Explain non brahman movement. (in brief).

By the second half of the nineteenth century, people from within the “lower” castes began organising movements against caste discrimination, and demanded social equality and justice.In the early twentieth century, the non-Brahman movement started. The initiative came from those non-Brahman castes that had acquired access to education, wealth and influence. E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker was one of the leader of non Brahmin movement.

"The linguistic term ` Dravidian ' was a contribution of Robert Caldwell to modern Indian linguistics. He used the term with reference to the four principal languages of South India, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, which "justly claim to be considered as springing from a common origin, and as forming a distinct family of tongues "... although non Brahmins from the two main Dravidian language groups - Tamil and Telegu - joined the non-Brahmin movement the use of Dravidianism as a political weapon was mostly confined to the Tamil non-Brahmins..."

He derived the word Dravidian from the Sanskrit, Dravida. However, Caldwell was not the first to apply the term to a group of allied languages. He himself pointed out that a Sanskrit scholar of the 8th century A.D., Kumarila, had used the term Andhradravidabhasa to denote the languages of the Telegu and Tamil countries.(2)

In later times in Sanskrit literature the term Dravida was used in a broader sense to denote the entire land south of the Vindhyas and its inhabitants. (3)

An attempt is made in the following pages to trace how the term Dravidian gained currency in politics in the period under survey.

The main thesis established by Caldwell was that the Dravidian languages were “independent of Sanskrit ". (4) In his lengthy introduction he attempted to outline the pre-Aryan civilization of the "primitive Dravidians ", and also used the word " Brahmans " as synonymous with " Aryans ". (5) Scholars like P. Sundaram Pillai and J. M. Nallaswami Pillai, basing their opinions partly on the views of Robert Caldwell and G. U. Pope and partly on the Tamil classics brought to light then, described Tamil culture as independent of Aryan influence. On the other hand Brahmin scholars and historians contended that South India was a more marshy jungle and the reclamation was started by the Aryans who migrated into South India during the period of the Sutras (750-350 B.C.). (6) Northern sources refer to Dravidian languages as the Paiiaci (prakrit), the language of demons.(7)

But non-Brahmin scholars began to argue the other way. For example S. Somasundara Bharati (1879-1959), a non-Brahmin Tamil scholar who later became Professor of Tamil (1933-38) at the Annamalai University, held that the Tamils were the original inhabitants of South India and that they possessed a rich civilization before the coming of the Aryans. He wrote:

" The first Aryan stranger, who swam south across the trackless jungles, was dazzled with the splendour of the Royal Pandyan courts, and he was not too proud to seek shelter in the hospitable Tamil land that smiled to a sunny clime ".(8)

M. Srinivasa Aiyangar commented in his Tamil Studies, thus:

" Within the last fifteen years a new school of Tamil scholars has coma into being, consisting mainly of admirers and castemen of the late lamented professor and antiquary, Mr. Sundaram Pillai of Trivandrum. Their object has been to disown and to disprove any trace of indebtedness to the Aryans, to exalt the civilization of the ancient Tamils, to distort in the name of historic research current: traditions and literature, and to pooh-pooh the views of former scholars, which support Brahmanization of the Tamil race ". (9)

The educated non-Brahmins by the beginning of the 20th century began to question the inferior position assigned to the Dravidian civilization in history. Most of the non-Brahmin leaders in Madras city as well as in the districts hailed from the landowning and merchant castes and they began to aspire to political power and official influence commensurate with their wealth and status in society). The Brahmins hold a pre eminent position in education especially the University, and, as a consequence, in the higher and clerical grades of government employment. The Brahmins consistently held the dominant position in government service ever since the establishment of the British rule in the Carnatic. In 1855, for example, the Brahmins held 237 of the 305 posts in the upper levels of the district administration of the Madras Presidency.10 The following table illustrates the relative increases in the percentage of appointments held by Brahmins between 1896 and 1912. (11)