Introduction
As a guy who prowls the web many times in a day, one thing that struck me was the ignorance among the many people about the origins of Dravidian politics and the various issues related to that. My intention is to have a blog that would provide a very rudimentary understanding of dravidian politics to people who encounter this beast, oblivious to the beauty within the beast.
posted by Om @ 8:33 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Please read the article carefully and without any prejudice. My views are absolutely against imposition of Hindi on the people having a different mother tongue. We ourselves in Maharshtra are fighting against the encroachment of Hindi which is fast displacing Marathi in Maharashtra's cities.
I have written it very clearly that Hindi is not our "national" language/"Rashtrabhasha" and any Indian language be it Hindi, Marathi , Tamil , Oriya , Asamiya are National languages in their own right.
About my being a North Indian. I belong to maharashtra and personally believe that this categorization of Indian people into North/south Indians is artificial and a product of divisive movements like the dravidian movement. As for the anti Hindi part of the dravidian movement, I empathize with it to the point that it is concerned with the preservation of Tamil. If it goes beyond that and asserts a different identity for the Tamil people, separate from the rest of the Indian people, in the name of the so called dravidian race, I strongly disagree and protest it.
In reality, your comment on me being a north Indian shows your myopic view and little understanding about the rest of India. This is typical of dravidian nationalists to think of any one living above tamilnadu, andhra as a North Indian, which is a myopic and incorrect view, to say the least.
I know the etymology of the word "Dravid", and agree with you on that.
I am happy to see that you do not approve the "Dravidian race" argument.
Do you not think that Periyar was associated with Anti Hindi agitation? Did he he not stoke the anti Hindi/ anti "north" Indian sentiment? Did he not harbour separatist thoughts? Was there any significant ideological difference between the DK and the DMK on this issue? Did he not believe in racial difference between Tamils and rest of Indians? Did he not promote the "Dravidian race" argument?
I don't want to enumerate and stress on the details of what happened and what did not happen at that particular point of time. I was just enumerating the ideological positions various groups held.
I dont there are any serious "north south issues".
They do consider the 4 states in the south to be south India, but I don't think any body considers Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa , North eastern states or for that matter even Gujarat to be a part of the "North" category. And that is not subtle.
In fact the people of Maharahtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh constitute a closely knit block,if we take the Satavahana heritage as a reference point.
If you are not a dravidian nationalist then I welcome that. But you would acknowledge the presence of hardliner dravidian nationalists whose radical views I have talked about.
Om.. you are doing a great job.. I recently thought of starting a blog to lay down exactly the same kind of issues. I am extremely impressed by your vetri-vel blog. Tamilians should know about their history and importance. Tamil people are treated very badly and humiliated in north. Personally I have got pissed many (MANY) a times and have felt that there should be a shared common knowledge base comparing both..
Most of the people in north are completely unaware of the basic facts reg tamil or for that matter any dravidian language.
A typical conversation with a northie will start like "You dont know hindi? are you an indian?" "what! you guys dont talk in hindi? then how are you guys going to survive man...?"
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