Street art in Chennai, Tamil Nadu depicting two prominent anti-caste leaders. B.R Ambedkar, who became a Buddhist and E.V. Ramaswamy, a key figure in the Tamil Dravidian movement.

As Tamil Nadu openly expresses its hostility to ongoing Sinhala Buddhist violence against Eelam Tamils, an array of Sinhala political actors has sought to build alternative links to north India, bypassing the south, on the basis of  Buddhism. To this end President Rajapakse is visiting the north-Indian Hindi speaking state of Madya Pradesh to lay a foundation stone for a Buddhist university. However, the attempt to forge a Sinhalese – north Indian alliance on the basis of Buddhism runs perpendicularly into the close association between Buddhism and the struggle against caste hierarchy that has been a powerful current in post–independence Indian politics.

This is most clearly expressed by B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the first Law Minister of independent India and a key architect of the constitution. Ambedkar was also from a caste group subject to extreme and violent forms of social exclusion known as un-touchability. In an act that has continued to inspire others struggling to overcome the iniquities of caste, Ambedkar publicly renounced Hinduism and its principles of caste hierarchy and converted to Buddhism.

Interestingly, though, in Ambedkar’s thinking it was the culture of north-India, and not the south, that was most problematic...

A Sinhala Buddhist-north Indian alliance against the Dravidian south?

As Tamil Nadu openly expresses its hostility to ongoing Sinhala Buddhist violence against Eelam Tamils, an array of Sinhala political actors has sought to build alternative links to north India, bypassing the south, on the ties of Buddhism. To this end President Rajapakse is visiting the north Indian Hindi speaking state of Madya Pradesh to lay a foundation stone for a Buddhist university. Likewise, the Sri Lankan High Commission in Delhi invited Sushma Swaraj, an Indian parliamentarian from the Hindu nationalist Bharathia Janata Party (BJP) and leader of the opposition, to unveil a painting of the Emperor Asoka to mark the 2,600 years of Buddhism is Sri Lanka.

The attempt to forge a Sinhala Buddhist – north Indian connection on the basis of Buddhism, bypassing the allegedly anti- Sinhala Buddhist Tamil south, has deep roots in Sinhala Buddhist ideology. According to the Mahavamsa, a set of myths that have powerfully shaped modern Sinhala Buddhist ethno-nationalism, the Sinhalese are originally a racially Aryan (light skinned) people that migrated from north India and were tasked by the Buddha to protect and foster Buddhism.

The Mahavamsa Mindset

Central to the Mahavamsa is the ongoing antagonism between the flourishing Buddhist civilisation established by the Aryan Sinhalese and the menacing south Indian, Dravidian (dark skinned) and Hindu kingdoms in the Tamil speaking areas of south India. Repeated invasions by the Tamil speaking Dravidian kingdoms of south India not only destroyed the pristine Buddhist settlements across the island but also left a residue of Tamils across the north-east.

These sentiments are most powerfully expressed by Anangarika Dharmapala (1964-1933), a key figure in the forging of the modern Sinhala Buddhist identity. Dharmapala claimed a racially Aryan and religiously Buddhist identity for the Sinhalese and forthrightly asserted the Sinhala Buddhist ownership of the entire island thereby relegating the claims of the ‘other races’, including the Tamils.

‘The island of Lanka belongs to the Buddhist Sinhalese. For 2455 years this was the land of birth for the Sinhalese. Other races have come here to pursue their commercial activities.... for the Tamils there is south India; for the moors Egypt... But for the Sinhalese there is only this island’
(quoted in Dharmadasa 1992:136).

Anagarika Dharmapala, a leader of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism

It is the Mahavamsa mindset that underlies the constant refrain by Sinhala Buddhist leaders that the Sinhalese, and not the Tamils, are the original peoples of the island along with the obsessive ‘uncovering’–and installing – of Buddhist artefacts and shrines in the Tamil speaking areas.

Caste, Buddhism and the Dravidian identity in India

From within the Sinhala Buddhist framework, Tamil Nadu’s current hostility is understood in Mahavamsa terms as evidence of longstanding Dravidian threat to be counteracted by building ties with friendly north Indian, Aryan states, the original home of the Aryan Sinhalese. However, the attempt to forge a Sinhalese – north Indian unity on the basis of Buddhism runs perpendicularly into the close association between Buddhism and the struggle against caste hierarchy that has been a powerful current in post- independence Indian politics.

From the late nineteenth century Indian anti-caste intellectuals and political movements embraced both Buddhism and the Dravidian identity as means of opposing the violently hierarchal principles of what they termed Aryan or north-Indian, Hinduism. In the struggles against caste, the Dravidian identity was asserted by groups across southern and western India as a means of establishing a pre-Hindu and pre-Aryan heritage.

In Indian politics therefore Buddhism is closely associated with the struggle against caste hierarchy and is positioned in opposition to the hierarchical caste order of north Indian, Aryan society. This is most clearly expressed B. R. Ambedkar (1891 - 1956), India’s first post-independence law minister and a key architect of the constitution. Ambedkar was also from a caste group subject to extreme and violent forms of social exclusion known as un-touchability.

In an act that has continued to inspire others struggling against the iniquities of caste, Ambedkar publicly renounced Hinduism and its principles of caste hierarchy and converted to Buddhism. Interestingly, in Ambedkar’s thinking it was the culture of north-India, and not the south, that was most problematic. In 1955 he wrote:

‘There is a vast difference between the North and the South. The North is conservative. The South is Progressive. The North is superstitious, the South is rational. The South is educationally forward, the North is educationally backward. The culture of the South is modern. The culture of the North is traditional’ (1955: 21).

Ambedkar delivering a speech to a rally at Yeola, Nashik, on 13 October 1935.

Dravidian politics and caste in Tamil Nadu

While Ambedkar’s rhetorical dichotomy was not intended to capture the persistent and complex realities of caste hierarchies in north and south India, it does nevertheless point to an important and ongoing association in Indian politics between the Aryan Hindutva of north India, and a non-Hindu, Dravidian south. In Tamil Nadu, for example the anti-caste leader E.V.R Ramaswamy (1879-1973) (or Periyar, as he is commonly known) used the term Dravidian primarily as a means of asserting a non-Hindu identity for Tamil, Telugu, Kannadam and Malayalam speaking peoples. Notably Periyar encouraged his followers to abandon Hindu beliefs and social practices, including using caste names and observing caste prohibitions. He also urged them to abandon Hindu life cycle rituals officiated by Brahmin priests and formulated instead a set of alternative marriage and death rites along rational and humanist principles.

The Tamil Nadu Dravidian parties have their intellectual origins in Periyar’s anti-caste movement and in Tamil politics the term Dravidian, far from implying an anti-Buddhist identity, is primarily a means of asserting a pre-Hindu, Tamil heritage. Although Hinduism continues to be widely practiced across Tamil Nadu and caste remains a pertinent principle of social and political life there, Hindu nationalist politics have always had a weak political and cultural hold in the state, something that M.S.S Pandian has recently linked to Dravidian social and political mobilisation (2011).

Ramaswamy pictured during the early years of the Self-Respect Movement

Lost in translation?

The attempt to build a Sinhalese – north Indian Alliance on the basis of Buddhism that bypasses the Dravidian south, runs headlong therefore, into the association between Buddhism and the anti-caste struggle that is now well established in Indian politics. While in Sri Lanka Buddhism is identified with the Aryan race and opposed to the Dravidian Tamils, in India Buddhism is part of a wider anti-caste mobilisation in which the Dravidian identity is opposed to Aryan caste hierarchy.

This clash of meanings is evident in the association that Sinhala Buddhist leaders have forged with the Hindu nationalist Sushma Swaraj, an association that the pre-eminent Indian Buddhist of the twentieth century, B.R Ambedkar, would surely have shunned. This contradiction cannot, however, be easily overcome. For as long as Sinhala Buddhism remains ideologically committed to violently subordinating Eelam Tamils, it will struggle to forge an alliance with the living tradition of India’s anti-caste Buddhism in which it is allied with the Dravidian identity.

References:

For an analysis of the intellectual and political development of the anti-caste movements in India see:

G. Omvedt (1995) ‘Dalit Visions: the anti-caste movement and the construction of an Indian Identity.’ New Delhi, Orient Longman

M.S.S Pandian (2007) ‘Brahmin and non-Brahmin: genealogies of the Tamil political present.’ New Delhi, Permanent Black

See also:

B.R. Ambedkar (1955) 'Thoughts on linguistic states'

M.S.S Pandian (2012) ‘Being “Hindu” and being “Secular”: Tamil “Secularism” and Caste Politics’ Economic and Political Weekly Vol 47 (31)

For a sympathetic analysis of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism see:

K.N.O Dharmadasa (1992) ‘Language religion and ethnic assertiveness: the growth of Sinhalese nationalism in Sri Lanka’ Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press