Kondaikatti Vellalar

From Justapedia, unleashing the power of collective wisdom
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Kondaikatti Velaalar
Regions with significant populations
Tamil Nadu, India
Languages
Tamil
Religion
Jainism[1]
Hinduism
Related ethnic groups
Tamil people

Kondaikatti Velaalar is a Tamil[a][b] caste who traditionally pursued agriculture as a profession in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka. They were originally settled in Tondaimandalam but spread to other areas in south India over time.[4] Since they historically used the Mudaliar title, they are sometimes referred to as Thondaimandala Vellala Mudaliars[5][full citation needed] or simply Thondaimandala Mudali.[6][need quotation to verify] However, Kathleen Gough considers them to be a separate subcaste of the Thondaimandala Mudali,[7] as does Susan Neild.[8]

Etymology

The word Kondaikatti was used to denote someone who bound his hair up in a tuft on top of the head.[9]

History

The Kondaikatti Velalar are sons of the soil and natives of the Thondaimandalam country from time immemorial.[c][11] During the colonial period, Colin Mackenzie an officer with the British East India Company who later became the first Surveyor General of India collated the history of south India from inscriptions, oral traditions among other evidences and recorded them into what is now known as the Mackenzie Manuscripts. As per these records, the Velalar settlement of Thondaimandalam is attributed to a king known variously as Adondai Cholan and Adondai Chakravarti. According to these records and the Velalar Puranas, the Kondaikatti Velalar were already residing in Thondaimandalam and were found by Adondai when he arrived there from the Chola country.[d]

Velaalar in the ancient Tamil society were of two kinds, the Uzhuthunbor or those who eat by ploughing their fields and the Uzhuvithunbor, that is those who ate by getting their fields ploughed by tenant cultivators. The Kondaikatti Velaalar and the Karkaatha Velaalar belonged to the latter group, that is they were landlords at least from the ninth century onwards and until the fall of the Chola empire.[13]

British Colonial period

During the Colonial era, this landed gentry were known as Mirasidars, named after the Arabic/Urdu term mirasi. The mirasi system was similar to a co-operative society where lands in a village were collectively owned by a group of people called Mirasdars. The Mirasdars were entitled to a share of the agricultural produce based upon the percentage of ownership.[14] Some of the Kondaikatti Velaalar were employed as dubashes, literally, a person who could speak two languages, in the Company. When the British took over the Jagir, that is the agrarian area of the Thondaimandalam region, in the late eighteenth century (1782), these Mirasdars and Dubashes put up a sustained and effective fight to thwart British attempts to control and collect taxes from this region.[15] Historian Eugene Irschick who did a study on the nature of the political society of the Thondaimandalam region between 1795 CE and 1895 CE notes:[16]

Many of these Kondaikatti vellala Dubashes were connected by kinship to Kondaikatti vellala Mirasdars in the Poonamallee and other rural areas of the Jagir. In contemporary documents these Kondaikattis were knowns as Mudalis-later lengthened to "Mudaliyar"-a term that literally meant a person of first rank. However, in the view of many of the Company officers, the term "Mudali" carried a pejorative meaning. Mudalis were despised by the British because they were considered both essential actors and great threats to individual British and Company operations.

As a direct result of this confrontation and hostile British policy, many of the Kondaikatti Vellalas were persecuted and eventually lost their mirasi rights and ownership of their lands.[17] They were systematically replaced by tenants from other castes who were essentially outsiders and strangers to the Thondaimandalam country. These tenants who were amenable to British rule and who were willing to abide by British taxation laws were gradually given more rights from the time of tax collector Lionel Place (1794 CE) and were eventually made Mirasdars.[18] Since the taxes were directly proportional to the produce, the British also deemed all uncultivated land regardless of ownership as Company property and redistributed these lands to those who were willing to cultivate and pay taxes .[19]

Caste structure

The caste is divided into a number of unranked patrilineal exogamous clans called gotras.[20] In addition, the caste is composed of four hierarchically ranked endogamous units called Vakaiyaras (varieties or kindreds). The members belonging to the higher Vakaiyaras will not interdine, intermarry or accept food or water from the lower Vakaiyaras. The Vakaiyaras comprise the same gotras and span across multiple village clusters. In the late 1920s, the more progressive members advocated the abrogation of the Vakaiyara system and after much deliberation, the caste passed a resolution to drop it.[21]

Religion

The Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally Jains.[22] The greater Saiva Velaalar social group, to which the Kondaikatti Velaalar belong[23], are also originally believed to have been Jainas before they embraced Hinduism.[e] The Tamil Jains refer to the Saiva Velaalar as nīr-pūci-nayinārs or nīr-pūci-vellalars meaning the Jains (Nayinars) who left Jainism and adopted Shaivism by smearing (pūci) the sacred ash or (tiru)-nīru.[25]

Varna Classification

During the British colonial period, the Vellalars who were land owners and tillers of the soil and held offices pertaining to land, were ranked as Sat-Sudra in the 1901 census; with the Government of Madras recognising that the 4-fold division (four varnas) did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately.[26]

While the Shudras are described as the slaves of the other three Varna, the Vellalas are not described in such terms in the Tolkappiyam(Velaan Maanthar) or in other Sangam literature.[27] Moreover, the Varna system is essentially a Hindu classification system that categorises people hierarchically.[28] However the Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally Jains.[29]

Dr. Kamala Ganesh, former Professor and Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Mumbai, states in her research that the Varna classification does not apply to certain sections like the Kondaikatti Velaalar. She further notes:[30]

"Barnett's detailed work (1970) on the Kondaikatti Vellalas defines them, both transactionally and attributionally, as a combination of the brahmanical and kshatriya models. This finding reflects a historically established fact, viz., in South India, vegetarian Vellalas, a sizeable and influential segment of the population do not fit into the four varna scheme and have constituted what could perhaps be called a parallel classical tradition which is both distinct from and overlaps with the orthodox sanskritic tradition."

The Kondaikatti Velaalar are one of the six ancient vegetarian Velaalar castes of Tamil nadu.[31]

Caste-based Reservation Status

Most non-Brahmin castes in the state of Tamil Nadu enjoy caste based reservation of up to 69% in jobs and education in the state and nationwide. While castes that have spawned ruling dynasties in the past like Kallar and Maravar have been granted reservation of up to 46.5% under the Backward and Most Backward category in the state and similar landowning agricultural castes that are numerically strong like Kongu Vellalar, Chozhia Vellalar and Thuluva Vellalar etc. also enjoy reservation under the backward class groups, the Kondaikatti Vellalar, a micro-minority group has been neglected and denied this very same reservation.[32] In 2019, the then BJP government of India passed a resolution to give 10% reservation for the economically weaker section of the forward castes termed the EWS category.[33]

Notable people

References

Notes

  1. ^ Among Tamil castes, both Karkattar Vellalas (Arunachalam, 1975) and Kondaikatti Vellalas (Barnett, 1970) have much the same profile as the KP: both are non-cultivating land-holders, with a history of service to ruling dynasties. Both are of high status, laying great stress on ritual purity. [2]
  2. ^ Most of the Dubashes in the late eighteenth-century Madras were Telugu brahmans or Telugu perikavārs, Tamil kannakapillais, Tamil yādhavas, or Tamil Kondaikatti vellalas. [3]
  3. ^ The original home of the Kondaikatti Vellalar is Tondaimandalam and subsequently they are found throughout Tamil nadu.[10]
  4. ^ According to the Vellala puranas, the kondai-katti Vellalas had been earlier residents of Tondaimandalam than the chozhiya Vellalas who had accompanied Atandai from the Chola country. The claim is lent credibility by the fact that the complex organizational structures like ur and sabha are epigraphically recorded prior to the reign of Surya Chola.[12]
  5. ^ It is also widely believed that the Saiva Vellalas of Madras State who are stricter vegetarians than even Tamil Brahmins, were Jainas.[24]

Citations

  1. ^ Justice Party Golden Jubilee Souvenir, 1968. Shanmugam Press, Secretary, Justice Party. 1968. p. 382.
  2. ^ Chanana, Krishna Raj (1989), p. 92.
  3. ^ Irschick (1994), p. 34.
  4. ^ KK Pillay & ps, pp. 23–24.
  5. ^ Donald B. Rosenthal. The City in Indian politics. Thomson Press (India), 1976. p. 104.
  6. ^ Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Farmers of India, Band 2. Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1961. p. 120.
  7. ^ Gough, Kathleen (1982). Rural Society in South East Asia. Cambridge University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-52104-019-8.
  8. ^ Neild, Susan M. (1979). "Colonial Urbanism: The Development of Madras City in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries". Modern Asian Studies. 13 (2): 217–246. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00008301. JSTOR 312124.
  9. ^ Raghavan (1971), p. 133
  10. ^ Venkatasubramanian & ps, p. 105.
  11. ^ KK Pillay & ps, pp. 23.
  12. ^ Robb Peter & ps, pp. 348.
  13. ^ KK Pillay & ps, p. 46.
  14. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, p. 32.
  15. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, p. 31.
  16. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, pp. 34–35.
  17. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, pp. 64–66.
  18. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, pp. 59, 96, 106, 121.
  19. ^ Irschick, 1994 & ps, p. 148.
  20. ^ Anthony Good, p. 180
  21. ^ Barnett (1973), pp. 130–141
  22. ^ Justice Party Golden Jubilee Souvenir, 1968. Shanmugam Press, Secretary, Justice Party. 1968. p. 382.
  23. ^ KK Pillay, 1977 & ps, p. 24.
  24. ^ Andhra University (1972). Religion and Politics in Medieval South India. Papers of a Seminar Held by the Institute of Asian Studies and Andhra University. Institute of Asian Studies. p. 15.
  25. ^ Umamaheshwari (2018), p. 222
  26. ^ Pamela G. Price (3 December 2007). Kingship and political practice in colonial India. Cambridge University Press. p. 61. ISBN 9780521052290. ...when government census officers placed Vellalar in the Sat-Sudra or Good Sudra category in its 1901 census, Vellalar castemen petitioned this designation, protesting this designation..
  27. ^ Subbiah Pillai, 1994 & ps, p. 40.
  28. ^ Shankar Rao, 2004 & ps, p. 36.
  29. ^ Justice Party Golden Jubilee Souvenir, 1968. Shanmugam Press, Secretary, Justice Party. 1968. p. 382.
  30. ^ Kamala Ganesh, 1993 & ps, pp. 137–138.
  31. ^ Duke University. Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia (1972). Monograph and Occasional Papers Series Issues 11-12. p. 182.
  32. ^ "It's high time Tamil Nadu rationalises its quota system". thewire. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
  33. ^ "ESW quota:TN's long history of resistance to income based reservation". NewIndianExpress. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
  34. ^ Christopher John Baker, D. A. Washbrook. South India. Springer, 1976. p. 174. Similarly, the principal Kondaikatti-Thondamandala-Vellala association included among its leaders M. Subramania Mudaliar and his nephew P.T. Rajan from Madura, whom local political tactics had taken into the Justice Party.
  35. ^ a b Eugene F. Irschick. Tamil revivalism in the 1930s. Cre-A, 1986. p. 152.

Bibliography

  • Kolappa Pillay Kanakasabhapathi Pillay (1977). The Caste System in Tamil Nadu. University of Madras, 1977.
  • M. D. Raghavan. Tamil Culture in Ceylon: A General Introduction. Kalai Nilayam, 1971.
  • Barnett, Steve (1973). Urban Is As Urban Does: Two Incidents On One Street In Madras City, South India. Urban Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1973, pp. 129–160.
  • Anthony Good, Lecturer Department of Social Anthropology Anthony Good (1991). The Female Bridegroom: A Comparative Study of Life-crisis Rituals in South India and Sri Lanka. Clarendon, 1991.
  • Eugene F. Irschick (1994). Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895. University of California Press.
  • Robb Peter (1996). Meanings of Agriculture Essays in South Asian History and Economics. Oxford University Press.
  • Karuna Chanana; Maithreyi Krishna Raj, eds. (1989). Gender and the Household Domain Social and Cultural Dimensions. Sage Publications.
  • T. K. Venkatasubramanian (1993). Societas to Civitas Evolution of Political Society in South India : Pre-Pallavan Tamilakam. Kalinga Publications.
  • K. Subbiah Pillai (1994). The Contributions of the Tamils to Indian Culture: Socio-cultural aspects. International Institute of Tamil Studies.
  • C. N. Shankar Rao (2004). Sociology of Indian Society. S. Chand Limited.
  • Kamala Ganesh (1993). Boundary Walls: Caste and Women in a Tamil Community Studies in sociology and social anthropology. Hindustan Publishing Corporation.
  • R. Umamaheshwari (2018). Reading History with the Tamil Jainas. A Study on Identity, Memory and Marginalisation. Volume 22 of Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures. Springer.
Retrieved from "https://justapedia.org/index.php?title=Kondaikatti_Vellalar&oldid=1118640917"