Many chief ministers in the past have been of Andhra descent, representing the borderless existence of the Telugu and Tamil speaking people under the broad umbrella of Madras (presidency and then state) for generations. In fact, even today, those living on the border of Andhra and Tamil Nadu speak both languages, allow marriages between them and share several customs and rituals.
The first chief minister of Madras Presidency was Agaram Subbarayalu Reddiar (1920-21). He was born in a Telugu Reddy family domiciled in South Arcot district of Madras Presidency. He was succeeded by the Raja of Panagal Rajarayaningar, from a zamindari in Kalahasti in Andhra Pradesh. It is not clear if he was a pure Tamil, though he was associated with Tamil institutions.
https://www.news18.com/blogs/politics/vvp-sharma/after-series-of-outsider-chief-ministers-sasikala-to-be-first-tamil-cm-after-29-years-14329-1345645.html
It’s fascinating that India’s most “distinct” state has a very strong history of having non-Tamil leaders. It reminds me of Scottish or more saliently “Catalan” nationalism (without the political aspects). Highly civil and linguistic, with a very strong socialist element. The amount of Telugus in Chennai is pretty incredible though they’ve become a blended people.
Telugus from Rayalseema and Coastal Andhra were part of the Madras Presidency while the Telugus of Telangana form a very significant component of the diaspora of Indians in the US.
తెలుగు తేట, కన్నడ కస్తూరి, మలయాళం మధురం, అరవం అదో గతి!
Telugu is clear, Kannada is kasturi, Malayalam is madhuram, Aravam(Tamil) is a goner!!
Extremely judgemental but this was a saying that our Telugu teacher used to mock Tamil with. Of course, I don’t subscribe to this..
I was reflecting on this for a few days while in Chennai. it’s maybe why Tamil linguistic nationalism is so acute?
Some of the very well know chess champs from TN ( Gukesh, Pragg) are actually Telugus
how are they perceived though?
Simply put: The Tamils know and they are happy to ignore since it works for them.
And the Telugus keep searching for their castes online. (This is obviously a guess, but I know my gang, I think PV Sindhu caste was the most searched google term around the time she won silver)
lol…
Based on my basic understanding, which may be wrong, the main reason why Tamil Nadu would have a large number of its elite originating from the Telugu region is due to the influence of the Vijayanagara Empire. To put it simply, the Vijayanagara Empire was heavily influenced by Veershaiva/Lingayat values systems that broke down traditional caste practices and instituted a new set of policies in the empire, where upward mobility was possible for marginalized groups based on military contributions.
Out of this system, a new set of political and military elites formed in the empire, who held the title of Nayak. Among these newly formed elites, a sizeable section descended from Telugu regions, including Ikkeri, Tanjavore, Maurai, etc. I don’t know why they specifcially Telugu specifically appeared more often, but Telugu was the dominant elite language and a major cultural influence on the Vijayanagara, so it might have been the cause.
The Nayak overtime consolidated their political power, often at the price of the emperor’s own power. After the death of Rama Raya at Talikot, the empire fragmented as the Nayaks consolidated their territorial holdings into autonomous states that ceremonially recognized the Aravidu dynasty (the last dynasty of the Vijayanagara empire) without giving the emperors any power.
A sizeable portion of these Telugu Nayaks ruled Tamil lands and were referred to by titles such as Vadaka-rajahs (Northern, meaning Deccan/Telugu region kings). Most of these kings and their vassals from the “North” gradually settled down in the regions and assimilated into the local culture over time. This process of intermarrying with and attracting people from the Telugu region seemed to have been continued by even the Maratha rulers of Tanjavore. One example off the top of my head is Pratap Singh II of Tanjavore, who married the Telugu devadasi Maddupalani; also, Tyagaraja (the famous Carnatic musician from the Maratha kingdom in Tanjavore) was of Telugu origin as well.
So, it’s no wonder that the colonial era continued this practice, and why many Tamil politicians descend from Telugu backgrounds, since it kinda was the norm for quite a while in the region. Most of my information came from the book “Heirs of the Vijayanagara: Court politics in Early Modern South India”.
Lastly, I wouldn’t call these people groups Telugu since they have more or less assimilated over time. At least from my perspective, ethnolinguistic identity in India at least is determined by the three L’s: Land, Lineage, Language. If you live in this land, speak the local vernacular as your primary language, and can or have intermarried, or are a product of an intermarriage with a local, you are basically a part of that ethnicity irrespective of ancestral origin. It’s not like Scottish or Catalan, since there is a strong sense of distinctness; more like Tamils being a part of India. They have an indian identity, but Tamils simultaneously identify with an ethnic identity. The same can be said about Punjabis, Gujaratis, and other Indian ethnic groups.
I had in an earlier comment said that the vijayanagar Telugu/kannada kings colonized tamil lands.
Nayakas (Kannada and Telugu balijgigas) were their representatives. Nayakadu- the honorific name morfed into naidu.
the language of classical music in Tamil nadu is Telugu.
I wouldn’t call this colonization since there wasn’t anything particularly resembling resource extraction or settler colonialism. Historically, pre-colonial South Asia generally had specific quirks that often make it difficult to use labels like ” colonization ” perfectly, since these concepts were created with European forms of imperialism in mind. A significant portion of South Asian imperialism functioned within a highly decentralized environment with a relatively homogeneous elite, often signified by the use of a specific language like Magadhi Prakrit, Sanskrit, Indo-Persian, and even languages like Telugu.
The homogeneous nature of the elite basically meant that a figure from a completely different cultural and social background could rule over the given land. Often, this newly migrating elite adapted to the local culture and completely assimilated. It is important to note as well that most pre-colonial (Brahmanical Monastic or Shariac) traditions explicitly encouraged the protection and preservation of customary practices as well as non-interference by the state in community practices. There were even debates between pro- and anti-state interventionism in local practices for a long time.
The British, in contrast, were very different since they were able to more actively interfere in practices and aimed for resource extraction all the time. Additionally, the British never assimilated into the local culture or particularly cared about the people beyond seeing it as an “exotic” land. The Telugus who ruled Tamil country more or less assimilated extensively and adopted local cultural practices a lot. Even Krishna Devaraya, who favored Telugu a lot and wrote many works in this language, is remembered most famously for his work Amuktamalyoda, Giver of the worn garland. A work that focuses on the life of the Tamil saintess Andal’s marriage to Ranganatha.
Also, the use of Telugu as the language for classical music isn’t particularly unique. In North India, Classical music was mainly sung in the language of Braj, as it was popularized during the Mughal reign, even in places like Rajasthan where Braj was never the primary language. In Kerala, the main language that appears in Carnatic pieces is primarily Manipravalam, a more blended language that combines Middle Tamil and Sanskrit. Folk tunes in many of these places are done in more vernacular languages (like Dimgal) or dialects.
The mixed nature of people groups and languages stems from the fact that the political theory and institutions of India have historically favored the creation of multiethnolinguist as well as multireligious states, which produces a very blended society. So, terms like “Colonization” for the pre-British states don’t really work since that was originally used for a more European style of imperialism and state formation.
what fantastic comments!
I had a surface level idea about the Telugu-Tamil intermingling but this helps give more colour. Would you recommend some good resources to read on the subject matter?
It does seem an outsider ruling elite exercising influence over centuries isn’t quite unusual. Very generally, this reminds me of the Yuan and Qing integration in to Chinese society; perhaps the Mamluks also a similar example? A modern day analog would be the Japanese origin political elites in Brazil and Peru.
A sizeable portion of these Telugu Nayaks ruled Tamil lands and were referred to by titles such as Vadaka-rajahs (Northern, meaning Deccan/Telugu region kings).
Just connected some dots in my head haha. I remember hearing the word vadakkan during my time in Chennai and when I looked it up I found out it was an unflattering way to refer to North Indians in Tamil. Wonder if there’s an undercurrent of resentment against the Telugu elite having the influence it does or that was just directed at me hahaha.
Also thanks for this. Comments and insights like these are what keep bringing me back to this site. Otherwise, we just have a bunch of Insta and Reddit experts making grandiose declarations as if they were the next Plato.
such an intelligent comment like this was completely lost in all the drivel..
Thank you. I yearn for parts of the old version of this blog where we used to have discussions on Indian history and culture without the bounds of mainstream narratives where facts were gatekept by ideologues in Indian academia. For me, exploring and learning about hitherto unknown facets of our beautiful civilization are of the most highest value. That’s what brought me here almost a decade ago. Really appreciate you, FlyDie and Girmit for still keeping some of that alive.
thank you for the kind words 🙂
yes the more obscure the better. it’s almost at odds with the mainstream.
Yeah, I would like to suggest some books, but I don’t really have extensive sources for South India during the colonial period. Most of the material I have on Telugu migration comes from Heirs of the Vijayanagara, which discusses the successor states of Vijayanagara and provides a thorough explanation of the empire in the aftermath of Talikota. Another good read about the Nayaks is the chapter called Constructing Kingship: Nāyaka Rule in Early Modern, in the architecture of sovereignty, which explains how patronage and the dynasty’s original migrations worked. Also, there was an additional article called “Migration of Telugu Catholics in Madras Presidency – ce 1780–1910: Empowerment, Identity and Social Mobility” by Joseph Martin that specifically looked at this sub-community of Telugus. Another work would be “Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra” By Cynthia Talbot, which examines Telugu consolidation in the Andhra region over time and colonial shifts. There was a genetic study about Telugu people in Tamil Nadu called: A Study on Telugu–Speaking Immigrants of Tamil Nadu, South India; it’s a bit shoddy but useful.
Thank you. I am somewhat familiar with Cynthia Talbot. Had read some of her articles in my college history courses and her book on Prithvi Raj Chauhan is on my to read list. Will look up the other sources.
Just curious – do you agree with the parallels I had drawn with intermingling of elites in China? I feel like China and India have this habit of absorbing outsiders but still retaining their core civilzational culture. China perhaps far more so than India. I’d not have said this if Islam hadn’t brought about the drastic changes to Indian society it did during its roughly 600 year old supremacy. China, otoh, managed to Sinicize its conquerors more than India managed to Indianize. Of course, these are very rough generalizations and have to be seen in perspective.
Well, you can’t really compare the situation in China to India due to multiple reasons. Most of China’s interactions with “foreign” people groups are kinda simpler in some sense, since they are external groups more culturally similar to the preexisting population of the Middle Kingdom. The Manchu Qing dynasty was founded by people groups who inhabited the region of Manchurian starting from the Ming dynasty, and they eventually overthrew the Ming dynasty during a period of internal stagnation. This would be more similar to how Kashmir transitioned from the Loharas to the Sultanate. The founding sultan was a Ladakhi nobleman who converted to Islam and utilized the political instability in the region after the Mongol intervention destabilized the Loharas’ control over the region. Both the Kashmir and Qing situations were more about semi-nativized external groups expanding their political control from within in the form of a coup.
In terms of the Yuan, well, the Mongols were a lot more internally divided during their reign since there was a deep divide in the nobility between those who wanted to maintain their original nomadic ways of life and those who wanted to adjust to a more sedentary life. The Yuan rule was exceptionally short-lived; I mean, Kublai only succeeded in fully ousting the Song dynasty around 1279, and the Yuan dynasty only lasted until 1368; barely a century had passed, and there would have still been some people that remebered the Song dynasty. Eventually, everyone’s favorite family murderer, Zhu Yuanzhang, kicked out the Yuan back into Mongolia and re-established political dominion of the “Han”. In fact, the Yuans continued as the Northern Yuan, who were, ironically enough, only finally defeated at the hands of the Manchu Qing.
Fundamentally, China was never really ruled by “foreigners” in some sense; even the most external groups shared a lot of religious and cultural values with the preexisting people groups, hence why the Chinese imperial system survived for so long. The Europeans were probably the first truly foreign group to actually reign over parts of China, which you can clearly see in how things turned out. I mean, European ideas and cultural practices fundamentally killed the imperial system and things like the Cultural Revolution, which was inspired by European communist ideology. Even though China (and East Asia to an extent) did retain some of their cultural practices, they are essentially some of the most Westernized people groups.
India, in contrast, literally experienced the exact opposite, like every single “foreign” people group was genuinely very distinct and separate culturally from the pre-existing people in India; this isn’t even an Islamic thing either. The earliest external people groups to truly influence India (since they conquered more land thant other before them) were the Greeks, who, keep in mind, came from a bunch of Ionian island chains on another continent on the other end of the Middle East. The people groups after them were the Saka/sycthians, who came from Kazakhstan, followed by the Parthians, who at least came from nearby Iran. After them, it was Kushan who came from the Tarim Basin, then the Huns, who came from Mongolia. Even with Islam, it was like the arabs who came from the other side of Iran. The Ghurids were annoying in many ways, but at least they were somewhat culturally close since they came from Turkmenistan as opposed to some random place on the other side of the peninsula.
Like, compare the Mughals with the Yuan; both of them started as violent conquerors (Tamerlane and Genghis Khan), and they both ended up trying to integrate and attempted to rule over those lands under a new name (Mughal and Yuan). The Yuan dynasty is fundamentally a footnote in Chinese history, considering how short their reign was. While Mughal went onto the define the very cultural identity of India to such an extent that their monuments are synonymous with this country. Keep in mind, Tamerlane butchered and killed many Indians in Delhi, and their descendants tried to re-establish Mughal/Timurids power in an effort to fight the British. Mind you, I am not even trying to take a jab at the Mughals, but the strangeness of India (and by extension South Asia in general) is something people don’t pay attention to. Like, India had an African general more or less running the Deccan during the 15th century.
I kinda got sidetracked here, but my main point can be summed up in two sentences. Indians (and South Asians to an extent) are more accepting of “foreign” external groups ruling over them without much assimilation, while China (and East Asia) are less accepting of “outsiders,” no matter how similar, and expect extensive assimilation into their culture. However, all of this comes with a caveat in the sense that Indians are more accepting of rulers from foreign rule, but they will never change practices or way of life to suit these rulers. China is less accepting of outsiders initially, but once these people groups become established, China historically let them do whatever they wanted.
For example, the Manchu of the Qing dynasty spent a lot of arduous time conquering and ruling over China, and there was always a sense of foreignness associated with them. However, once they became established, they forced a lot of their cultural practices onto the people, including clothing, eating habits, dressing styles, and many more, to the extent that most people’s stereotypes about traditional Chinese clothing, for example (Manfu), are Qing in origin (Hanfu is the clothing of the present “Han” people). Compare that to the Mughals, who kinda added their own practices onto the preexisting clothing practices. Things like the churidar and kurta, for example, had similar preexisting clothing dating as far back as the Kushan times in the 2nd century AD. Another example would be the fact that the Mughals patronized the Persian language, but they also patronized regional vernacular languages like Braj. They claim to be the shadows of Allah and a messianic figure, but they described themselves using the same term as Vishnu or Krishna.
This is getting long, so I am just going to conclude it here. The main reason for this divergence is that India is a deeply dynamic and ever-changing society, even if it doesn’t seem that way on the surface. Anyone from anywhere and any background can get a turn at dominating the land, but the problem remains that it is hard to retain control for long, since the openness that allowed them to take power would mean that others can do the same and push them out. Ruling is forever a constant struggle to retain your position, and it requires a lot of cooperation as well as flexibility. China (and East Asia), in contrast, it is hard to come into power, but once you are in, you will remain there for a long time. States remain closed off to change for long stretches of time, followed by a short period of massive change that alters the cultural and social landscape (think the Republic period of China between the Qing dynasty and the rise of the CCP, technically PRC, but it doesn’t have a good ring, or the Sengoku Jidai warring states period between the Ashikaga and Tokugawa shogunate/edo period). Mao and the PRC came into power in 1949, around the same time as Nehru and Congress in 1947, when both were at their Zenith. Today, Congress has fallen from its high position and has been displaced by the BJP, while the PRC still retains its control even today. It isn’t a difference between democracy and autocracy; rather, it is a difference in the political culture and views about state control.
As a side note, this was way too long. Also, this is based on a lot of generalizations, vague, generalized explanations of history, and mostly personal opinion that others can naturally disagree with.
you need to put this as a post 🙂 I’m loving learning about China..
Btw, there is a large patch of Chola overlap of Telugu Tamil history. The Cholas had the coast all the way upto Orissa under their domain.
They are primarily known as a Tamil dynasty, but Andhra influences on the family tree are not insignificant.
https://andhraportal.org/history-telugu-cholas/
what’s so interesting to me is just how profound the Telugu influence is in Chennai..
Malayalis seem to be the most distinct South Indians?
The present Telugu lands are very close Chennai (chenna Nayaka pattanam).
I had a colleague who use to go away exactly at the closing time and when I enquired, he sheepishly said that he doesn’t stay in Chennai but commutes from a town in Andhra Pradesh every day!!!
Hah, yeah, that sentence is really untrue; distinct is not the word I would use here, rather than clingy.
A forewarning: this is probably my dumbest and shoddiest comment. Treat it with a grain of salt, and these are just my weird, ignorant observations that are vague generalizations.
Malayalis are not a distinct South Indian group. Most of the elements that shaped Kerala over the years are actually quite strongly influenced by classical Tamil culture and classical Sanskritic culture, with strong hints of Middle Eastern influence via Nazarine christians, Mappila Muslims, and Malabari Jews. For example, the most important festival that symbolizes Kerala is Onam, a harvest festival that happens around August every year. The main myth of the festival is centred around the Vamana incarnation of Vishnu sending Bali to the Patala.
However, this myth was a later rendition that was added at another time, while the original story was centred around the god/King of Madurai, who went out to beat shit out of his enemies, and his people celebrated by having a harvest festival. The earliest references, for example, come from the Tamil Sangam literary work Maduraikkanchi, where they talk about how Onam was celebrated in Madurai. I was recently told by someone that Onam was a major festival in Tamil Nadu in the pre-Vijayanagara period, but it feels out of place after the Vijayanagara Empire formed as a result of complex migrations that happened. Onam is still celebrated by some minor Vaishnavite communities that retained the practices due to theological reasons.
Similar things apply to caste as well; you have wandering minstrels like Pulluvas and tribal groups like Paniyas, who were a lot more prevalent in the South for a long time. During the Vijayanagara period, many of these castes and tribes merged into a single caste or were further divided into other castes. Kerala was unaffected since it retained autonomy during the Vijayanagara period. Most of this information was told to me second-hand, so there might be errors, but I would argue the general gist of it is correct: Kerala retained a lot of older elements from the Tamilakam, which ironically feel out of popularity of proper Tamil country.
Additionally, the Bhakti movement arrived quite late to Kerala in contrast to the rest of the South, so that affected the religious character of the religion. Also, the religious nature of Kerala is unusually orthodox across all religions. The main school of Hinduism in Kerala, ironically (as with everything else), comes from the Purva Mimamsa school of Heumeretics, in spite of Adi Shankara, the granddaddy of non dualism/Vedanta/Uttara Mimamnsa coming from here. Additionally, there is a strong hint of Kaula tantra in the local religious character. For example, a well-known element of local temple worship is the Theyyam dance, which is a form of spiritual possession.
There was a Tulu variant called Daiva/bhoota Aaradhane (literally god-spirit worship); I think it appeared in the movie Kantara. As a side note, Tulu Nadu tends to share a lot of overlap with Kerala as well since they follow the Theravad system that is common amongst all the communities in the state. There is even strong caste and religious overlap in other ways. For example, I was once told that the Shetty caste functioned similarly to the Nair of Kerala, while the Billava caste is closely related to the Ezaha caste to the extent that Sri Narayana influenced them. Also, the Beary muslims are related to the Mappila muslims; in fact, the Beary language is technically a dialect of Malayalam. There is a lot of overlap in terms of culture.
During my recent readings into tantric erotic sculptural depictions, I learned that this spiritual possession business actually comes from the Kaula sect, a popular tantric sect that used to dominate (to varying degrees) the entirety of South Asia from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. They are the weirdos who made the Khajuraho sex statues for the Chandela dynasty, and their modern descendants include Kashmiri Shaivism and the Aghori sect, as well as potentially some tantric groups in Nepal (I am not fully sure). Divine possession was a major part of their rituals, and the Theyyam might be a local interpretation of his preexisting practice; however, I am not fully sure.
Even the Christian community is freaking weird in hindsight. Based on what I have read, Nestorians seem to have had some influence on the local community, and Nestorius of Constantinople, who founded the Nestorian movement, stated the belief that Jesus was two separate persons: Spirit and Man united in one body with intermixing. I think this is called prosopic union in contrast to the hypostatic union favored by mainstream Christianity today. Hypostatic union says the same thing, but that God is fully man and fully Spirit. I don’t explain further because Early Christians from the Byzantine period were dumb as hell and seemed to argue every minute detail, giving the people reading this shit a god damn migraine. Either way, Nestorius was a revered saint among Kerala Christians in the past, even though he was and is now seen as a heretic by everyone in Kerala Christianity because the world is round. Also, Kerala Christians favored the more historical language of Aramaic in the Karshuni script (a hybrid Arabic and Syriac Aramaic script that died out in the Middle East) over the weird Latin nonsense that they used in Europe. Basically, Kerala Christians retained a lot of older elements that died out elsewhere; most seem to be orthodox, and even the eastern catholics are orthodox-adjacent, with the whole gender segregation and hatred for the concept of chairs (this seems to be changing recently).
I wanted to give more details about Muslims and Jews, but I was raised on my maternal side in Travancore, where there were Nazarenes and Tantric Shakta Hindus. Muslims mainly lived on the Malabar side, and Jews had kinda dwindled a lot. The one thing I know for sure is that the Mappila, like the other two, tended to be orthodox with them explicitly following the Shafi school of jurisprudence, the same one as Indonesia, Egypt (I believe), and the Horn of Africa. They are basically traditionalist among the Sunni denominational groups, which is what I was told; someone else can probably provide a better explanation. I plan on looking into this someday.
Honestly, Kerala isn’t distinct; rather, they cling to the older, long-forgotten, and orthodox elements of their respective religions. The weirdest part here is the fact that Communism of all things rose in this place, considering how Orthodox the religious structures are, but it kinda makes sense since Communism is basically a dying ideology, so it’s quite natural to cling to it as well. Kerala, the land of Alcoholic mulsims, sacrilegious Christians, beef eating hindu and religious communists, all topped by some of the most orthodox religious institutions run by some of the most unbearable traditionalist old men. Kerala isn’t distinct; rather, it clings to a bunch of old ideas that everyone else seemingly moved on from, while completely failing to adhere to any of them.
Why don’t you go ahead and post this as a full fledged article?
So informative!
yes such a fantastic piece.
I’ll make this as a mini post
@flydie
Your posts are packed with so much to think about its hard to know where to respond at times! This one made we wonder whether the intake of settler diasporas was a defining pattern of the collapse of the Tamil macro-state of the 14th century. The devastating sack of the Madurai Pandyas during a fratricidal civil war by Malik Kafur and the attempted later intervention by the Hoysala king Veera Ballala III and his morbid fate completing the decimation of the last surviving great medieval polities, would make a great epic film, btw. The pattern I was alluding to is the rise of the predatory deccan poltical system. We see it foreshadowed in the Rashtrakutas inserting themselves in Kannauj and the gangetic theatre and culminate in the 18th century maratha confederacy. The deccan plateau actualizes as a historically resource-constrained, high-mobility zone that acts as a predatory empire builder targeting riverine surplus zones. While the late classical period sees Magadha and the lower Kaveri and Palar basins as the largest aggreagations of political capital, the period post-5th century AD (roughly) sees continental power begin shifting to favor highly mobile forces. This is all to say that when the Vijayanagar empire pushes to incorporate the Tamil country, they bring a mobile deccani Telugu and Kannada military class as not just Nayakars and Polygars, but even agricultural specialists to cultivate the arid black soils that were previously under-exploited by the native Tamil pillai/ mudaliar elites who were wet-zone ecology adapted. The deccanis brought the stone quarrying and well digging expertise and large retinues of settlers that populate areas that were previously used by marginal communities. In contrast, Kerala (and coastal KA) have always benefited from a kind of “ecological shield” against dryland plateau dwellers who don’t have the cultural technology to dominate those regions. This is also why inland sultanates and mughals would also fail at creating supply chains for cavalry based control of the humid tropics.
In an effort to connect this back to our century, post-pandya tamil country is fatally fractured politically, then the first non-classical pre-early modern south indian imperial polity rises in the deccan as a dialectical reaction to the structural, fiscal, and technological innovations introduced by the Delhi Sultanate and Tughluqids. They adopt the military-horse complex of the persianate world with its massive stone masonry fortifcation technology. After Talikota, the Bijapur and Golconda Shahs would further the same patterns of state control in Tamil country and be the bridge to later Maratha political ascendancy in the exact sub-regions. As such, the period spanning the 14th-18th century sees Tamil secular and courtly prestige decline from its historical apex but find a redoubt in sacred and folk poetic contexts. Can we trace modern TN’s accomodation of MGR, Periyar, Karunanidhi, (even Rajnikant!) in its pantheon to that latter cultural adaptation to give primacy to speech and poetic force as opposed to lineage?
[…] The Nayak inheritance. Why does so much of Tamil Nadu’s elite traces to Telugu country? Vijayanagara’s military system let new men rise, and it minted the Nayaks. After Talikota they carved out autonomous states in Tamil lands as “Vadaka-rajahs” and assimilated over generations. The Thanjavur Marathas kept the pattern going. Ethnicity as the three L’s: Land, Lineage, Language. […]