The Governor of Tamil Nadu has been criticised by some for expressing his views on the Aryan-Dravidian divide. Some have gone to the extent of calling this political interference. This is unfair. Expressing one’s views on a sensitive issue cannot be construed as political interference.
What the Governor has done through his comment, however, is disturb the popular view that former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai’s forsaking of the demand for a separate Dravidian state was only a practical compromise, and that Aryans and Dravidians continue to remain racially different people. The eminent historian, P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar, never subscribed to this view, even though he maintained that cultural differences existed between the Vedic and non-Vedic people. In Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture, he wrote, “A careful study of the Vedas… reveals the fact that Vedic culture is so redolent of the Indian soil and of the Indian atmosphere that the idea of the non-Indian origin of that culture is absurd.”
The Governor called the Aryan-Dravidian divide a handiwork of the British, which has been criticised as toeing the Hindutva line on the issue. This criticism is also unfair because many eminent scholars, both local and international, have written about the Dravidian movement’s colonial origins. The linguistic theory, unscientific histories of racial origins, the politics of the non-Brahmin movement and the modern rationalism of the self-respect movement all have deep roots in colonial thought.
