problem in winning mass support lay in the composition of its leadership,
drawn almost entirely from the ‘forward’ shudra castes, which composed
19% of the population of Tamil Nadu, and which claimed to represent the
‘backward’ shudra castes (49%) and the dalits (17%) (Arooran 1980: 52-
53). That the Dravidian parties spoke about these disenfranchised groups is
clear; that they spoke for them is less clear, but such an argument might be
made; that they persuasively spoke to them is clearly wrong, given their
electoral defeat. This problem was recognized by the leaders of the non-
brahman movement. The Self-Respect League appointed a propaganda

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

70 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

committee in 1929 for the purpose of ‘spreading the ideals of the Non-
Brahmin Self-Respect movement among the masses’ (1980: 172). After their
defeat in the 1934 elections, the Justice Party also formed a propaganda
committee with substantial funding, which E.V.R. criticized as limiting its
activity too narrowly to urban areas (1980: 182). E.V.R. attributed the Con-
gress victory in the 1937 elections to a ‘lack of contact between the [Justice]
party leaders and the villagers’ (1980: 184). Does this lack of contact reflect
a failure of the instruments of propaganda, that is, a failure of the propa-
ganda machinery, or was it a failure of ideology, that is, a failure of the
revivalist vision of Tamil tradition? Why was the Justice Party unpopular
among the very populations it claimed to represent?
Other scholars have argued persuasively that the failure of the Dravidian
parties was due to either their insufficient instruments of propaganda (Arnold
1977: 158), or because of their formal ties to the colonial project (Hardgrave
1966). While I do not dispute their arguments, they focus too heavily on
extraneous elements of the movement’s message, not paying enough atten-
tion to the failings of the message itself.7 A shift in focus from formal ties
and structures to a greater consideration of formulations of tradition, and
analysis of the links between the institutional and the discursive aspects of
political activity, are essential to understand the electoral results of Tamil
nationalist politics.
The consideration here of Congress successes is instructive. Many com-
mentators have noted the explicit Hindu idioms and ritual practices that were
marshaled by the Congress party for their nationalist cause. Most notably,
Gandhi himself embodied the Hindu character of the Congress message. As
Peter van der Veer writes, ‘Gandhi’s idea that his asceticism (tapas) and his
celibacy (brahmacharya) would give him power (shakti) that could be used
to control not only the microcosm of the body but also the macrocosm came
from an established Hindu discursive tradition’ (Van der Veer 1994: 97; see
also Wolpert 1982: 303). Closer to home in Tamil Nadu, one of the leaders
of the Tamil Congress party from 1920 through the 1950s was C. Rajago-
palachari, a Tamil brahman. Greatly influenced by Gandhi, he would
become chief minister of the Madras district in 1950 (Waghorne 1985: 40-
41). Rajagopalachari considered the Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, to constitute India’s ‘spiritual foundations’, and so he con-
fronted E.V.R. directly over the desecration of the Ramayana (1985: 8).
When the DK began to stage performances of counter-Ramayanas depicting
its characters based on E.V.R.’s reading, Rajagopalachari took up the pro-

7. See M.S.S. Pandian’s attack of D.A. Washbrook’s analysis of the Dravidian Movement.
Pandian points out that Washbrook attempts to separate cultural and ideological discourse from
political activity, a tactic which Pandian criticizes as irrevocably removing the influence of ideas
from politics (Pandian 1995).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 71

tection of the epic, using police force to break up these performances as

disturbances of public order. For Rajagopalachari, public order did not toler-
ate attacks on these texts which were to provide the ‘spiritual foundations’ of
the new unified India. In 1954, when he left office as chief minister, one of
his first public activities was to undertake a Tamil retelling of the Sanskrit
Ramayana to reassert ‘the foundations of the traditional social and political
order in South India’. His audience? The ‘children of Madras State’ (1985:
145).
Using religious symbols, identifying lower castes as Hindu, and arguing
for caste reform in Hinduism, the Congress Party won the support of peas-
ants and low caste communities which composed the majority of the popu-
lation of what was to become India. This concern with religion, the utiliza-
tion of its symbols to secure identification and support, and the invitation to
participate in a reformed religious community all proved extremely effective
for the Congress. E.V.R., on the other hand, rejected all forms of religion,
even reformist Hindu notions that were being formulated by twentieth-
century Shaiva Siddhantins. ‘In whatever manner you surmise God, and
with whatever good intentions you found a religion, the results are all the
same. A reformist God and a rational religion cannot achieve anything more
than a superstitious God and a blind religion’ (Ramasami 1985: 16-17).
In rejecting reform and arguing for a pristine Tamil past, Ramasami
harshly criticized not only brahmans as morally corrupt, but also Tamils as
naive and blinded by superstition. He argued for a Tamil society based on
rational principles, but he was also acutely aware that the reality of contem-
porary society was far different from his vision. He compared a British child
to a Tamil child: the British child will look at everything from a scientific
point of view, the Tamil from a religious point of view (Ramasami 1985:
16). The brahmans exploited non-brahman Tamils ‘in the name of God and
religion…which the bulk of the people had not the intelligence to under-
stand or the courage to ignore’ (quoted in Arooran 1980: 184). Indeed, he
lamented the hopelessness of his agenda:
I do not know for how many centuries our people have to wait for attaining
reason and maturity. I have to believe that Tamil Nadu will have no salvation
unless she is razed to her foundation by a catastrophic deluge or storm, a
flood or an earthquake, and then renewed. (Ramasami 1985: 18-19)

While E.V.R. had no illusions that Tamil society would simply discard its
religious traditions and transform itself into a rationalist society, this is pre-
cisely what he was asking them to do when he tried to replace prior tradi-
tions with one formulated out of European sources. Others realized that the
Justice agenda was based on a notion of Tamil identity which was hopeful
of the past and the future, but which was foreign, and often even insulting,
to contemporary Tamils. Many moderate members of the Justice Party

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

72 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

refused to enter the incipient, Ramasami-led DK in 1944 because of its

virulent anti-religious ideas (Arooran 1980: 230).
E.V.R.’s refusal to accommodate past Tamil tradition was consistent with
his project to distinguish this tradition absolutely from Hindu traditions, both
local and pan-Indian. This distinction rested, however, on a highly artificial
construction of tradition. Simon Harrison points to the ways in which the
construction of identity often entails the conscious forging of distinction with
some other with whom one shares much:
ethnic and national identities are best understood as emerging through proc-
esses in which certain kinds of felt similarities, and shared features of identity,
are disavowed, censored, or systematically forgotten… This perspective implies,
among other things, that the most elaborate and extreme forms of ethnic
‘othering’ are more likely to occur in relationships that are in some sense close,
rather than in distant ones. The more intense the identification with the Other,
the more radical the measures needed to counter it. (Harrison 2003: 345)

There are limits, however, to the creativity that authors of tradition can
exercise in constructing such differences. In their disavowal of all Hindu
elements of prior Tamil tradition, Tamil revivalist leaders rejected those sym-
bolic, ritual, and narrative sources of motivation and inspiration that Tamil-
speaking people had held for centuries, and that they continued to hold
throughout the twentieth century.
The failure of the Dravidian parties to formulate a compelling vision of
Tamil tradition is suggested by their lack of electoral success. A correspon-
dent of the Madras Mail attributed the defeat of the Justice Party in the 1934
elections at the hands of Congress to the ‘inflammatory speeches of the self-
respectors’, that is, the anti-brahman and anti-religious speeches for which
E.V.R. provided the model (Arooran 1980: 180). The majority of Tamils,
deeply affected by Hindu symbols, responded more enthusiastically and
identified more strongly with the Congress notion of an Indian tradition
based on Hindu ideals. The repeated victories of the Congress in Tamil
Nadu were primarily in the rural areas, while the Justice Party vote was
limited to an urban, educated constituency. With every electoral victory by
Congress, uneducated rural communities attested that they identified them-
selves more as noble and ethical Hindus, forcefully repressed by the military
might of Britain, than as non-Hindu, atheist Tamils, duped too long by
brahman superstitions.

Conclusion
Any construction of identity, either in the features of tradition or the articula-
tion of community, is most effective when it responds to current needs in
idioms that are recognized by the audience it seeks to address. Traditions,

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 73

like communities and identities, cannot be invented ex nihilo. Benedict

Anderson distinguished imagination from fabrication, arguing that nation
identities are imagined, a term which implies an active process of creation
and forging of community (Anderson 1991: 6). Likewise, Josep Llobera
utilizes the concept of ‘ethno-national potential’ to describe the pre-existing
cultural forms on which national movements draw in order to evoke a
recognition of community identity (Llobera 1994). I have likewise argued
here that articulations of identity must be recognized in order to be effective.
Over the past millennium, broader notions of identity among Tamils have
crystallized around religious elements, more specifically, brahmanic elements,
especially worship of Sanskritic deities and the temples dedicated to those
deities. The Tamil nationalist articulation of Tamil identity, and the agenda
and mythology which it propounded, was working against this much longer
history of Hindu symbols, temples, and rituals in Tamil-speaking areas. The
Dravidian leaders’ attempt to deconstruct notions of Tamil identity based on
Sanskritic, brahmanic idioms was successful only among those for whom
such deconstruction had already been effected through Western styles of
education and exposure to arguments of scientific rationality. It was in their
failure to formulate a widely recognizable notion of Tamil identity that the
Tamil nationalists failed to gain the wide support that they desperately
sought. They sought a Tamil essence that was radically different from the
reality of the contemporary situation of rural Tamils, formulating a tradition
that was unrecognizable as ‘Tamil’ to all except those most ensconced in
colonial life, for whom brahman oppression, scientific rationality, and the
benefits of technology were everyday realities. For rural Tamils, it was the
Congress notion of a tradition and a nation based on Hindu ideals which
evoked recognition and elicited devotion.

References
Anaimuthu, Tiruchi V.
1980 Contribution of Periyar E.V.R. to the Progress of Atheism. Periyar Nul
Veliyittakam, Madras.
Anderson, Benedict
1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of National-
ism. Verso, New York.
Arnold, David
1977 The Congress in Tamilnad: Nationalist Politics in South India, 1919–1937.
Manohar, New Delhi.
Arooran, K. Nambi
1980 Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism, 1905–1944. Koodal Pub-
lishers, Madurai, India.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

74 ARSR 20.1 (2007)

Barnett, Marguerite Ross

1976 The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India. Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ.
Caldwell, Robert
1998 A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of
Languages. Asian Educational Services, Madras [1856].
Diehl, Anita
1977 E.V. Ramaswami Naicker-Periyar: A Study of the Influence of a Personal-
ity in Contemporary South India. Scandinavian University Books,
Stockholm.
Elmore, Wilber Theodore
1925 Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A Study of the Local and Village
Deities of Southern India. The Christian Literature Society for India,
Madras.
Hardgrave, R.L.
1966, Religion, Politics and the D.M.K. In South Asian Politics and Religion,
edited by Donald E. Smith, 213-34. Princeton University Press, Princeton,
NJ.
Harrison, Simon
2003 Cultural Difference as Denied Resemblance: Reconsidering Nationalism
and Ethnicity. Comparative Studies in Society & History 45(2): 343-61.
Hart, George L., and Hank Heifetz (trans.)
2002 The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems
From Classical Tamil, The Purananuru. Columbia University Press, New
York.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger (eds.)
1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Inden, Ronald
1990 Imagining India. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
Irschick, Eugene F.
1969 Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement
and Tamil Separatism, 1916–1929. University of California Press,
Berkeley.
1986 Tamil Revivalism in the 1930s. Cre-A Publishers, Madras.
Jaffrelot, Christophe
2000 Sanskritization vs. Ethnicization in India: Changing Identities and Caste
Politics Before Mandal. Asian Survey 40(5) (Modernizing Tradition in
India): 756-66.
Llobera, Josep R.
1994 The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western
Europe. Berg, Washington, DC.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels
1995 The German Ideology. International Publishers, New York.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

 Weiss The Limits of Inventing Tradition 75

Mueller, Max
1985 [1869] Chips From A German Woodshop. Vol. 1. Essays in the Science of
Religion. Scholars Press Reprint, Chico, CA.
Pandian, M.S.S.
1995 Beyond Colonial Crumbs: Cambridge School, Identity Politics and
Dravidian Movement(s). Economic and Political Weekly 30(7–8): 385-91.
Ramasami, E.V.
1982 Collected Works of Thanthai Periyar E.V. Ramasami. Periyar Self-Respect
Propaganda Institution, Madras.
1985 The Revolutionary Sayings of Periyar. Department of Information and
Public Relations, Government of Tamil Nadu.
1996 Is There a God? Selections From Periyar’s Speeches and Writing. Emerald
Publishers, Chennai.
Ramaswamy, Sumathi
2004 The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India
1991 General Editor, Robert P. Goldman. Princeton University Press, Princeton,
NJ.
Richman, Paula
1991 E.V. Ramasami’s Reading of the Ramayana. In Many Ramayanas: The
Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asiai, edited by Paula Richman,
175-201. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Trautmann, Thomas R.
1997 Aryans and British India. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Van der Veer, Peter
1994 Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. University of
California Press, Berkeley.
Venkatachalapathy, A.R.
1995 Dravidian Movement and Saivites: 1927–1944. Economic and Political
Weekly 30(14): 761-68.
Visswanathan, E.S.
1983 The Political Career of E.V. Ramasami Naicker: A Study in the Politics of
Tamilnadu, 1920–1949. Ravi and Vasanth Publishers, Madras.
Waghorne, Joanne P.
1985 Images of Dharma: The Epic World of Rajagopalachari. Chanakya
Publications, Delhi.
Wolpert, Stanley
1982 A New History of India. 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007.

View publication stats