A dear friend of mine forwarded to me the above Opinion piece penned more than a year ago in August 2020, well before the State elections of May 2021 were held in the the state of Tamil Nadu and from which the new DMK government emerged and was swept into power after a decade spent in political limbo.
The author of the Op-Ed, who was one of the DMK Party’s back-bench legislators until last year, is today the serving Finance and HRD Minister of the Tamil Nadu Government, the Hon’ble Tiru. PTR Thyagarajan. His column was published in the Newsminute online webpage and, quite strangely, a very dear friend of mine forwarded it to me this morning and wanted to know what I thought about the rather outspoken views expressed in it by the Hon’ble Minister (who I shall refer to in rest of this blogpost as “PT”) on the causes and circumstances that led to the historical mass emigration of the Tambrahm Diaspora from Tamil Nadu in the 1960s through 1990s.
After I read PT’s piece, I told my friend, I felt I had to agree with some of his express views. But then I also had to disagree with others he certainly seems to imply…. the ones that one can read easily between his lines.
*************************************
So, my take on the whole matter is this:
PT looks at it like from the narrow perspective of a hardnosed, savvy investment-banker-turned-politician that he wants us all to know he is, while the matter itself has really got far less to do with data-points and info-metrics and all that financial mumbo-jumbo than with the more relevant and weighty issues of history, social dynamics, politics and cultural currents of Tamil Nadu. To PT the matter is plain socio-economics while to an ordinary man like me it is more profoundly socio-cultural.
Let me first set out the views of PT with which I cannot find disagreement:
QUOTE:
- “Immigration to the US occurs from all over the world, and the common theme across all States of India, and all countries, is that the vast majority is driven by opportunity, not repression“.
2. “…….. they (i.e. the Tambrahms who made it good in the USA) simply could not have achieved anywhere near their current positions if they had stayed back in Tamil Nadu, irrespective of any potential marginalization. Why? Simply because the opportunity set here is but a small fraction of that available in the United States. ….. They have attained such great heights precisely because they emigrated to the largest and most unbiased talent-valuing market in the world. And having done so, they are extremely well-positioned to be of great service to their state and country of origin. Not only have we not lost such talent, we have gained well-wishers of almost unimaginable potential.“
3. “In the century since 1920, parties espousing the Dravidian philosophy have been elected to form the government for all but about 30 years. What is more, the policies of the Swatantra and Congress Parties which formed the governments (of Madras Presidency, Madras State and Tamil Nadu State) for the bulk of the balance of 30 years, hewed closer to the Dravidian philosophy than that of the Congress Party of other Presidencies and States (e.g. on universal rights for temple entry, enhancing access to education for all, expanding the free school meal scheme across the state).”
4. “In the absence of any universally acknowledged perfect philosophy or model of governance, all existing models include imperfections of one kind or another. Even as a die-hard adherent, I accept that our Dravidian model has much room for improvement, in several dimensions.”
UNQUOTE
In the context of 1. above, no one can deny that the emigration of Tambrahms to foreign shores, especially to the USA, was principally impelled by reasons quite different from those that caused the waves of immigrants flowing into that vast country from Europe for centuries since the 17th and 18th CE.
People from Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Italy and other smaller nations fled to the USA from political oppression and cultural pogroms. It would be absurd exaggeration to compare those waves of European emigrations with that of the trickling streams of Tambrahm exodus from Tamil Nadu to the USA in the ’60s through the 90s of the 20th century CE.
The European exodus to America was caused by the need to escape from almost certain extinction at home whereas the Tambrahm exodus to America was caused by the need to escape suffocating, if not enervating lack of social upward mobility at home which in time resulted in a growing sense of disenfranchisement, alienation and social discrimination amongst the community during the entire period when what PT calls “Dravidian Philosophy” prevailed over the ethos of Tamil Nadu.
Which now brings me to the disagreements I have with PT’s views not so much expressly stated but clearly and surely implied.
****************************
PT clearly implies that the Tambrahms as a community were never “socially marginalized” and that what really drove them out of the State to America was not any kind of social ostracization, mild or virulent, but that it was simply crass “opportunism“.
The general drift of his arguments is that Tambrahms left Tamil Nadu for greener pastures, to a land of milk and honey…. to a distant Eldorado shining on the Hill that beckoned them with open welcoming arms into its top-class Universities, its free-market and free-world ethos, its almost unlimited opportunities for gainful employment and attainments, for glamorous standards of living and for everything else that glitters in the great and glorious American dream of “the pursuit of happiness“.
The Tambrahm goes wherever the lure of easy opportunity for personal advancement beckons him. Period. And the rest of the story is …. well, just that …. plainly made-up stories.
That in short is the point PT insinuates and it is his nuanced and subtle way of exposing what he believes to be the hypocrisy of the “successful”, “high-achieving” American diasporic Tambrahm who, after making it big in America, turns around to either claim or else yet remain reticent about victimhood under social oppression he suffered at the hands of the Dravidians back home before he came to America. (Kamala Harris, Sunder Picchai et al). In doing so, the Tambrahm only seeks to throw a pious veil over greedy, opportunistic, “get-ahead-in-life-at-any-cost” attitudes that got ingrained in the Brahmin psyche over centuries in Indian history.
If PT’s Dravidian view of history is to be believed, the Tambrahm had always enjoyed munificent social largesse, tax-free entitlements and caste-privileges that were lavishly bestowed upon his community by the ruling classes of the day whoever they happened to be — whether Gupta Kings or the Vijayanagar Brahminical dynasts, the Muslim vassal viziers of the Moghul Empire in Tamil Nadu or the British East India Company Governorate.
The understated gravamen of PT’s argument is that the Tambrahm’s social status throughout history had always thrived upon, prospered and advanced as long as the ruling classes molly-coddled and pampered the community. They were deferred to as being the custodians of tradition, religion, priesthood and institutions of higher cultural learning and skills.
However, once the plug was pulled, so to say, on such royal or governmental patronage traditionally granted to the Tambrahms (as “brahmadeyam”) or was otherwise either withdrawn or whittled down, as it has happened over the last 100 years under the rule of Dravidianism and PT’s ancestral Justice Party, the Brahmin community at once felt aggrieved, cried foul and found both comfort and political purchase in beginning to play the game of “identity politics” and the social victimhood card.
If one were to construct a parallel between PT’s theory and the present-day brand of Indian politics called “minority religious-groups appeasement”, one could perhaps even go so far as to surmise that PT regards Tambrahms as a Hindu Minority within the Hindu Majority in Tamil Nadu agitating against “oppressive majoritarianism” by using the same tactics and tricks that minority religious groups in India use to further their own community interests — i.e. scrambling to retain their social entitlements through many Kautilyan tricks — politicking, propagandizing, wily exploitation of governance systems and exercising covert, insidious influence over policy and decision-making in the national polity.
It is not as if I am trying to mind-read PT here, but then what else can one to conclude about his thought-processes and thought-trajectories when PT goes on to decry and bemoan the fact that (QUOTE:) “……. Tamil Brahmins, who constitute less than 3% of the population…. are massively disproportionately represented in the Civil Service, the legal profession (including the Judiciary), Chartered Accountancy, and so many other high-end professional fields. This is well-documented, and true across all of India, not just Tamil Nadu. As one stark example, the overwhelming majority of India’s Supreme Court is constituted by Brahmin (~40% alone) and other Upper Castes. As another example, one of the biggest and most-respected industrial conglomerates in India today (and one of the top 2 or 3 in our State), is the Tamil Nadu-based TVS group, started by TV Sundaram Iyengar four generations ago, and still run as a privately-held group by his many descendants (all Brahmins). (UNQUOTE).
It is his thought-processes, deeply prejudiced as one can see they truly are, that perhaps incapacitate PT, I think, from looking at the issue in question from outside the confines of the narrow perspectives of the investment-banker that he is — and please do not fail to notice how, as a member of that highly over-rated worldwide professional fraternity, he flashes his badge of “international”, “OECD”-accredited career-accomplishment by wearing it, nay, flaunting it on his sleeve in this semi-autobiographical Op-Ed!
Yes, PT is indeed a prisoner of a rather peculiar prejudice and perspective …. one that gives him, in fact, his own identity as a self-confessed “die-hard adherent of Dravidianism”. Being cramped into the self-confines of such narrow parochial perspectives, it would indeed be difficult for PT to open his mind up to an alternative point of view and argument that could be made against his…. one which questions the very definition of “social marginalization” that he stoutly dismisses and denies was ever the true cause of the Tambrahm exodus from Tamil Nadu to foreign shores.
PT quotes impressive figures and hammers so hard with “data-points” to prove that if Tambrahms had indeed been “marginalized“, they would never have been able to emigrate out of India in the first place!
QUOTE: “If, as it is claimed, reservations (which started in the 1920s), and post-Independence (1947) socialism resulted in marginalization, surely it would have resulted, at least within a few decades, in denying Tamil Brahmins access to the requisite launchpad for immigrating to the United States for Graduate studies: a high quality school-education followed by outstanding under-graduate performance. It clearly has not. Further, if we take …. (the) claim of many more such high-achieving Tamil Brahmins in the US at face value, the fact that so very many from such a tiny community had such access further undermines… (the) claim of marginalization.” UNQUOTE
This is such a one-dimensional view of “social marginalization”, Tiru. Thyagarajan!
PT sees marginalization solely in terms of what he calls “access to high-school education” and “under-graduate studies” and deliberately fails to even acknowledge that social marginalization can be perpetrated through a variety of ways other than “reservations‘ in Education or Employment.
Even an investment banker ought to know that the world is not bounded by socio-economic metrics alone….. such as “access to” and “provision of equal opportunity” in the education, health-care and employment sectors of society. In a program (not pogrom) of social marginalization, far greater than the impact of granting, limiting or outright denying access to education to a particular community or segment of society, is the impact of granting, limiting or outright denying socio-cultural inclusivity to it. Even if the Tambrahm, as PT argues, did have access to education in Tamil Nadu, there is ample evidence to show that he did not in the same measure enjoy inclusivity within Tamil society. On the contrary, the Tambrahm suffers even today from being rudely, culturally excluded from Tamizh society…. a “high-caste” cultural pariah of sorts.
PT mentions in his Op-Ed something called “Indian education ecosystem” to refer to a larger social milieu in which every member of society should have assured access to quality education. Likewise, I say, he should recognize too that there is such a thing called “cultural ecosystem” in which every member of society should be able to hope to enjoy a sense of belonging and a certain bonding with it, brought about mainly through three key elements that help bring about true social inclusivity : (i) Language, (ii) Way of Life and (iii) Community affiliation.
Denial of access to the cultural ecosystem to any particular community within a larger society is as discriminatory and unfair, if not more, as it is to deny access to the “education ecosystem” PT talks about.
In the last 100 years….. or to put it in the words of PT….. “in the century since 1920, (when political) parties espousing the Dravidian philosophy have been elected to form the government for all but about 30 years” , the Tambrahm community have had their access to cultural ecosystem of Tamil Nadu severely curtailed if not completely denied it. It is in that wider, truer sense that he suffers “social marginalisation” if not exclusion.
Let me explain that point a bit.
*************************************
Historically, the language of the Tambrahms has been Sanskrit which is utter doctrinal anathema to Dravidianism. The “political parties, espousing the Dravidian philosophy” in all but 30 of the last 100 years of a century of governance since 1920, in Tamil Nadu left no stone unturned to destroy this language from its very roots within the Brahmin community and have erased all traces of it from the usage and custom of Tamil society. Now, if that is not social marginalization, Tiru. PT Thyagarajan, tell me what is it?
*******************************
Historically, the Tamil Brahmin way of life at home and in the community was a unique one devoted as it was to priesthood and priestly occupations. That devotion meant adopting certain distinctive dietary, sartorial and demeanor of living. It meant being half-clad in simple, rough dhoti, being tonsured except for a tuft of hair left dangling from the scalp behind the head, wearing the “poonool”, going about barefooted, earning a meagre livelihood from the practice of priest-craft and scriptural studies. Again, political parties espousing the Dravidian philosophy” in all but 30 of the last 100 years of a century of governance since 1920 in Tamil Nadu, actively encouraged certain other large, very influential “anti-Brahmin” sections of Tamil society to look upon the Tambrahm way of life with ridicule and even disdain. There are Dravidian so-called “social-justice outfits” in the state even today who openly and with impunity carry out sustained and systematic campaigns and programs to paint the Brahmin’s way of living in poor light… They belittle, ridicule, humiliate and caricature poor Brahmin priests all across the districts of Tamil Nadu. (The great social-justice reformer, Tiru. E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, the greatest Dravidianist of all if you were to ask PT, once famously exhorted his followers, “If you were to encounter a serpent and a Brahmin at the same time, make sure you kill the Brahmin first“). Now, if that is not social marginalization, Tiru. PT Thyagarajan, tell me what is it?
******************************************
Since the very dawn of history of Tamil Nadu, the landscape across the state has always been dotted and marked by the towering presence of great temples to the Vedic gods of Saivism, Vaishnavism and Saktaism. And it was the temples of the land through which great kingly dynasties ruled it and kept their subjects united and secure within communities.
Tamils were and still ate an innately religious-minded people. Tamil Kings in the past, being generally very democratic-minded, always deferred to the peoples’ wish to institutionalize temples as active and thriving centers of socio-economic and socio-cultural activity.
Temples of Tamil Nadu throughout its history had been both engines of economic and social growth as well as serving society as treasuries of cultural commonwealth.
Brahmins had traditionally been the custodians, operators and asset-managers of these temple institutions and their wealth viz. land, the produce of the land, the material endowments of kings and governors, and the donations of the common people. Temples were the true commonwealth of Tamil Society and the Brahmins were for long regarded as its trustworthy Trustees. It was an unwritten social contract that had generally worked well for centuries…..
From the beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era, alas, many historical forces and events changed all that….
First came the Islamic invasions of South India. In wave after wave of such invasions, the temples of Tamil Nadu too were not spared plunder, loot and depredation.
Then came the European and British colonialists who over the second half of the second millennium ravaged the country and impoverished it for the sake of their own imperialist interests. They bled the temples of Tamil Nadu of their commonwealth — through taxes, tithes, venality and plain loot.
Then, after India’s Independence, came what PT aptly describes as “political parties espousing the Dravidian philosophy” in all but 30 of the last 100 years of a century of governance since 1920, who through legislation, government policy measures and implementation, ensured that, in the name of ushering in social justice and fairer distribution of wealth amongst under-privileged castes and classes of society, the systematic bleeding of temple commonwealth continued with impunity. (The track-record of work done by the Tamil Nadu HR&CE Commission since it’s inception in 1920s in this regard is today incontrovertible standing testimony to the depredations that post-Independence political governance inflicted upon the temple-wealth of Tamil Nadu. Even the High Courts of Tamil Nadu have today acknowledged the fact).
In the middle of all this historical churning, it was the Tambrahm community that bore the brunt of sustained attacks on the institution of temples which for centuries had been their principal means of livelihood and…. lifetime, lifeline vocation too.
The so-called “Brahmin bastions” in Tamil temples were breached and destroyed by the onslaught of Dravidian Philosophy. Traditional cultural markers were wiped out; socio-cultural structures, bonds and ancient unwritten social-contracts were devastated…. The Brahmin was driven out of his home in the “agrahaaram-s” of his hamlets. He fled first to the cities within Tamil Nadu for sheer survival, then to cities in other states in the country… and finally, he fled abroad to the USA for, of course yes, “better prospects“. Now, if all that is not social marginalization, Tiru. PT Thyagarajan, tell me what is it?
******************************
There is one other very significant societal reason for the Tambrahm exodus of the last five or six decades which PT does not care to dwell upon at all in his Op-Ed piece… It is the endemic Corruption in public life that set in all through the years that “political parties espousing the Dravidian philosophy” in all but 30 of the last 100 years of a century have governed this State since 1920.”
Corruption, both big-ticket as well as petty, retail ones, even today, of course, continues to corrode the general socio-economic ecosystem of Tamil Nadu.
The above fact, PT should note, is also documented and as well too as the impeccable sources of information he has drawn upon in his Op-Ed to be able to preen about what he calls the great “Dravidian Model” of socio-economic growth in Tamil Nadu to compare it with the models of other poorer States of India and those of other advanced “OECD countries“.
The India Corruption Survey 2019, carried out between October 2018 and November 2019 has this to say about the ecosystem of Tamil Nadu: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/corruption-survey-2019-telangana-karnataka-and-tn-paid-most-bribes-south-india-113091
QUOTE: In Tamil Nadu, 62% citizens who participated in the survey admitted to paying a bribe to get their work done, out of which 35% gave bribes several times (directly or indirectly) while 27% paid bribes once or twice (directly or indirectly). 8% said they got work done without paying a bribe and 30% did not have a need to pay a bribe. In terms of the authority to which residents of Tamil Nadu gave bribes, 41% gave bribes for property registration and land issues while 19% paid bribes to the Municipal Corporation. 15% paid a bribe to the police and 25% to others (Electricity Board, Transport Office, Tax Office, etc.). Tamil Nadu had led the south Indian states in terms of corruption last year, with 52% of respondents admitting to having paid bribes. UNQUOTE
PT should understand that not everyone in society has the same threshold limit for corruption in public life. To some, corruption may well be a fact of life, something not to be condoned but then if it endemic to society, then better to simply put up with it and move on in life….rather than go on griping about it.
Sorry, PT Sir, that’s not the way the Tambrahm looks at Corruption…. And it is certainly not the way the Tambrahm, who throughout the 60s and 90s emigrated from Tamil Nadu, looked at it. The threshold for tolerating corruption in public life, both at the retail and institutional levels, for the average Tambrahm is very, very low. He can barely survive in an ecosystem that no matter how “socialist, liberal-democratic, secular and “progressive” it claims to be, is still about 52% corrupt.
*******************************
To conclude, I must ask PT to dwell deep and ask himself the question, “Did I miss the wood for the trees?” in theorizing upon this subject of Tambrahm emigration? He most certainly did if he thought what made the Tambrahm leave Tamil Nadu was simply Opportunism” or “social marginalization” measured using merely socio-economic metrics in an investment-banker’s tool-kit… and that it had nothing to do at all with the larger socio-cultural ecosystem of Tamil Nadu in which Corruption was and is, even today, endemic.
Sudarshan Madabushi