Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi, on March 4, alleged that Robert Caldwell, who failed to finish his formal education and not even passed out from school, authored a fake book called, A Comparative Grammar of Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages.
Mr. Ravi, who presided over the 192nd birth anniversary of Ayya Vaikundar, a social reformer from Kanniyakumari district, said the British had a society called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and recruited school dropouts by providing basic training and sent them to India.
“People like Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope were sent to India. They started closing all the native schools, running here for a long time. Only missionaries were allowed to run the schools. They started targeting the people who were poor and marginalised, and, in this background, they started targeting the southern districts of Tamil Nadu,” claimed the Governor. He also released the book Sri Mahavishnu’s Avatharam- Sri Vaikundaswamy Aruliya Sanathana Varalaru (Tamil Version).
