Overcoming the Aryan-Dravidian divide

Overcoming the Aryan-Dravidian divide

Subject: History

Section: Art and culture

Context: Many eminent scholars, both local and international, have written about the Dravidian movement’s colonial origins

The Dravidian movement

• The Dravidian movement in British India started with the formation of the Justice Party on 20 November 1916 in Victoria Public Hall in Madras by NatesaMudaliar along with T. M. Nair and P. Theagaraya Chetty as a result of a series of non-Brahmin conferences and meetings in the presidency.
• Communal division between Brahmins and non-Brahmins began in the presidency during the late-19th and early-20th century, mainly due to caste prejudices and disproportionate Brahminical representation in government jobs. The Justice Party’s foundation marked the culmination of several efforts to establish an organisation to represent the non-Brahmins in Madras Presidency

Self-Respect Movement

• Self-Respect Movement was a dynamic social movement aimed at destroying the contemporary Hindu social order in its totality and creating a new, rational society without caste, religion and god.
• Self-Respect Movement was started by V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Tamil Nadu in 1925. It was an egalitarian movement that propagated the ideologies of breaking down of the Brahminical hegemony, equal rights for the backward classes and women in the society and revitalization of the Dravidian languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam.

Languages in India

• Indo Aryan Group of Languages : It is a branch of the larger Indo European group of languages which came to India with the advent of Aryans. It is the largest language group of India and around 74% Indians speak those languages which belong to this group. This group is mainly divided into three groups :
• Old Indo Aryan Group : This group had its development around 1500 BC and Sanskrit was born around this period. The ancient form of sanskrit which is found in vedas, puranas, upanishadsetc had emerged from this time. It is a scheduled classical language. One amongst 22 indian languages. It is also known as the mother of Indian languages. The understanding of the diversity and richness of our culture has been possible because of the development of sanskrit language during those time.
• Middle Indo-Aryan Group (600 BC to 1000 AD):Prakrit was developed during this period. Prakrit was also the mother language for other languages such as Pali, Apabhramsha, ArdhaMagadhi. Pali was one of the main language used in Budhist scripts.
• Modern Indo Aryan Group :The languages belonging to this group are Hindi, assamese, bengali, Guarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu etc. The language developed under this group are mainly spoken in the northern, western and eastern parts of India.
• Dravidian Group : Group comprises mainly of languages spoken during the southern part of India. Around 25% of Indian population are covered in this group. Proto dravidian gave rise to 21 dravidian language. These are classified into three categories. Telugu is numerically the largest of all dravidian languages, Malayalam is smallest and youngest of the dravidian group.
• Northern :Brahui (Baluchisthan), malto (tribal areas of bengal and odisa) and kurukh (bengal, odisa, bihar, madhyapradesh) are the main languages.
• Southern :Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Tulu, Kodagu, Toda and Kota. Tamil is the oldest amongst these.
• Central : It consists of eleven languages i.e. gondi, Khond, Kui, Telugu. Only Telugu became a civilised language and is spoken in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
• Sino Tibetan group : Languages under this family belong to the Mongoloid family and stretch all over North Bihar, North Bengal, assam and in North These languages are considered older than Indo Aryan languages and are refered to in the oldest sanskrit literature as Kiratas.
• TibetoBurman :Tibetan, North Assamese, Burman, Manipuri are the most common languages spoken in this category.
• Siamese Chinese :Ahom is one of the languages spoken in this category but it has already become extinct.
• Austric : These are the languages spoken by the Munda or Kol group and spoken in central, eastern and north eastern india. Santhali is an important language spoken by the group and common among the santhal tribals such as Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal.