From: ravik@wam.umd.edu (Ravi Kuchimanchi)
Subject: Why are TAMILS hated ? (SOME ANSWERS !!)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 20:20:16 GMT

I am posting this for a friend. Please dont email this account.
			-Ravi
___________________________________________________________________
WHY TAMILS ARE HATED ? The reason is extreme JINGOISM. (I don't have
to go far to get examples. I will just use recent net postings when
I need to illustrate a point.) People dont like others walking
around with a chip on their shoulder, especially when it is built
on a shaky foundation of lies cooked up for devious political 
ends (by the kazhagams).

1. TAMIL is somewhat more ANCIENT.
Tamil is "ancient". But not much more ancient than (say) Kannada. 
Historically speaking Tamil has no special place any more than Kannada, 
Telugu, urdu, and various other Prakrits and spoken REGIONAL languages. 
There is no sense even in making grandoise comparisons of Tamil 
to Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the oldest Indo-European language and the Vedas
are at least 3700 years old. Its influence is also international
strectching from Japan, philipines, china, south east asia, all the
way to central asia. On the other hand, Tamil is spoken in some small
corner of India and Srilanka and has literary history dating only as far
back as the birth of christ and would be difficult even to make a case 
of superiority to other REGIONAL languages. 

(Example 1: It was funny when someone asked why there were no "ancient" 
Tamil books in mathematics. Ofcourse not. They are in Sanskrit including 
many  written by people in what is now Tamil Nadu.)

WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, it is a HISTORICAL and ARCHAELOGICAL fact, 
that there is NO artifact suggesting any form of civilisation in 
south india till about 300 BC or so (this is really stretching it).
THE RUDIMENTS of south indian civilisation from music to literature
to grammar is essentially IMPORTED from the North.  The cradle of Indian 
civilisation is Sindh and the gangetic valley (cities of Mohenjodaro 
date to about 3000 BC). If at all anybody, the Sindhis can have a
chip on their shoulder !!

(Example 2: I had a good laugh when someone refered to TOlkappiyam as 
the most ancient grammar. Especially as it is believed the person who 
wrote it belonged to one of the ancient Sanskrit grammar schools. It is
even funnier since many technical terms and grammatical concepts in
modern linguistics  are from Sanskrit and the study of comparitive 
philology  originated with the study of Sanskrit.)


2. Tamil and Tamil history are DISTINCT. Yes this is true. BUT it is
no more distict than ANY regional variation of the Indian civilisation,
like Bengali (say). But what some s.o (school dropouts of Kazhagam fame) 
are doing is to throw out 75 % of Tamil culture (which is shared with 
all of India and is decidedly SANSKRITIC) and highlight only the remaining
20 % which is the local variation and things unique to Tamil Nadu. 

(Example 3:
It is funny to see that one poster thinks that Saiva Siddhanta
or Siddhars are the true Tamil religion. Saiva Siddhanta falls 
squarely in the Sanskritic classification of Indian philosophy
into 3 unorthodox  6 orthodox and the remaining Saiva and Saktha
schools. Read any Saiva Siddhanta text and the terminology is 
entirely Sanskrit based and follows in Sanskritic traditions. 
It is also clasified with other related local variations in other parts of 
India like Kashmiri Saivism.  All this not withstanding the fact 
that Sankara and Ramanuja hailed from the Tamil Country and the Bhakti
movement a decided part of pan-Indian Sanskritic culture was once a 
local Tamil variation !! )

I could give other example but I will stop here.


					-L . S