Dravidianism and Hinduism
In the years between the late 1920s and 1950s, when the influence of the iconoclastic and atheistic Ramasami was at its peak and before the DMK actively entered the fray of electoral politics, Dravidianism also sought energetically to dissociate Tamil from all religious affiliations. Like radical neo-Shaivism, it castigated Hinduism as a Brahmanical, Sanskritic, and Aryan conspiracy hatched to destroy Tamil and Dravidian society. So, for Dravidianism, a true Tamilian/Dravidian is one who is emphatically not a Hindu. “A Hindu in the present concept may be a Dravidian, but the Dravidian in the real sense of the term cannot and shall not be a Hindu” (quoted in Harrison 1960: 127). Tamil speakers were therefore repeatedly called upon to destroy all (Hindu) irrationalisms and foolish beliefs, and to rescue themselves from ārya māyai, “Aryan illusion” (Annadurai 1969). Thus Bharatidasan, who in the 1920s had written passionate poems on Hindu deities and continued occasionally to publish religious verse into the 1930s, insisted in the 1950s that “there is no god” and told the Tamilian that his duty lay in weaning away his hapless fellow speakers from their false belief in divinities.[22]
And here is where Dravidianism parted company with neo-Shaivism: for in its attacks on religion, it did not spare either Shiva or the reformed “rational” version of Shaivism that Maraimalai Adigal and others were attempting to popularize (Sivathamby 1978: 30-31; Venkatachalapathy 1990). Neo-Shaivism may have insisted that Shaivism is the authentic Tamilian religion, radically different from Aryan Brahmanical Hinduism, but Dravidianism was not convinced about this. Nor was it ready to brook neo-Shaivite resistance to reforming and rationalizing the Tamil script, believed by many devout Shaivites to be Shiva’s own handiwork (Sivathamby 1979: 71). Dravidianism was also not willing to define the Tamil/Dravidian community as Shaiva, for what would then happen to Tamilians/Dravidians who were nominally Vaishnavas, Christians, and Muslims? So Tamil is the life, the consciousness, and the soul of the Tamilian. It is indeed everything, but it certainly is not “divine Tamil,” for to imagine it as such would entangle it with the irrationalisms, inequalities, and idiocies of Hinduism. Tamil speakers, too, consequently would be subordinated and demeaned in an inherently Brahmanical order of things, and they would lose all their “self-respect.” In a revealing speech of 1944, Ramasami offered the following advice to his fellow Dravidians: “You may well ask, ‘If we give up Hinduism, what religion can we profess to have?’ Have courage and claim that religion which will not demean you as untouchable and lowly in society. If there is objection to this, you may always say you are Dravidian and that your religion is Dravidianism. If you have problems even with that, say that your religion is humanity” (Anaimuthu 1974: 446).
Contrary to Marguerite Barnett (1976: 274), who has suggested that “within the Dravidian ideology there was no coherent alternative to religion or Hinduism,” I would argue that especially within the Dravidianist regime of tamiḻppaṟṟu, various efforts were made to create alternatives to both religion and Hinduism. Given the complex entanglements between Tamil devotion and Hinduism, however, such efforts were not entirely successful, nor were they as autonomous as Dravidianism would have desired. Minimally, those devotees of Tamil who turned to active electoral politics as members of the DMK distanced themselves from Ramasami’s iconoclastic irreverence for Hindu scriptures, gods, and images. By the 1950s, both the DMK and Dravidianism generated a curious combination of agnosticism (“we do not ask whether there is god or not”), monism (“there is only one god and one community”), populism (“god lives in the smile of the poor”), and humanism (“we must develop that kind of outlook which treats all humanity as one”). This medley of diverse beliefs that Anita Diehl (1977: 29) has shrewdly characterized as “pragmatic, agnostic humanism” opened up a space for the steady incorporation of all kinds of elements from popular as well as the devotional religious practices of the region into the ideology of Dravidianism, such as the celebration of the harvest festival, Pongal; the worship of Murugan; and the apotheosis of Valluvar and his Tirukkuṟaḷ (Ramanujam 1971: 168, 175; Ryerson 1988: 108-93).
One other important strategy is followed by Dravidianism in filling up the space vacated by Hindu gods. Consider this 1959 poem by Bharatidasan, addressed to a tampirāṉ, “Shaiva monk preceptor,” in response to the opposition of the orthodox to the growing demand for use of Tamil as ritual language in temples:
Is it religion (camayam) that is important, O tampirāṉ[?] It is fine Tamil that is indeed eminent, O foolish tampirāṉ[.] Why do you hate Tamil, O tampirāṉ[.] Why do you hate your mother, O tampirāṉ[?] Even if religion is destroyed, Tamilians will flourish[.] If good Tamil is destroyed, can there be a Tamil community[?] Do service to Tamil! O tampirāṉ[.] Tamil is the life of the Tamilian! O foolish tampirāṉ[.] Is it God who is great[?] O tampirāṉ[!] It is glorious Tamil that is indeed great[!] O foolish tampirāṉ[.] Even if God disappears, the Tamil community will flourish[.] If Tamil dies, its community, too, will die, O tampirāṉ[.] Do you intend to destroy the Tamil creed (tamiḻneṟi) by invoking Shaivism (caivaneṟi), O foolish tampirāṉ? Service to Shaivism is not great, O tampirāṉ[.] It is auspicious service to Tamil that is eminent, O tampirāṉ[.] ...... Only one thing is greater than [our] mother(s)! O tampirāṉ! Is that not Tamil, O foolish tampirāṉ?[23]
There are few clearer statements than this of Dravidianism’s attempt to displace conventional gods and the religious beliefs associated with them, and to substitute Tamil in their stead. Indeed, Dravidianism sacralized Tamil, even while refusing to participate, at least overtly and consciously, in its divinization. Dravidianism’s ambivalence towards religiosity and Hinduism notwithstanding, Tamil was offered to its speakers as an iconic object that deserves all the adulation, adherence, and service they had hitherto reserved for their gods. In this process, even within Dravidianism, Tamil was imagined as desired by the gods, and was every now and then deified. So, in his controversial 1945 poem, Tamiḻiyakkam (The resurgence of Tamil),Bharatidasan asked whether Tamil, “which is life itself,” is not dear to the gods (Bharatidasan 1969: 27). On a more personal note, in his autobiography the poet Mudiyarasan, who identifies himself as an ardent follower of Ramasami and Annadurai, asks, “I consider Tamil as god (kaṭavuḷ). How can I be an atheist (nāttikaṉ)?” (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 86-87). A similar sentiment undergirds the DMK government’s institution of the homage to Tamiḻttāy as the state song in 1970. The government may have announced that it was doing this because the song had no “religious or sectarian associations,” an assertion it was able to make because it carefully edited out Sundaram Pillai’s original title, Tamiḻt teyva vaṇakkam, “Homage to Goddess Tamil.” Nonetheless, in its official statement (in English), Tamiḻttāy herself is referred to as “goddess of Tamil,” and the hymn is characterized as “prayer song.”[24]