Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi, presiding over an event to celebrate social reformer Ayya Vaikundar’s 192nd birth anniversary. Speaking at the event, he highlighted that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), established by the British, recruited individuals who had discontinued their education prematurely. These recruits underwent basic training before being deployed to India.
Ayya Vaikundar, a prominent social reformer from Kanniyakumari district, played a central role in the discussions. Governor Ravi unveiled the Tamil version of the book titled “Sri Mahavishnu’s Avatharam – Sri Vaikundaswamy Aruliya Sanathana Varalaru” during the event.
As reported in The Commune, Governor RN Ravi recounted how the East India Company was assigned the mission of proselytizing and converting the local population to the Gospel when they engaged in trade in India. He mentioned that the British initially contemplated shifting their focus from trade to territorial control in Bengal, leading to discussions within the British government. However, upon careful consideration, they determined that the colonization methods employed in America, Australia, and Canada, which involved the decimation of local populations through diseases, were not viable for India. Despite India’s vast size and diversity in terms of language, cuisine, etc., the people remained united due to the common thread of Sanatana Dharma.
He said, “GU Pope, they were all recruited by Society for Propagation of Gospel, SPG. Robert Caldwell, I saw written somewhere that he was a graduate. He is a school dropout, he didn’t pass even high school, this is false information given on Wikipedia and all. He was a person who couldn’t even clear his high school but they picked up such people and brought them to India. Caldwell and GU Pope, they were brought to Madras Presidency and many others, and then they started with a strong force evangelising, conversion.”
“They started closing all the native schools, running here for a long time. Only missionaries were allowed to run the schools. Admissions were allowed only if you were baptised, unless a child is baptised, it will not get admission in these schools,” he further added.
“In 1833 Ayya Vaikundaswami appeared. It was at that time, 1824, that Thiruvarutprakasa Vallalar had appeared. All these people had appeared because Sanatana Dharma was being destroyed by the British. He started targeting them and he is the one who wrote a very very fake book – Grammar of Dravidian Languages. The person who has not even entered college, who had not even finished schooling, claimed to be a philologist, a great linguist, and here people quote it. Because people here even today, there are people who want to destroy Sanatana Dharma. Sanatan means indestructible, Sanatan means it has been always there and it shall always be there, you cannot destroy. Sanatan is where all are inclusive. In fact, the world is looking forward to Sanatan because all other faiths, all other systems are divisive – my way or highway. That is how everyone says but we say no we are all family, Vasudeiva Kutumbakam, Yaadum Oorey, Yaavarum Kelir, we are all one,” he continued.
“They are the followers of those who collaborated with the British, mourned on August 15, 1947, our Independence Day, and observed it as a Black Day. Sanatan is where everything is inclusive. As all the other faiths are divisive, the world is looking forward to Sanatana Dharma. Today, our country is awake and experiencing a comprehensive resurgence. We are all fortunate that we are living in this age, witnessing and participating, playing our role,” he stated.
India Today report seems to buttress missionaries
An India Today report on this event was headlined, “Tamil Nadu Governor terms Robert Caldwell’s book ‘fake’, stirs controversy” – with the word fake within quotes. The TN Governor questioned how a school dropout who was sent to Bharat to spread the “gospel” could have authored such a book.
Governor Ravi has mentioned these same words at another event in the recent past. While the entire report is just a transcript of the entire speech, India Today’s headline seem to tell a different tale – that which buttresses the missionaries.
This book on Dravidian languages by Robert Caldwell was first published in 1856, provides a “comparative analysis” of the grammar and linguistic features of the “Dravidian” languages. Robert Caldwell, as mentioned in Wikipedia was “mostly self-taught”. Wiki also says he had a liking for phililogy and thus he was sent to Bharat as a missionary to “study” the ‘structural similarities and differences’ among ‘Dravidian’ languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. He was a Congregationalist minister when he “finished University”. The book is as divisive as it can get – it groups the languages spoken in the south of Bharat as Dravidian languages. A layman can easily identify that there are letters in Tamil language that do not appear in other languages such as Kannada or Telugu. Tamil language does not have certain letters or sounds like other ‘Dravidian’ languages such as ba/bha – the letter used for these sounds is one and the same and it is ப which is pronounced as pa. In fact, one can find similarities between Sanskrit and Hindi and Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu.
Using this book, Caldwell only pushed the missionary agenda of dividing Hindus based on language and caste. They called Sanskrit an Aryan language and those who spoke Sanskrit (the Brahmins apparently) were Aryans! Whether Tamil came from Sanskrit or vice versa is a different debate altogether.
Caldwell was the perfect example of how the Church furthered their divisive agenda through language. The Church is the major beneficiary (even today), strategically exploiting fault lines like Aryan versus Dravidian and Brahmin versus non-Brahmin to gain converts. The influence of the Church is evident in demographic shifts, such as Christians forming 46.85% in Kanyakumari (as per 2011 census), and its involvement in political controversies like the Kudankulam protests and Sterlite Copper factory shutdown.
