1. Neo-Shaiva claims to the contrary, the Theosophical Society published large numbers of books and journals in Tamil relating to religion, philosophy, and national regeneration (Nambi Arooran 1980: 58). The Tamil that was promoted, however, was closely linked to Sanskritic and Brahmanical Hinduism. The society also ran Sanskrit schools and had grand plans for initiating a “national Sanskrit movement” (Suntharalingam 1974: 303).

2. For different interpretations of the rise of the “non-Brahman” movement, see Irschick (1969), who presents it as “the articulation of a pre-existing social rivalry between Brahman and non-Brahman” in the context of the spread of western education and competition for jobs; Barnett (1976), who traces it to the social strains and sense of “relative deprivation” suffered by rural “non-Brahman” elites as they moved to colonial cities; Washbrook (1976), who locates it as a direct product of governmental policy and action which interpellated various social groups as “Brahman,” “non-Brahman,” and the like; and Subramanian, who extends Washbrook to emphasize transformations in the “pre-colonial profile and logic of power and status” which shifted the delicate balance of power in the late colonial period in favor of Brahmans. This, he suggests, produced a reaction among “non-Brahman elites” who had hitherto exercised considerable dominance and privilege, but who now found their new “lowered status in the emergent public sphere defined by colonial law and bureaucracy galling” (N. Subramanian 1993: 114, 104).

3. See also Centamiḻc Celvi 41 (1966-67): 457-63.

4. Centamiḻc Celvi 46 (1971-72): 153.

5. Tirunelveli South India Shaiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society; henceforth Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam.

6. Indeed Damodaram Pillai’s editorial prefaces to these publications between 1881 and 1892, using Western modes of textual criticism, contain some of the earliest gendered conceptions of Tamil, including tamiḻmātu, “Lady Tamil” tamiḻaṇanḳu, “Goddess Tamil” kaṉṉittamiḻ, “virgin Tamil” and more rarely, tāymoḻi, “mother tongue.” He even suggested that medieval and modern Tamil are the products of the (incestuous) “marriage” between the “virgin” Tamil and the “hero” Sanskrit (Damodaram Pillai 1971: 6, 12, 19, 69, 93-94).

7. In a series of essays written between 1890 and 1895, T. Chelvakesavaroya Mudaliar (1864-1921), who taught Tamil at Pachaiyappa College in Madras, dismissed as fable, and contrary to the truths of philology (pāṣātattuvaccāttiram), the belief that Shiva created Tamil (Chelvakesavaroya Mudaliar 1929: 15-16). In another narrative cast in the form of a “dramatic interlude,” a philologist (pāṣainuṟppulavar) attempts to convince traditional pandits that the belief that the languages of the world emerged from different parts of the lord’s body is nothing but fabrication. “God is not necessary for creating a language” (Namasivaya Mudaliar 1910: 60-61).

8. Or consider how the nationalist historian Romesh C. Dutt’s much-cited treatise on Indian history, Ancient India (1893), was received by one Tamil devotee: “From his work, it is clear, that he has not studied much about the southern people, their condition, civilisation, literature, and language. Thus his work may be fitly entitled ‘the Ancient Aryans’ rather than ‘the Ancient India.’ Every step that the migrating Aryans took in the Bharata land [India] is described by him as an Aryan Conquest—an expression which has an agreeable sound, but no meaning” (Savariroyan 1900-1901: 106).

9. The Light of Truthor Siddhanta Deepika 6 (1902-03): 117-19.

10. NNR 11 (1913): 428; 41 (1916): 1739.

11. NNR 35 (1917): 2257-58. Another editorial in the same daily (11 February 1916) also insisted that English education “only leads our girls to take to foreign ways of thinking and dressing, and that therefore, instruction should be given to them only through the vernacular” (NNR 8 [1916]: 296). See also exchange of views on this issue in Āṉantapōtiṉi 8, no. 7 (1923): 263-66; 9, no. 6 (1923): 233-235.

12. MLCD 45 (1928): 80-81. The Madras Mail, a pro-government newspaper, responded that “the adjective ‘vernacular’ always meant ‘one’s own’ and to extend it to mean ‘a slave’s language’ or even to ‘belonging to a slave’ would be gratuitous” (quoted in Nambi Arooran 1980: 109). In 1934, the Madras Presidency Tamilians Conference passed a resolution which declared, “Instead of referring to Tamil—the preeminent language of the world, fully equipped to transmit all kinds of scholarship—as a ‘vernacular,’ a derogatory term of slavery, we request the university authorities and the government to use the term ‘mother tongue’ ”(Centamiḻc Celvi 12 [1934-35]: 579). In February 1939, the government of India finally abandoned the term for official use (Nambi Arooran 1980: 109). Barely a month later, when a member in the Madras Legislative Assembly used the term to refer to Indian languages, he was chastised by the Speaker: “There is no question of vernacular. The word is tabooed on the floor of this House” (MLAD 11 [1939]: 597).

13. Devaneyan Pavanar, a devotee whose works are contestatory classicist, lists the following reasons to account for the “Anti Tamil” biases of the Tamilnadu Congress: “1) Re-Brahmanization of staff in public offices… 2) Introduction of compulsory Hindi in Tamil Nad against the will of the Tamils; 3) Misrepresentation of Tamil language, literature, and culture by Brahman authors and historians; 4) Rewarding of Sanskrit scholars and promotion of Sanskrit studies at the expense of Tamil; 5) Suppression of Tamil with the help of betrayers and venal professors of Tamil in all ways possible; 6) Prevention of orthodox and genuine Tamil scholars from being appointed to responsible posts in the Tamil department, either of Government or of a University” (Devaneyan 1967: 25-26).

14. Government of Madras Order No. 562 (Education and Public Health), 5 March 1938; Order No. 2438 (Education), 21 November 1960; MLAD 44 (1961): 545-614, 63 (1965): 627-28.

15. MLAD 29 (1960): 268-80.

16. That the “common man” in Tamilnadu in the 1960s also came increasingly to believe that only the followers of the Dravidian movement “loved” Tamil is clear from Barnett (1976: 161-236).

17. Kuyil, 6 December 1960, 6.

18. English transcription of Tamil speech. Government of Madras Order No. 4068 (Home), 23 August 1938.

19. Kuyil, 15 April 1962, 1.

20. Kuyil, 21 June 1960, 3.

21. Kuyil, 17 June 1958, 13.

22. Kuyil, 19 May 1959, 5.

23. Kuyil, 8 December 1959, 1.

24. Government of Tamilnadu Order No. 1393 (Public), 17 June 1970.

25. Mālai Maṇi (Inti Etirppu Malar), 7 August 1960, 12 (emphasis mine).

26. Nam Nāṭu, 25 February 1967; Muracoli, 25 February 1967.

27. Nam Nāṭu, 7 April 1967; see also Nam Nāṭu, 24 February 1967.