Dubashi tambrams and Vaidiha tambrams

[kunjuppu]

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i would like to emphasize on the tambram portion, as i think, many a time, we interchange brahmin and tambram verbology, without undertanding the himalayan differences between the two.

to me, a brahmin caste addressed across india, is similar to muslims or christians spread across the world. a common god or practices. but definitely different in many a cultural aspect.

i have here referred two urls from senthilraja, an old friend of this forum.

ubashi-brahmins-and-vaidiha-brahmins/

here he analyzes the onset of tambrams' entry into the service of the english. as a community, we came in late. even in madras. it was the chetties naidus mudaliars and pillais who were the intermediaries between the english and the locals, whether they be muslim chieftains or landless labourers.

we remained aloof. till. till such time when we took to learning english. again we were not the first brahmins to do this. it was the bengalis who beat us to it.

the term babu to address a civil servant carried with it the scorn and contempt, which was attached to the bengali. we came in numbers post independence, and there are a few blogs, giving us the delight of experiencing those heady days immiediately, when the said ministry was one shed with a peon and a clerk (the madrasi) along with the secretary ( a north indian)... and how the madrasi moved up in ranks with the expansion of the central bureaucracy.

can-english-educated-brahmins-be-dharmic

interesting blogs both of these. what surprised me most was some points raised..and here i quote verbatim.

Those brahmins who adopted western elite life style, and discarded everything specific to brahmins (like sandhya vandhanam, rituals etc). How do we call them?? For politeness, Lets call them as Elite Brahmins.

Those brahmins who due to circumstances, happened to be corporate world, but wanted to follow the tradition. (Lets call them as Hindu brahmins)

Role of Kanchi Mutt: I think, writing this will make many people get offended. But it is the kanchi mutt, which first started facilitating english education of brahmins, and sent them to different government posts. That is why, we are seeing so many mylapore and Kumbakonam Brahmins in powerful posts. and it is they who are support base for this mutt. Will write more on this in separate post.


i will leave the public to chew on this pseudo sociology at their own convenience and comfort.

myself, as a result of this, wondered: what if, instead of following the lead of our bengali brahmin cousins, we stuck to vaideeha way of life, akin to our telugu or gujarati kins. true, both of these, are among the poorest, in their communities today. as opposed to us tambrams, who are mostly mid to upper middle class, or more.

would we have been more happy now? would all our boys found girls as there would be no female emancipation? would the rest of tamil community continued to have respect for us? would there have been no periyar?

it was a whimsical journey of fancy, of what ifs and what ifs.

i have always felt, that 'what could have been' to be among the saddest phrases in any language. however in this context, i found it a magical mystery tour of a fantasy, that i had not experienced before.

 

[suraju06]

i would like to emphasize on the tambram portion, as i think, many a time, we interchange brahmin and tambram verbology, without undertanding the himalayan differences between the two. to me, a brahmin caste addressed across india, is similar to muslims or christians spread across the world. a common god or practices. but definitely different in many a cultural aspect. i have here referred two urls from senthilraja, an old friend of this forum.
ubashi-brahmins-and-vaidiha-brahmins/
here he analyzes the onset of tambrams' entry into the service of the english. as a community, we came in late. even in madras. it was the chetties naidus mudaliars and pillais who were the intermediaries between the english and the locals, whether they be muslim chieftains or landless labourers. we remained aloof. till. till such time when we took to learning english. again we were not the first brahmins to do this. it was the bengalis who beat us to it.
the term babu to address a civil servant carried with it the scorn and contempt, which was attached to the bengali. we came in numbers post independence, and there are a few blogs, giving us the delight of experiencing those heady days immiediately, when the said ministry was one shed with a peon and a clerk (the madrasi) along with the secretary ( a north indian)... and how the madrasi moved up in ranks with the expansion of the central bureaucracy.
can-english-educated-brahmins-be-dharmic
interesting blogs both of these. what surprised me most was some points raised..and here i quote verbatim.
Those brahmins who adopted western elite life style, and discarded everything specific to brahmins (like sandhya vandhanam, rituals etc). How do we call them?? For politeness, Lets call them as Elite Brahmins.
Those brahmins who due to circumstances, happened to be corporate world, but wanted to follow the tradition. (Lets call them as Hindu brahmins)
Role of Kanchi Mutt: I think, writing this will make many people get offended. But it is the kanchi mutt, which first started facilitating english education of brahmins, and sent them to different government posts. That is why, we are seeing so many mylapore and Kumbakonam Brahmins in powerful posts. and it is they who are support base for this mutt. Will write more on this in separate post.
i will leave the public to chew on this pseudo sociology at their own convenience and comfort.
myself, as a result of this, wondered: what if, instead of following the lead of our bengali brahmin cousins, we stuck to vaideeha way of life, akin to our telugu or gujarati kins. true, both of these, are among the poorest, in their communities today. as opposed to us tambrams, who are mostly mid to upper middle class, or more.
would we have been more happy now? would all our boys found girls as there would be no female emancipation? would the rest of tamil community continued to have respect for us? would there have been no periyar? it was a whimsical journey of fancy, of what ifs and what ifs.
i have always felt, that 'what could have been' to be among the saddest phrases in any language. however in this context, i found it a magical mystery tour of a fantasy, that i had not experienced before.

Dear Kunjuppu,

Your tour of fantasy is interesting. I thought about it. I think nothing much would have been different:
1. The Europeans would have been compelled to learn Sanskrit or the local language and the language would have become richer with words of mixed origin. Just like Chinese. Though China was also under foreign yolk for long they never cared to learn any foreign language. They are now trying to compensate by learning English.

2. Poverty has nothing to do with education. The appetite for money and wealth determines poverty. So brahmins if they were saatvik, as most of them are, would have been content with getting a job and earning just adequate money to keep going and creating just adequate wealth to keep the wolf out in case of natural handicaps to children which will prevent them from competing on equal footing in the world.

3. Boys will find girls because girls also need boys.

4. EVR would still have happened because hatred selling is lucrative always and it pays handsomely. It is one formula which has worked always through centuries.

5. Even today highly successful brahmins in worldly affairs always get back to vaideeha way of life because they can not but be anything. The chemicals codes in the genes can never get erased and overwritten. If you think I am talking through my hat, please refer to Robert Boyd of UCL and his reserch work on how culture influences genes.

Cheers.

 

[கால பைரவன்]

what if, instead of following the lead of our bengali brahmin cousins, we stuck to vaideeha way of life, akin to our telugu or gujarati kins....

would there have been no periyar?

The DK's first target of attack has always been gurukkals and vaidheehars. During the Srirangam EVR statue fiasco, Ayodhya Mandapam was petrol-bombed and the only person to suffer loss of limb was a poonul selling paarppanar. Perhaps the DK considered him a competitor to the NB Vaishyas.

EVR would still have happened because hatred selling is lucrative always and it pays handsomely. It is one formula which has worked always through centuries.

Absoluetly correct!


IMO, it is much easier for the brahmins to reconcile with the likes of Senthilraja than dravidianists and their apologists!

 

[sarang]

Perhaps we need all kinds of brahmins - vaidic brahmins, kshatriya bramins, vaishya brahmins and vellalar brahmins. As before, the latter three can support the first group! Senthil has clear views on kula and jati and has blogged extensively on this topic.

He is also proud of his jati; his community is a cohesive group and weaker members are supported financially and emotionally.

 

[sangom]

i would like to emphasize on the tambram portion, as i think, many a time, we interchange brahmin and tambram verbology, without undertanding the himalayan differences between the two.

to me, a brahmin caste addressed across india, is similar to muslims or christians spread across the world. a common god or practices. but definitely different in many a cultural aspect.

i have here referred two urls from senthilraja, an old friend of this forum.

ubashi-brahmins-and-vaidiha-brahmins/

here he analyzes the onset of tambrams' entry into the service of the english. as a community, we came in late. even in madras. it was the chetties naidus mudaliars and pillais who were the intermediaries between the english and the locals, whether they be muslim chieftains or landless labourers.

we remained aloof. till. till such time when we took to learning english. again we were not the first brahmins to do this. it was the bengalis who beat us to it.

the term babu to address a civil servant carried with it the scorn and contempt, which was attached to the bengali. we came in numbers post independence, and there are a few blogs, giving us the delight of experiencing those heady days immiediately, when the said ministry was one shed with a peon and a clerk (the madrasi) along with the secretary ( a north indian)... and how the madrasi moved up in ranks with the expansion of the central bureaucracy.

can-english-educated-brahmins-be-dharmic

Dear Kunjuppu,

By now you know well "where I come from", so to say. But I am not able to agree with many of the points given above. Firstly, where does Shri Senthilraj prove that the Chettinadu Mudaliars, etc., were the earliest dubashis for the British? I could not locate. Be that as it may, it is difficult to believe that dubashis will ipso facto convert to the foreigner's ways of life and beliefs.

Bengali's were of course the earliest to come into contact with the British and there was intense proselytization efforts by the British missionaries in those areas and some lower caste people converted to Xianity also. This was all before the British scholars found out the nexus between sanskrit and some of the european classical languages. Once they found it, their attitudes I think changed from looking at the Indian native just like the african natives; they understood the reach of the brahmins within the complicated social fabric of this country.

interesting blogs both of these. what surprised me most was some points raised..and here i quote verbatim.

Those brahmins who adopted western elite life style, and discarded everything specific to brahmins (like sandhya vandhanam, rituals etc). How do we call them?? For politeness, Lets call them as Elite Brahmins.

This is an untruth according to me. It was a gradual process spread over roughly two centuries or about 8 or 10 generations. But the blogger makes it look as if the moment a brahmin went to the English school, put on trousers, shirt etc., he bid adieu to all hindu religious practices. We should not also forget that almost all castes here adopted the western ways of life. The blogger seems to be sidelining this important point.

Those brahmins who due to circumstances, happened to be corporate world, but wanted to follow the tradition. (Lets call them as Hindu brahmins)

The blog is very mistaken in this because it says "I particularly observed, that all those who debated in tamilbrahmins.com were english educated, and working in corporate world. The normal vaidiha brahmins, who live as priests, gurukkal, dikshithars, purohithars, and in veda patashalas, are NOT part of this group."

As everyone here knows well not many here are from corporate world and there is no linkage between corporate brahmins and vaideeki way of life.

Role of Kanchi Mutt: I think, writing this will make many people get offended. But it is the kanchi mutt, which first started facilitating english education of brahmins, and sent them to different government posts. That is why, we are seeing so many mylapore and Kumbakonam Brahmins in powerful posts. and it is they who are support base for this mutt. Will write more on this in separate post.

Though I have my own non-conformist views on Kanchi-mutt's origin itself, I don't think the mutt was in any way instrumental in sending tabras to English schools and then to government jobs.

myself, as a result of this, wondered: what if, instead of following the lead of our bengali brahmin cousins, we stuck to vaideeha way of life, akin to our telugu or gujarati kins. true, both of these, are among the poorest, in their communities today. as opposed to us tambrams, who are mostly mid to upper middle class, or more. would we have been more happy now?

Brahmins all over India have been somewhat materialistic in their outlook on life. Land and gold were the major items of assets in the olden days and all brahmins had pursued the acquirement of such assets all along. That is why the Sree sooktam is still recited by most brahmins by heart though they may not be very familiar with vishnusahasranaamam or indraakshee/sivakavacam. But indiscriminate reproduction and consequent large/very large families resulted in division of the farmlands to very tiny parcels after only a few generations and because the brahmins did not posses any skill other than 'darbhai' and "karaNTi", many of the vaideeki brahmins went from poverty to utter poverty while those who adopted the British ways of life prospered.

Hence, the answer to your doubt is very clear — we tabras would have been definitely poorer, unhappier, jealous and mean if most of us had remained steadfast to our brahminic traditions.

would all our boys found girls as there would be no female emancipation?

Yes, of course.

would the rest of tamil community continued to have respect for us? would there have been no periyar

Why are you bothering about the rest of tamil community continuing to have respect for us? Was it there at any time? have we any evidence, documentary or otherwise? As long as we have this yearning for recognition and respect from the rest of the populace without examining whether we deserve it, I think Periyar would have been an inevitable phenomenon produced by mass karma.

In Kerala the tabras always had only some sort of second rank, Nambudiris claiming the top-most slot and deriding the brahmins. Kunjan Nambiar also pokes fun on the "pANTippaTTar", paTTar etc., in his literary works but the tabras seem to have not minded all those. Hence they did not precipitate hatred of other communities in as crystallized a way as did the pure tabras. As a Palghat Pattar yourself, you will know these as well as I do.

 

[kunjuppu]

...
In Kerala the tabras always had only some sort of second rank, Nambudiris claiming the top-most slot and deriding the brahmins. Kunjan Nambiar also pokes fun on the "pANTippaTTar", paTTar etc., in his literary works but the tabras seem to have not minded all those. Hence they did not precipitate hatred of other communities in as crystallized a way as did the pure tabras. As a Palghat Pattar yourself, you will know these as well as I do.

dear sangom,

i come from north malabar, badagara, just north of calicut. the brahmin community was handful and kept a close track of each other, good or bad.

i dont remember my dad or mom, both from badagara, ever having negative views about the town they grew up. it was natural that their first language of communication was malayalam, because they studied in that tongue.

my father's first brush with tamil culture was in coimbatore, when, he studied for 4 years at psg institute. he got free education, boarding and lodging, courtesy of psg charities as he was an orphan. he had high regard for psg and the naidus of kovai.

i dont think dad ever knew or cared that psg was among periyar's most ardent fan and follower. and the naidus of kovai were among the biggest contributors to the early DK.

however, dad's mind was continually influenced by the brahmins of madras, in his later years, especially when he joined the ayyappa sangham. these guys just about made brahmins as next to gods, and periyar, as close to devil as one could be. which is what made me read up on periyar.

though i flinched at some of periyar's terms, by and large, his attitude on birth control, women's education and emancipation, simple weddings, all appealed to me. and came to understand the position of tambrams in tamil nadu, through the eyes of an outsider. for in all essentials, my famiily never gave up our malabar roots or acknowledged anything east of palghat as part of their heritage, including the old travancore cochin. all that appears so quaint now, that i am even amazed that even bringing it up here.

after i came to canada, about 30 years periyar was not even in my radar. till internet came, and i renewed my contact with tamil nadu. especially through forums and at that time, i dispassionately looked at periyar's messages, and our own lifestyle here. i found that we were even more 'advanced' than periyar, in many aspects.

so too most of the tambrams here in canada. the extent to which their girls are automatically granted freedom of choice, for just about anything they want, the ease with which the generation next, has dropped off the brahmin label and the weightage that comes with it, all have made think many times, over the supposed infallibility of casteism and our own position in the hierarchy.

no matter what, i think, the community has moved so far away from the previous generation, that even if you take the most traditional of tambrams today, and compare them to their grandfathers, the difference would like night and day. whereas in the grandfather's day, the differences between the generations would not have been much.

i am pleasantly surprised, to see so many old timers batting for the equality of women. in the past i have found the ranged against me per se, whenever i talkled about female equality in absolute terms. but now, the most articulate and passionate postings comes from these. truly gladdens my heart.

there are no permanent views. only permanence of change of views.

so be it.

thaththaasthu.

ps.. as P.A.Krishnan, an author whom i admire very feels, that periyar and periyar alone, is responsible for the massive changes of tamil society. rajaji, kamaraj and others are only second rung and have already started their fading process. though, i would say, that in today's tamil nadu, periyar if not flogged by MK, every now and then, would also have been forgotten. and would not be surprised, if periyar gets mistaken for tamil santa claus by the next generation, which are fed on a constant stream of hollywood cartoons

 

[sangom]

so too most of the tambrams here in canada. the extent to which their girls are automatically granted freedom of choice, for just about anything they want, the ease with which the generation next, has dropped off the brahmin label and the weightage that comes with it, all have made think many times, over the supposed infallibility of casteism and our own position in the hierarchy.

no matter what, i think, the community has moved so far away from the previous generation, that even if you take the most traditional of tambrams today, and compare them to their grandfathers, the difference would like night and day. whereas in the grandfather's day, the differences between the generations would not have been much.

Dear Kunjuppu,

I am fully in agreement with you. As I have possibly said in a few of our past discussions here, the strong attachments to "things Brahminical" which we find expressed here (and also in some other forums) is, imo, a result of the vague feeling that something very valuable and exotically great is contained within all these many brahminic customs and beliefs. People here seem to forget that tomorrow if there is a nuclear war between Pak and India (most probably staged at the advice of China to Pak/India, all these grandiose notions of brahminism and may be, even castes, will vanish completely!

In that respect, I feel continuing abject poverty might have also brought in some sense of universal outlook of brahmins towards other castes but the experience on the ground, from the poor vaideeki brahmin communities in Mangalore etc., goes against such an optimistic conclusion.

i am pleasantly surprised, to see so many old timers batting for the equality of women. in the past i have found the ranged against me per se, whenever i talkled about female equality in absolute terms. but now, the most articulate and passionate postings comes from these. truly gladdens my heart.

there are no permanent views. only permanence of change of views.

so be it.

thaththaasthu.

I concede that when we debated on IC/IR marriages about 2 years ago, when our *** was here, I was of the view that we should avoid IC/IR marriages if the parents are not willing and that the girls and boys (in tabra community at least) have a duty to obey their parents in this matter. But I find that the trend has changed fast and surely with girls progressively asserting their right to decide their mate. Before this avalanche of social trend, I don't think I, or for that matter, any individual, can hope to oppose and survive. Therefore, I am now speaking out the present trend in our caste. My own personal views have no relevance any more, I feel. As you say, change is the only constant feature of everything!!

ps.. as P.A.Krishnan, an author whom i admire very feels, that periyar and periyar alone, is responsible for the massive changes of tamil society. rajaji, kamaraj and others are only second rung and have already started their fading process. though, i would say, that in today's tamil nadu, periyar if not flogged by MK, every now and then, would also have been forgotten. and would not be surprised, if periyar gets mistaken for tamil santa claus by the next generation, which are fed on a constant stream of hollywood cartoons

Hope that does not happen and EVR is given his due place.

 

[vgane]

.


Role of Kanchi Mutt: I think, writing this will make many people get offended. But it is the kanchi mutt, which first started facilitating english education of brahmins, and sent them to different government posts. That is why, we are seeing so many mylapore and Kumbakonam Brahmins in powerful posts. and it is they who are support base for this mutt. Will write more on this in separate post.




I do not know the reason why the author (Senthil) has dragged in the Kanchi Mutt...The Mutt was mainly in religious activities...I can quote my extended family...We follow the Kanchi Mutt and the Acharyas..But never once has the Acharyas supported us in getting English education or getting Government jobs....It was on account of individual enterprise, dedication and hard work that families have educated their children...On account of individual brilliance and skill the children (we) got our jobs...The author is unnecessarily bringing in the Mutt in this ...May be the Mutt has helped a really needy person which is the need of the hour and there is nothing apologetic or guilty in this