Taraki sivaram biography of william

Chidamparam Pillai. The Maravar are matrilineal. He says that the warriors brought forth by these mothers made Tamil Nadu glorious in the Sangam era, in which "one does not hear of north Indian kings invading Tamil Nadu, but only the victories of Tamil kings who fought the northerners. This was so because of the greatness of Tamil martial might.

The essay was used by Bharathy as an instrument for rekindling the martial ethos among the Tamils to achieve national liberation through armed insurrection. Bharathy and V. Chidamparam Pillai wrote to Aiyangar, saluting the nationalist spirit inspired [by] his essays. The politics of the Thamil Sangam was muted next year, when the Swadesh Steam Navigation company was crushed following riots against the British at Tuticorin and Tinnevely.

Chidamparam Pillai and the revolutionary leader Subramaniya Siva were arrested and imprisoned. Bharathy became an exile in the French cology of Pondicherry. Nevertheless, Aiyangar developed the theme of a Tamil martial tradition that was superior to the north, into one of the most persistent and characterising narratives of militant Tamil nationalism — the Seran Senguttuvan legend of the epic Silapathigaram.

His belief that the decline of the Tamil martial tradition caused the decline of the Tamil nation has been echoed in every Tamil nationalist project since his time. Raghava Aiyangar lamented the decline of martial values in Tamil society, for he saw himself essentially as a loyal Brahmin of one of the oldest ruling Maravar clans of Tamil Nadu.

His Tamil nationalist project was rooted in that self-perception. Lakshmi has examined the role of the concept of the heroic mother in the militant Dravidian movement and its strategy of mobilising women. She, however, fails to take note of the politics of Aiyangar and Bharathy and the impact of the Russo-Japanese war on them in the genesis of this concept.

Economic and Political WeeklyOctober Saminatha Aiyer,Kabir Press, Madras. Raghava Aiyangar;D. Gopalapillai Co. Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan invited him to taraki sivaram biography of william in Jaffna. One V. One of the earliest modern historians of Jaffna, A. Previous installments of 'On Tamil Militarism' by D. Tamil Military Castes.

The Code of Suicide. Militarism and Caste in Jaffna. The Suppression of Tamil Military Castes. Bishop Caldwell and the Tamil Dravidians. The Tamil Soldier and the Dravidian Diaspora. The Twin Narratives of Tamil Nationalism. Bharathy and the Legitimation of Militarism. One of the first concerns of the British as soon as they conquered the southern parts of India was with the ancient and ingrained "habits of predatory war" among the Tamils.

The extirpation of these "habits" and culture was considered essential to establishing their authority in Tamil society. The Tamil region was ceded to the British in July ; a proclamation was issued by them in December the same year, whereby the use of arms was suppressed and the military service traditionally rendered by the Tamil military castes was abolished.

It was stated in the proclamation that "wherefore the Right Honourable Edward Lord Clive…with the view of preventing the occurrence of the fatal evils which have attended the possession of arms by the Poligars and Servaikaras of the southern provinces…formally announces to the Poligars, Servaikaras and inhabitants of the southern provinces, the positive determination of His Lordship to suppress the use and exercise of all weapons of offence" and that the Palayams would be turned into Zamindari estates for the purpose of preventing the Tamil military castes from engaging in their customary military services.

The British proclamation abolished the Palayam system "In the confident expectation of redeeming the people of the southern provinces from the taraki sivaram biographies of william of predatory warfare", and in the hope of inducing them to take up "the arts of peace and agriculture". T he ban carrying weapons was crucial to the urgent task of depriving the Tamil military castes of their traditional status in the southern provinces.

The woods and fortresses of the turbulent Poligars were destroyed and removed from all maps and official documents They remained so, until the time of Karunanidhi. The demilitarization of the Tamil region did not spare even the Kallar caste which had rendered valuable service to the British in the important wars of the Carnatic,by which they subjugated the whole of south India.

The hereditary chiefs of this military caste were the kings of Pudukottai — the Thondamans, who had sided with the British against Hyder Ali and later his son, Tippu Sultan. In many of the early wars, the British fought on behalf of the Nawab of Arcot in south India, the Kallar had made up a sizeable portion of their forces. But the Kallar and the other Tamil military castes had to be disfranchised to rid Tamil society of its ancient habits and culture of predatory warfare.

What did the British mean by the Tamil habit of predatory war? Unlike many other martial castes of the subcontinent, the Kallar and the Maravar were not yeoman peasants who dropped the plough for the sword only in times of war. They had to seek battles even when their king or chieftain was not at war. Most of the hero-stones found in Tamilnadu commemorate such battles between groups of Kallar or Maravar.

Some of the warrior gods who are worshipped to this day in southern Tamil Nadu are Maravar, who distinguished themselves in such battles which took place even after the British began to abolish the culture of predatory war. The bow-song of Eena Muthu Pandian, a Tamil demigod, describes the martial life and heroic deeds of that Maravar warrior who lived in British times.

The Purananooru an anthology of Tamil heroic poems derides the newly arisen kings for their interest in rice yielding fields verse War was the sole occupation and aim of the Tamil warrior clans. In many seventeenth and eighteenth century British reports the epithet "fierce and turbulent" is very often used to describe the Tamil military classes. Their ancient and deep-rooted cultural hegemony in Tamil society was seen as a positive threat to the perpetuation of colonial rule.

To eradicate it, the British adopted a dual strategy. On the one hand they attempted to destroy the social structures which sustained this culture; on the other, they promoted castes which stood to gain from the suppression of the military castes. The most important structure which gave the Kallar and Maravar immense power in the Tamil country-side was the system of kaval.

It was abolished in This has been the traditional means by which the Kallar, Maravar and Ahampadiyar derived their livelihood in times of peace when they were not employed as soldiers. The manual of the Tinnevely district, described the origins of the Maravar kavalkarars thus: "As feudal chiefs and heads of a numerous class of the population, and one whose characteristics were eminently adapted for the followers of a turbulent chieftain, bold active, enterprising, cunning and capricious, this class constituted themselves or were constituted by the peaceful cultivators, their protectors in times of bloodshed and rapine, when no central authority existed.

Hence arose the system of desha and stalum kaval, or the guard of separate villages. The feudal chieftain and his Kallar and Maravar received a contribution from the area around his fort in consideration of protection afforded against armed invastion. The village and district kaval system permeated many levels of rural Tamil society and hence was hinderance to the effective implementation of new form of administration and revenue collection.

In some instances kaval was taken over from the military castes and was handed over to the Shanar Caldwell;p. Many efforts were taken to put a stop to the kaval services of the Tamil military castes in the countryside in the first half of th nineteenth century, culminating in the organization of a new police system inwhich recruited mostly from among castes which were considered favourable to the British.

The Nadu-Ambalakarar institution of the Kallar by which justice was traditionally dispensed in regions dominated by them was also abolished to make way for the penal and judiciary system introduced by the British. Deprived of their traditional occupations of kaval and soldiering and in some instances of their lands, a large section of the Tamil military castes became, in the eyes of the colonial government, a delinquent mass, a danger to the rural social order.

A body of administrative and ethnographic literature arose on this perception and on the need to portray and classify the Tamil martial castes as criminal. It also relegated them to the margins of Tamil history and culture. The Kallar and Maravar who had been referred to as the military tribes of the southern provinces by early British writers were classified as criminal tribes towards the end of the nineteenth century.

The task of disfranchising the Tamil military castes and destroying the structures of their traditional power in Tamil society was strengthened by the promotion of the Vellalas, Shanaras NadarasAdi-Dravidas and the Nattampadis, who constrasted favourably with the Maravar and suited the aims of revenue, security and conversion. Among these, the Vellalas acquired the most favoured status for the following reasons:.

A They were, according to the Madras census report, "a peace loving, frugal, and industrious people". They were essential to consolidating the new revenue and the Administrative Manual Coimbatore noted that the Vellalas were "truly the backbone of the district. It is they who by their industry and frugality create and develop wealth, support the administration, and find the money for imperial and district demands.

B It was ascertained that "according to native ideas", husbandry was their only proper means of livelihood and that they had no established traditions of kingship, like Kallar and Maravar. The Madurai Manual noted that Aryanayaga Mudali, the great general of the sixteenth century was dissuaded from making himself a king on the ground that no Vellalan ought to be a king.

C They were found suitable for the expanding manpower needs of British administration. They were unsurpassed as accountants and many of them were employed as Karnams or village accountants. D They were extremely conservative in their outlook. The Tanjore Manual observed, "in religious observances, they are more strict than the generaliry of of Brahmins; they abstain from both intoxicating liquors and meat.

It is in this milieu that the Dravidian movement took shape as the pro-British of the de-martialized Tamil social order. None may become a Nayre save he who is of Nayre lineage. They will not touch anyone of low caste…The most part of these Nayres when they are seven years of age are sent to schools where they are taught many tricks of nimbleness and dexterity…and when they are fully accomplished in this way they teach them to play with weapons to which they are most inclined.

All Nayres are mighty warriors. The feudal military system described by Barbosa was common to those parts of South India known to the Portuguese as Malabar. In its southern and south eastern parts the military castes were known as Maravar, Kallar and Ahampadiyar; of these the Kallar and Maravar had kingship traditions. This feudal military system was found in Jaffna as well when the Portuguese arrived.

The Palk Strait was known to them as the Marava Bay. Most of the Tamil Palayakarar were Maravar. Each maintained a body of Kallar, Maravar and Ahampadiyar warriors who "served on the battle field and in times of peace engaged in hunting and training in the military arts, nourishing a rugged and practical character", and serving as village guards kaval for a contribution 3.

Taraki sivaram biography of william: Sivaram often used to say 'My

In Jaffna "the Maravar had to learn the art of war from the age of sixteen till they were twenty four years of age; then they had to become village kaval-karar, live on land given by the King and return to military service whenever the king required them to do so. The military system of the Tamil country was yet a dream in eighteenth century Europe; its armies were in the process of developing methods and regulations which "got rid of the peasant" in the new recruit and "gave him the air of a soldier.

He "dreamt of a military machine that would cover the whole territory of the nation and in which each individual would be occupied without interruption, but in a different way according to the evolutive segment, the genetic sequence in which he finds himself. The Palayam was sustained by a codified martial culture. As we shall see later the practice of martial suicide was most prevalent in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu, which had a very large number of Palayams.

Early Europeans who studied the military system of the Tamil country were inclined to read therein, some of the ideals embodied in the celebrated regulations of the Prussian infantry that the whole of Europe imitated after the victories of Frederick II. He says. Their arms are lances and pikes, bows and arrows, rockets and matchlocks, but whether with or without other weapons every man constantly wears a sword and shield.

In battle the different arms move in distinct bodies, but the lancemen are rated the most eminent, and lead all attacks. This weapon is eighteen feet long. They tie under the point a tuft of scarlet horse hair, and when they attack horse, add a small bell. Without previous exercise, they assemble in a deep column, pressing close together and advance at a long steady step, in some degree of time, their lances inclining forward but aloft, of which the elasticity and vibration, with the jingle and dazzle scare, the cavalry; and their approach is scarcely less formidable to infantry not disciplined with firearms.

The boomerang - or Valai Thadi in Tamil — was another weapon that "played a considerable part in the Poligar Palayakarar ars". The Kallan and Maravan taraki sivaram biographies of william plied it with deadly effect and "could at one stroke dispatch small game and even man. Like the Japanese Bakuhan system, the Palayam system was based on a feudal class structure of warriors, farmers, artisans and merchants where the distinctions between the caste statuses of the constitutent classes were strictly enforced.

To symbolize this society, the Tamil warriors, like the Japanese samurai, wore swords in everyday life because the system was maintained by their military power. Lushington who was sent as Collector to Palayakarar Poligar country indesirous of wresting control of the vast revenues of the land, described the Palayam Pollam system of Tamil feudal militarism as extremely evil.

A fierce and ancient martial culture and religion was nurtured by the military castes. As in the other martial regions of India, traditional militarism permeated several levels of society. Therefore, despite the great temple centres, the heroes and godlings of Tamil martial culture were worshipped widely throughout rural Tamilnadu. In Japan, the Samurai nurtured the values of kyuba-no-michi the way of the bow and horse.

In the Tamil country, Maram was the martial ethos of the warrior castes. There are three characteristics of Tamil feudal militarism which set it apart from other pre-modern military cultures. They are. The great medieval Tamil commentator Naccinarkiniyar says that norms which sanction "killing through perfidy and by virtue of divine powers given by gods" are to be disregarded and that modes of war involving gods are to be rejected and refuted as modes not belonging to the Tamil speaking good world.

The author of Ramayana had noted that, "the southerners wore flowers for war. Codified Tamil feudal militarism was nurtured and transmitted as the Purath thinai division of high Tamil Senthamizh poetics and grammar. Tolkappiyam, the earliest Tamil grammar, the Buddhist grammatical treatise Veerasoliyam, the saivite Ilakkana Villakam 17th century and Swaminatham, written in early part of the last [i.

The perfecton and codification of Tamil martial culture through the ages was paralelled by the thematization of several narratives of military gloty in Tamil culture through epics, inscriptions, minor forms of poetry etc. Therefore two aspects of Tamil feudal militarism which has been reasserted in Tamil revivalism and militarism will be briefly examined here.

Taraki sivaram biography of william: (William Mc Neil, however,

The most important of these can be reduced to the basic form — Tamil King defeats the Aryans of north India and causes his emblem to be carved on the Himalayas. All three Tamil dynasties — Chera, Chola and Pandya — are distinguished by this feat in a wide range of texts and inscriptions. Moothinmullai: the duty of the warrior mother to inculcate the martial ethos and to urge her sons to attain martyrdom in heroic battle.

Avippali, Thannai, Verttal, Vallan pakkam, Pun Kilithu Mudiyum Maram and Marakkanchi: the forms of martial suicide and suicidal battle of the warrior as the ultimate expression of his loyalty to his commander. These six forms of martial suicide are defined as described by the works referred to above. Pulla Vazhkai Vallan Pakkam — the martial attitude of the warrior who goes forth into suicidal battle is mentioned by Tholkappiyam.

The other works refer to it as Thannai Verttal. Duarte Barbosa describes the practice among the Nayar of the Chera kingdom. It was later noticed by British officials as well. It was also prevalent among the Maravar of the Pandya kingdom from whom the suicidal Aapathuthavi bodyguard was selected. Thannai Verttal also refers to the suicide of a warrior on hearing that his king or commander has died Purapporul Venpa Malai.

Punkilithu Mudiym Maramis the martial act of a warrior who commits suicide by tearing apart his battle wound. Another form of martial suicide mentioned by all the works except Veera soliyam, is Avippali. Tamil inscriptions speak of it as Navakandam. Inscriptions found in many parts of Tamilnadu provide greater information on the practice.

The Kalingathu Parani 10 — a work which celebrates the victory of the Chola king Kulotunga and his general Thondaman in the battle for Kalinga, describes the practice in detail. The epics of Chilapadikaram 5: and Manimekalai 6: mention the practice. To ensure the complete severing of the head, the warrior tied his hair to a bamboo bent taut before he cut his neck.

Hero stones depicting this practice are found all over Tamil Nadu, and are called Saavan Kallu by locals. The warriors who thus committed suicide were not only deified in hero stones saavan kallu and worshipped but their relatives were given lands which were exempted from tax An area handbook Tharamangalam of the Tamilnadu archeology department notes that "the Nava Kandam sculpture which is found widely all over Kongu Nadu Coimbatore, Salem is to be seen at the Tharamangalam Kailasanathar kovil also.

The people call it Saavan Kallu. A Saavan Kallu at Thenkarai Moolanatha sami Kovil in Madurai, depicting the act of a warrior holding his hair with his left hand and slicing his neck with his right — 14th century — is said to be annually worshipped by the Conjeevaram Mudaliyars. The founder of the DMK, C. Annadurai was a Conjeevaram mudaliyar, of the kaikolar caste.

Apart from these codified forms of martial suicide, a method called Vadakkiruththal is mentioned in Tamil heroic poetry. It is the act of a warrior king fasting to death, if some dire dishonour were to come upon him The Tamil teacher, and the Dravidian propagandist, turned the song of the legendary Chera king Irumborai who committed suicide when he was taken captive by his enemies into a compelling theme in Tamil renaissance.

Senchorru-kadan the debt of red rice is a phrase that is widely used today by Tamils as an expression of loyalty. One frequently hears of it in a taraki sivaram biography of william Tamil song. The phrase sands for the ritual of partaking of rice by which Maravar and other Tamil military caste warriors bound themselves to their king or commander to die in suicidal battle for him, or to commit suicide on the day he was slain.

Of Avippali, the Puraporul Venba Malai [verse] 92 says, "thinking of nothing but the red blood rice the Maravar give their life as offering in battle. The ritual of red or blood rice was described by two Muslim travellers who had visited the Tamil country in the 9th century. By eating of this rice, they all engage themselves to burn themselves on the day the king dies or is slain; and they punctually fulfill their promise.

II, pp. Poonkunran, Tharamangalam, publication No. Tamilnadu Dept. Sethupillai, op. Kopperun-Cholan who thus committed suicide was apotheosized. Cheraman Peruncheralathan committed suicide thus when he accidentally received a wound on his back in battle which was considered a great dishonour to a warrior Purananooru: [verse] Note: Swaminatham was first published in full inby S.

Shanmugam, Annamalai University, based on a manuscript found in the British Museum library. It refers to Avippali as Poar Avikkoduthal, versep. With the reference to the above article in Lanka Guardian 1 July In the article [by] the writer Mr. Sivaram, some facts are incorrectly stated. This is the story of the life and impact of the political activist, journalist, and freedom fighter Sivaram Dharmeratnam.

Sivaram dedicated his life to helping the Tamil people. He started out as an active participant in the war against the Sri Lankan government—in the eyes of some, a "terrorist. Instead, he became a journalist and used his position to fearlessly critique the government—despite repeated threats on his life and the murders of other journalists.

In one of the videos below Sivaram predicts the killing of journalists in Sri Lanka.

Taraki sivaram biography of william: Mr. Karu said it was astonishing

He consciously made the decision to live in Colombo under life threatening conditions so that there would be someone remaining to report. Is it soley a matter confined to Sri Lankan internal politics, or does it have an international dimension because Sivaram was able to perceive potential threats to the Tamil struggle well before those threats became manifest?

Learning Politics from Sivaram. Indo-US interest in Sri Lanka Killing of Journalists Anticipated by Sivaram On Becoming a Journalist. We would like to note that a major police raid occured on Sivaram's house as early as May 4,he was abducted and murdered on April 28,Amb. Threat to his life [ edit ]. International reaction [ edit ]. Accusations and investigation [ edit ].

Controversy [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Collection of writings [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved 27 December Retrieved 2 October Archived from the original on 27 August Archived from the original on 5 September Reporters Without Borders. Archived from the original on 22 August Archived from the original on 20 July Committee to Protect Journalists.

International Federation of Journalists. Archived from the original on 19 August Retrieved 16 May Archived from the original on 6 January Archived from the original on 28 September Asian Tribune. Archived from the original on 17 June Retrieved 4 May Colombo Telegraph.