Tamil Identity

I have move my blog to www.spotalks.com

I never ever thought of writing on this topic i.e "Tamil identity" till I read the book written by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen "The Argumentative Indian". In that book he extensively talked about the Indian identity in general. I'm an ardent fan of his highly intellectual, intriguing and inquisitive writing about economic sciences with convergence of social science. I admire and respect him for thoughtful writings and idea but I personally felt he has focused his thoughts mainly on the perspective of northern India including Bengal ( His birth place). He augmented to Indian Identity by thoughts of Tagore, Sanskrit literature, northern moghal rulers,Gandhi, etc who basically hailed from northern India. What disappointed me was, He hasn't even cited a single thought of southern scholars, literature, Rulers, etc. He generalized Indian identity only based on north Indian perspective based on historical facts. I presume that most of the modern Indians think that north Indian Identity is different from south Indian.
I actually hail from southern state of Tamil Nadu and I personally think the south India or Tamil Identity has lots of deviations from north Indian Identity. What makes me to think so, because I have friends from most of states of India and I find their thoughts, basic instincts is different from me. I'm some times finding difficulties to have good relationship with them, this may be attributed to the difference in thoughts and idea. Most of the thoughts and ideas we possess actually have great influence of our inheritance and circumstance.So, it boggles my mind to think what's the uniqueness of Tamil Identity where I come from. To understand the identity of any man we got to look into his history and environment. Lets us first have brief look into history of Tamil people in general.
BASIC INSTINCT
Only Tamil kingdom invaded other parts of south Asia unlike northern rulers. Tamil Kingdom was basically ruled by chera, chola and pandian. These three rulers have great influence on Tamil identity in general. These rulers established "sangam" to flourish the tamil literature. Thats one of the main reasons why there are more than 1000 Tamil sangams outside India and Srilanka to protect and flourish the tamil language. Rulers from outside Tamil Kingdom found it extremely difficult to invade them. It doesn't mean that these rulers were united but they are united when outsiders invaded them. There were frequent conflicts between these rulers but they preserved the temples, literature and everything which possess their own identity. During pre-independent era also madras presidency has seen lots of freedom fighters who fought courageously against British rule. This brief history has lot to say about tamil people in general. Most of my friends too remarked that tamils are very diplomatic, hard working, brilliant ( depends on individual too), introvert,loquacious. Every tamilian has to agree that unity, inter alia, is weak, this statement can be conceded by lots of issues happening in tamil nadu and expatriate tamil places too now.
Castetism in tamil nadu is wide spread and most of the conflicts and confrontation occurred in the past clearly depicts the arrogance of dominance of one caste on other people. In Tamil Nadu development is also spoiled by the conceited nature of the castetism among the people of tamil nadu. Today, caste is over thrown by the open mindedness of not just tamils but also Indian by western education. The unique feature of tamil culture which is pretty hard to see in other culture is loudness. If we go to any one of the festivals in village, we can see the loudness in all the activities. Lets us take an example of "Pongal" which is uniquely a tamil festival in India has long standing traditional value. Apart from worshiping sun and cow, it also has activities to outcast sixty four arts of tamil culture especially "jalikattu" which shows the men's brave. In ancient tamil culture, every men was supposed to possess sixty four arts which is pivotal for any king to rule tamil kingdom. Those sixty four arts related to gamut of subjects such as love, brave, etc.
LANGUAGE
Many Indians tend to blame Tamilians for their linguist chauvinism, other way around can also be seen now in urban areas. Let me first analyze why tamilians are very sensitive in their language. From 200 BC onwards Tamils started flourishing and protecting their via establishing "tamil sangam". Sangam literature is considered to be one of the oldest literature and it has great antiquity. One of the literature, "thirukkural" which has been translated into many different language due to its thoughts and neutrality. Its often said, language is pivotal for thoughts of a persons. Language certainly shapes the thoughts and ideal because we acquire those knowledge by default when we read, listen, and watch to the literature, conservation and movies. One of the very famous director of Tamil cinema reiterated that "He attribute his thoughts to tamil language". It all happened after independence of Indian Union that politician started choosing a language as official language of India to represent Indian Union. They wanted to chose an Indian language which represents the majority and easy to learn too. They chose "Hindi" as an official language of India which is inevitable because Hindi is spoken by majority of population of India. But this provoked the sentiments of tamilians and they agitated against this imposition of Hindi during 1960. Here is statement said by C. N Anna durai in parliament
"It is claimed that Hindi should be common language because it is spoken by the majority. Why should we then claim the tiger as our national animal instead of the rat which is so much more numerous? Or the peacock as our national bird when the crow is ubiquitous?". During agitations there were about 60 people killed and self immolated. This has changed the attitude of Union government and retained English as one of the official language of India to this date.
These incidents may sound like French people agitating against English but Tamilians like to flaunt in foreign languages. Nowadays, the scene has been changed due to the English medium education in Tamil Nadu. Most of the people who are educated are ashamed of speaking in tamil in public. This has recently provoked political parties to staging protest against English too which I personally consider insane. Expatiates Tamils who settled in western countries and south Asia established "Tamil Sangam" to promote Tamil Language among Tamil people. This is a laudable effect because through this sangam they are able to spread the awareness of Tamil culture.
CULTURE
There are lots of rhetoric statements about Indian Culture. People in Tamil Nadu used to say that Tamil Culture is conservative. I don't seriously understand the word conservative in the modern times because ancient tamil culture never imposed rules and regulations on women education, and freedom. Equality in the society of ancient Tamil Kingdom was clearly seen from literature and Grammar of Tamil Language. There were lots of female poets who wrote poems in praise and against the rulers, one such example is "Avaiyar". Tamil Culture has long tradition of tolerance in religious freedom. Not alone Hindus contributed to the tamil literature in ancient literature but also Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains . Tamil Nadu has a little record of communal violence unlike northern India. If culture and language has to protected and promoted, people of that race must understand their identity. I want to know your views also.