'Tamilttay' as the Symbol of Tamil Ethnic Identity
Why would love for their language (idolized in the figure of Tamilttay, i.e. Mother Tamil) lead several men in southern India to burn themselves alive in its name? 'Passions of the Tongue' analyze the discourses of love, labour and life that transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment. The author, Sumathi Ramaswamy, suggests that these discourses cannot be contained within a singular metanarrative of linguistic nationalism and instead proposes a new analytic: 'language devotion'.
By LUBA ZUBKOVA
Sumathi Ramaswamy's book is based on her doctoral dissertation in Indian history from the University of California, it abounds in first-class historical and literary material diligently procured from the libraries in several countries, thoroughly classified and interpreted. In my view, it is a fascinating reading. Master of her subject as well as of scientific terminology and logic, Sumathi writes in a confident, persuasive manner. A little too passionate at places though permissible, one would think, in a book with such a title, permissible for a scholar investigating into a dramatic story of her mother tongue. The latter particularity is though not so simple as it sounds. It is clarified in the preface that the author, born into a Tamil Brahman household, was exposed due to life circumstances to Kannada and Telugu, English and Hindi, Urdu and Sanscrit rather than Tamil. She formally learned her putative 'mother tongue' in Berkeley, far away from her motherland.The author confesses that as a result of growing up with not just a singular, but 'multiple' language identity her attitudes are close to so-called (neo)nomadic consciousness. This presupposes a certain cultural impartiality and 'healthy skepticism' about steady identities and mother tongues. I believe this to be an advantage, since in my own field of Tamil literary research the works performed by scholars of Tamil origin living beyond India (in Sri Lanka, US, Britain, France etc.) are the most innovative, they combine a 'personal involvement' in the subject felt 'from within' with objectivity of its analytical interpretation.
The goal of the study is plainly stated in the introductory chapter: to raise the language question once again, but to answer it and write it differently for a colonial and post-colonial context ('differently' means disregarding as far as possible 'the universalizing imperative of Europe's knowledge practices and heeding the moments of 'difference'). Its actuality is emphasized by the fact that historians in Indology are usually preoccupied with caste and religion, 'those two gatekeeping concerns of South Asian studies on identity politics', and rarely interrogate a complex of issues relating to the language despite its obvious importance for the political cultures of the emergent nation-state.
To pursue this ambitious burden on the material of Tamil-speaking south India a new analytic is used devotion to the Tamil language (tamilpparru), the term rutinely used by Tamil people themselves when they talk emotionally about their beloved language. The lexical meanings of 'parru' also include adherence, attachment, affection, support and love. This then is a book about poetics and politics of 'Tamil devotion': it analyzes how the language has been transformed into an object of devotion in the course of the social mobilization and political empowerment of its speakers, it explores the consequences of this process for the ontology of Tamil, as well as for the formulation of cultural policies around it, and it shows how language devotion produces the modem Tamil subject, the 'Tamilian', 'an entity whose subjectivity merges into the imagined self of Tamil' and even 'has no existence independent of it' (pp. 6-7).
The 'Tamilians' in this sense are supposedly those who cultivate and demonstrate the language devotion, notwithstanding eventual worldly losses. Such people, with their dramatic stories, are vastly represented on the pages of the book under the definition 'Tamil's devotees'. Sumathi Ramaswamy is aware of a heavy share of 'imagination' factor in this construct, which is typical for the phenomena related to the ideologies of nationalism. She also certifies considerable differences among Tamil's devotees over the meaning of their language and over the best way to practice their devotion. And still she proposes that they be considered as one singular 'community' on the pretext that they all agree to recognize 'the natural and inevitable attachment between Tamil and its speakers'.
To my feeling, 'devotional community' in respect to the Tamil language is rather far-fetched an abstraction, unlike historically and socially determinated religious communities, or such concrete-cum 'imagined' entities as nation, caste, class etc. The compound 'Tamil's devotees' seems sufficient, since we are not told exactly when and how these formed a community of confederates, nor how many self-identifying 'members' such a community may number before and now. There are, of course, clues in the book as to historical dynamism of Tamil devotion (in the given sense, as networks of praise, passion and practice), and we get to know that it is a comparatively recent phenomenon whose foundation were laid in the nineteenth century with the consolidation of colonial rule and advent of print culture. But when, further in the text, a Tamil poet of the seventeenth century is mentioned, obviously having the same diction regarding the 'preeminent Tamil' (P. 209) as Tamil's devotees of the later times, a question arises about intensity and contents of Tamilians' love for their language in the previous historical periods.
Multiple imaginings
Contrary to a general assumption of scholars studying nationalism, Sumathi Ramaswamy does not think that languages have singular and stable identities. Instead, as languages are subjected to the passions of all those interested in empowering them, they attract multiple, even contrary, imaginings. Four main regimes of imagination (active in Tamilnadu from the 1890s to the 1960s) are introduced in full detail, i.e. 'religious', 'classicist', Indianist' and 'Dravidianist, where Tamil is variously conceived: (1) as a divine tongue, favoured by the gods themselves; (2) as a classical language, the harbinger of 'civilization'; (3) as a mother tongue that enables participation in the Indian nation; and (4) as a mother/tongue that is the essence of a nation of Tamil speakers and of themselves.
What follows is that, to many Tamil speakers, Tamil is no longer merely a language, an instrument for communication. Its devotees are able to inject so much passion into practicing tamilpparru because Tamil, embodied in the figure of Tamilttay, is a near and dear person their personal goddess, or devoted mother, or else beloved lover ('virgin maiden') who commands their veneration, and deserves their love. It also demands their selfless service.
Due to her devotees' persistent labouring in 1950s- 1960s, Tamil became the language of Hindu worship in temples. She was then 'purified', i.e. 'cleansed' from Sanscrit borrowings and even began to press her rival, the English language, in the public sphere of Madras state which in January 1969 was officially renamed Tamilnadu. The work for Tamil also implicated fierce resistence to the 'imperialism' of Delhi Tamil's devotees joined ranks with Dravidian movement proponents. It is meticulously shown in the book how the issue of language accumulated all anti-North, anti-Aryan and anti-Brahman sentiments of Dravidianism. (alias Tamil nationalism), helping to visualize a 'perfect' image of the sworn enemy.
The growing militant aspect of Tamil devotion caused paradoxical recasting of the Tamil identity in terms of resistance to Hindi: 'true' Tamilians were those who might or might not speak good Tamil or even care for it; but they were certainly those who gave up their bodies, lives, and souls in the battle against Hindi (p. 178). The chapter titled 'To Die For. Living for Language' presents life stories, of such true devotees of Tamil, among which are (woman) Nilambikai, (missionary) George U. Pope, (brahman) Suryanarayana Sastri, (poet) Bharatidasan, (scholar) Swaminathan Aiyar, (publicist) Maraimalai Adigal, (patron) Pandithurai Thevar, (warrior) Karunanidhi, and some 'Tamil martyrs' who, in protest against imposing of Hindi, immolated themselves or died in prison.
Obviously, the author has reached the goals of her research, and the chosen analytic of language devotion allowed her to prove that sentiments accumulating about Tamil among its faithful speakers 'resonate with attitudes expressed towards deities, sovereigns, and parents' *
Sumathi Ramaswamy
PASSIONS OF THE TONGUE
LANGUAGE DEVOTION IN TAMIL INDIA, 18911970
University of California Press,
1997, 303 pp
Luba Zubkova is living in the Netherlands. She can be reached at: clepair@wxs.nl.