“The Western theory (of Aryan Invasion), it is clear, is only a hurried conclusion drawn from insufficient examination of facts and believed to be correct because it tallied with certain pre-conceived notions about the mentality of the ancient Aryans which they were supposed to have possessed on no other grounds except that their alleged modern descendants, namely, the Indo Germanic races are known to possess. It is built on certain selected facts which are assumed to be the only facts. … In the face of the discovery of new facts set out in this Chapter the theory can no longer stand and must be thrown on the scrap heap”. – Dr Babasaheb BR Ambedkar, Who Were Shudras? , Complete Works of Dr BR Ambedkar, Govt. of Maharashtra, Mumbai, p. 100
In the last week of March, the Southern States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala witnessed two events giving contradictory messages. The Kerala Media Academy organised the ‘Cutting South’ conclave with other media houses, including Confluence Media, Canada and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ). Though the organisers tried to maintain a low profile of the event, focusing on the Southern States and giving a twist of ‘global south’ to the narration, the implicit intent of fuelling the North vs South divide was obvious.
The European colonisers systematically developed the artificial fault line of the North vs South, of which linguistic division was the first layer. Two Christian Missionary scholars, Francis Whyte Ellis (1816) and Robert Caldwell (1856), introduced the division of the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian families of languages under the pretext of comparative linguistics. The two ancient languages, Sanskrit and Tamil, are similar in antiquity, source and the way of expressing their origin. Even after a comparative study between Tolkappiyam, by Tamil grammarian Tolkappiyar, and Ashtadhyayi, by Samskirt grammarian Panini, proving this beyond a point, the colonial narrative persists.
The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is another master theory introduced by the Europeans. In the 1780s, William Jones, a British philologist and High Court Judge of the East India Company, tried to establish similarities between Sanskrit, Bharat’s ancient scriptural language, with Greek and Latin. The German scholar Max Muller articulated the notorious AIT in 1848 based on the German idea of racial supremacy. The AIT popularised the notion that ‘white-skinned’ Indo-Aryans who spoke Vedic Sanskrit through invasion/migration relegated the original inhabitants of Bharat, the ‘dark-skinned’ Dravidians, who had developed the Harappan or the Indus Valley Civilisation, to the Southern parts of Bharat. Many scholars disproved this theory historically, anthropologically and genetically. Still, the AIT gets preponderance in political and academic jargon.
Bharat never thought of divisions on racial or linguistic lines like Europeans. This superimposition of European constructs on Bharatiya society was an apparent attempt to appropriate the Samskrit knowledge and justify colonial rule simultaneously. Unfortunately, after Independence, the colonial construct of linguistic identity got political traction, which was never there historically. The Dravidian parties added caste-based narration to the Aryan-Dravidian fault line in the name of Ambedkarism. Interestingly, Dr Ambedkar refuted this theory in his seminal work – Who Were The Shudras?
The divisive forces within and outside Bharat are trying to accentuate these old theories to counter the growing acceptance of Hindutva and cultural nationalism across Bharat. They have already started using census and correlated representation as the next ploy to widen the divisions. Yes, North and South differ in many respects, but they are geographical and historical rather than national. The Jyotirlinga Yatras, the sanctity of temples and their rituals, reverence for Ramayan and Mahabharat and the recently held Kashi-Tamil Sangamam are testimonies of the civilisational connect and continuum. The third edition of ‘Chennai Lit Fest’ attempted to do the same by invoking Mahakavi Subramania Bharati’s legacy. Learning each other’s languages and exploring the threads of unity is the way forward for Ek Bharat- Sreshta Bharat. We did that during the freedom struggle. In our march towards prosperous and powerful Bharat, we should discard these divisive colonial constructs like North vs South and build the bridges of civilisational unity based on shared history, culture and ancestors.
