Taraki sivaram biography of william

He widely travelled in Europe, Asia, and North America and equally well known to governments, the diplomatic community, and human rights activists. He was killed just ahead of a scheduled trip to Japan to consult with the Japanese government regarding the then current peace process. When Sivaram started receiving death threats, he was requested by his friends and colleagues to move himself and his family out of Sri Lanka.

He always refused to leave. Where else should I die but here? After his death was reported, governments such as Japan, and international organisations such as Reporters Without Borders [ 7 ] and UNESCO [ 8 ] officials publicly condemned his murder and requested the government of Sri Lanka to investigate the murder. The LTTE accused the government in complicity of his murder.

One year later a Tamil man belonging to the PLOTE organisation was apprehended but eyewitnesses refused to identify him as one of the kidnappers. Reporters Without Borders, a pres freedom organisation, said "The Sri Lankan authorities have regrettably demonstrated a complete lack of will to solve cases of murders and physical attacks against journalists.

Sivaram was also accused by human rights activists such as Rajan Hoole who was critical of Sivaram's role as the Tamilnet. Jeyaraj wrote that Karuna , an LTTE splinter group leader and a member of a government aligned political-military organisation was personally involved in the murder of Sivaram. He is revered for his work which focused not just the plight of the Eelam Tamils but helping oppressed people all over the world empower themselves and get out from oppression.

His colleague Dr. Jude Fernando, of Clark University, was quoted saying:. Eelam poet Kaasi Ananthan mentioned him as a neutral journalist who was not driven by racial emotions. In , the 10th anniversary of his death was observed, in various parts of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools.

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Tamil journalist of Sri Lanka. For the former president of Afghanistan, see Nur Muhammad Taraki. The epics of Chilapadikaram 5: and Manimekalai 6: mention the practice. To ensure the complete severing of the head, the warrior tied his hair to a bamboo bent taut before he cut his neck.

Hero stones depicting this practice are found all over Tamil Nadu, and are called Saavan Kallu by locals. The warriors who thus committed suicide were not only deified in hero stones saavan kallu and worshipped but their relatives were given lands which were exempted from tax An area handbook Tharamangalam of the Tamilnadu archeology department notes that "the Nava Kandam sculpture which is found widely all over Kongu Nadu Coimbatore, Salem is to be seen at the Tharamangalam Kailasanathar kovil also.

The people call it Saavan Kallu. A Saavan Kallu at Thenkarai Moolanatha sami Kovil in Madurai, depicting the act of a warrior holding his hair with his left hand and slicing his neck with his right — 14th century — is said to be annually worshipped by the Conjeevaram Mudaliyars. The founder of the DMK, C. Annadurai was a Conjeevaram mudaliyar, of the kaikolar caste.

Apart from these codified forms of martial suicide, a method called Vadakkiruththal is mentioned in Tamil heroic poetry. It is the act of a warrior king fasting to death, if some dire dishonour were to come upon him The Tamil teacher, and the Dravidian propagandist, turned the song of the legendary Chera king Irumborai who committed suicide when he was taken captive by his enemies into a compelling theme in Tamil renaissance.

Senchorru-kadan the debt of red rice is a phrase that is widely used today by Tamils as an expression of loyalty. One frequently hears of it in a popular Tamil song. The phrase sands for the ritual of partaking of rice by which Maravar and other Tamil military caste warriors bound themselves to their king or commander to die in suicidal battle for him, or to commit suicide on the day he was slain.

Of Avippali, the Puraporul Venba Malai [verse] 92 says, "thinking of nothing but the red blood rice the Maravar give their life as offering in battle. The ritual of red or blood rice was described by two Muslim travellers who had visited the Tamil country in the 9th century. By eating of this rice, they all engage themselves to burn themselves on the day the king dies or is slain; and they punctually fulfill their promise.

II, pp. Poonkunran, Tharamangalam, publication No. Tamilnadu Dept. Sethupillai, op. Kopperun-Cholan who thus committed suicide was apotheosized. Cheraman Peruncheralathan committed suicide thus when he accidentally received a wound on his back in battle which was considered a great dishonour to a warrior Purananooru: [verse] Note: Swaminatham was first published in full in , by S.

Shanmugam, Annamalai University, based on a manuscript found in the British Museum library. It refers to Avippali as Poar Avikkoduthal, verse , p. With the reference to the above article in Lanka Guardian 1 July In the article [by] the writer Mr. Sivaram, some facts are incorrectly stated. The statement a strong narrative is found in Myliddy is correct.

The statement that the Marava chieftains and their castemen married among Karaiyar of the village is also correct. But the statement about Thuraiyar and Panivar is incorrect. The clans known as Thuraiyar and Panivar in this village are the descendants of the ancient families of Myliddy. The martial arts of Marava are popular among these two clans, though the Thuraiyar is considered as superior.

Thuraiyar as well as Panivar were connected by marriage to Ramnad, the home country of the Maravar, for which evidence is available. No comments:. Post a Comment Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment. Newer Post Older Post Home. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. Dharmeratanam Sivaram. See also Human rights in Sri Lanka.

Sivaram [courtesy: Lanka Guardian , September 1, , pp. Pope b The caste politics of Vellala upward mobility. Sunderam Pillai Thus, the historical works of the early Dravidian school were produced as "social charters directed toward the census, where the decennial designation of caste status became a major focus for contests over rank between and Kanagasabai Pillai However, Maraimalai Atikal had decided to publish it as a book in order to refute a claim in the caste journal of the Nattukottai Chetti community, that the Chetties did not marry among the Vellalas because they the Vellalas were Sudras.

In the English preface to the work, Maraimalai Atikal says that his book "is written in scrupulously pure Tamil style, setting forth at the same time views of a revolutionary character in the sphere of social religious and historical ideas of the Tamil people…In the first place attention is directed to Vellalas, the civilized agricultural class of the Tamils, and to their origin, and organization…it is shown that at a time when all the people except those who lived all along the equatorial regions were leading the life of hunters or nomads, these Vellalas attained perfection in the art of agriculture…and by means of navigation occupied the whole of India.

Taraki sivaram biography of william

Caldwell as the farmers of the best moral codes, and by the new school of non-Aryan Tamil scholars…" Aiyangar even claims, "We have said that the Vellalas were pure Dravidians and that they were a military and dominant tribe. Sivaram states: I suggest that Mr. Sivaram [courtesy: Lanka Guardian, October 1, , pp. One of its sympathisers was the Tamil scholar M.

Raghava Aiyangar, who was the court pundit of the Maravar kings of Ramnad. Subramaniya Bharathy has been one of the most powerful influences in Tamilian cultural and political life in the twentieth century. The fundamental idea of modern Tamil militarism - that the Tamils were a martial race and that the rejuvenation of their martial traditions is necessary for national liberation, was enunciated by these two Brahmins in the first decade of the twentieth century.

This idea has informed Tamil scholarship as well as the narratives of militant Tamil nationalism since then. It has been reproduced in many forms but its fundamental structure has remained the same. He was hence, acutely aware of the traditional status of the Maravar in Tamil society and what had befallen them under the British.

The great famine of had brought untold suffering upon the people in the deep south and had led to a further decline in the standing of the poorer sections of the Maravar. They were constantly harassed by the police which was formed by Brahmins and other non-military castes. The poet, a Brahmin who had given up the holy thread, hated Brahminism and his castemen who were servile to the English.

To Bharathy, the kshatriyas of Tamilnadu were the Maravar. This view seems to have been common to Brahmin families that had served the Marava chieftains and kings. See also, Dirks; ; p. Maravar are kshatriyar. Understand that, in our country, the class that is known now as Maravar are kshatriyar. He portrays his own castemen in the police as a wretched and greedy lot, abject before the English master, framing criminal cases against the Maravar and fleecing them under various pretexts.

The might of our swords and spears are gone! A bad name has come upon us in this world…The times when we made war with bows, blowing our chanks, are now a thing of the past…Can we bring disgrace upon our great warriors of yore by selling our honour? Should we lead this useless life anymore? The project has continued to be at the centre of all political schemes that have invoked Tamil nationalism from his time.

It came from a talk given by U. Saminatha Aiyer on a poem from the Purananooru - an anthology of heroic Tamil poetry. Saminatha Aiyer, after many years of research, had discovered and published the Purananooru in It was considered to be one of the most ancient Tamil works. It is said that "the publication of Purananooru created a revolution in Tamilian thinking.

Mani; p. Bharathiyarum Thamil Pulavarhalum, , Madras. The political life of Purananooru, the foundation text of Tamil militarism, begins in this editorial. It was a time when very few Tamils knew about Purananooru or the Sangam corpus. He says, "A Tamil work called Purananooru was written many centuries ago. It does not, like later works, relate Puranic fables.

It tells of the condition of Tamilnadu in those times, the wars of the kings and many other natural events. A poem from this work was expounded by U. Saminatha Aiyer of the Madras Presidency College. There are some, who out of ignorance think that there is no use in learning Tamil and that it cannot inspire patriotism. Aiyer spoke on this poem to refute their erroneous notions.

The poem is about the mother of a warrior Rana Veeran. The woman had sent her son to the battle field, thinking that he will either die in war for his mother country or come back victorious. A liar came and told her that her son had taken fright and run away from the battle field. I shall go to the battle front and if he has done so, I shall hack these breasts that gave him suck and will die there.

She was at peace, because her son had given his life for his motherland. But only if Lord Isvara blesses the continent of Baratha with many such mothers in these times, a solution to all our problems could be found. The theme of the heroic Japanese mothers who nurtured the martial spirit in their sons during the war was emphasised in these books.

This was M. The projective narratives that shaped militant Tamil nationalism and its idea of nationl liberation were formulated as a reassertion of feudal Tamil militarism and its traditional cultural hegemony in Tamil society. The importance of chiefly Bharathy and to lesser extent Raghava Aiyangar in the rise of modern Tamil militarism lies in the fact that they initiated a political reading of the ancient Tamil text Purananooru, in particular- an anthology of predominantly heroic poems - and a heroic Tamilian past in general, as basis of a Tamilian concept of national liberation.

It must be emphasised that they saw the Tamil martial tradition from a pan-Indian perspective. To them the heroic Tamil past was a reflection of a great Indian martial heritage, whereas the Dravidian school vehemently rejected the pan-Indian perspective as a myth promoted by Brahmin interests. Therefore the politics of the views propagated by Bharathy and Raghava Aiyangar have to be located at two levels; the pan-Indian and the south Indian.

At the first [pan-Indian] level, the following factors have to be considered; a British recruitment policy and its theory of martial races, b the cultural and political reaction to it among the educated Indian middle classes in Bengal and west India. The shift in [military] recruitment to the northwest of the subcontinent toward the latter part of the 19th century was accompanied by the martial races theory which sought to elaborate the idea as to why some Indian people - Rajputs, Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims - were martial, while others - Marathas, Bengali upper castes, Mahars, Telugus and Tamils who had once been the predominant groups of the British Indian army - were not martial.

I tried hard to discover in them those fighting qualities which had distinguished their forefathers during the wars of the last and the beginning of the present century…and I was forced to the conclusion that the ancient military spirit had died in them. There were protests and petitions from the de-recruited classes including Tamils and Telugus.

A need to prove their ancient martial character arose among many classes that were thus affected. These sentiments had been already exacerbated by the Arms Act of which prohibited Indians from possessing arms without permission. This was seen as a loss of self respect. Raja Rampal Singh protested against it at the second session of the National Congress in , "…But we cannot be grateful to it the British Government for degrading our natures, for systematically crushing out of us all martial spirit, for converting a race of soldiers into a timid flock of quill driving sheep.

Thilak arose as a national leader among them. He propagated the view that the kshatriya class which had been disfranchised by the British had to rise again. They were the traditional defenders of the realm and internal order. National emancipation could be achieved through the rejuvenation of that class and the traditional Indian social order.

The movement got a big boost in , when Japan defeated Russia. The victory demonstrated a point - that Asian martial spirit could prevail over European military might. He was an ardent follower of Thilak and the revolutionary movement and was one of the few in Madras who were bold enough to propagate its ideas through his paper. The people of our country who have always keenly observed Veera Poojai, should not be slack at a time when it is most needed.

The revolutionary movement was spreading the Shivaji festival in many parts of India to rekindle the martial spirit which according to them had been systematically crushed out of the Indian nation and were establishing gymnasiums to improve its physical power. The people should have opposed it then. This is enough to show the valour of the Asians.

The ideas of the revolutionary movement had to be rooted in Tamil culture and its deepest values; and they had to be spread among the ordinary Tamil masses. This could be done according to him only by adopting a simple style of writing Tamil. Will Saraswathy the goddess of learning appear in this country in such a situation? Hence good poets disappeared from this country.

Do not fail in courage. Learn the art of War. Bharathi Kavithaikal; , Vanavil Pirasuram, Madras. Nicholas B. Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XLI, no. The Sethupathys - the kings of Ramnad - belong to the subsection known as Sembi Maravar. Dua; Chand, Delhi. Gerald Cromer; In the Mirror of the Past - The use of history in the justification of terrorism and political violence.

The fixation is more explicit in Mr. The account cannot however be taken as an accurate reading of Tamil history. It may be better understood as a charter, providing historiographical legitimacy for the present-day glorification of warrior-heroes who earn fame and honour through gruesome deeds. Crucial to his argument is the assertion that the pre-British society was dominated by martial values and only subsequently "under active British patronage the Vellala caste established its dominance, and its culture became representative and hegemonic in Tamil society" May 15, p.

Against this view, it may be pointed out that centuries before the Bishop launched his so-called pacification programme, the brahmans and their Vellala allies initiated a process of agrarian expansion that not only brought large tracts of land under cultivation, but its people under the sway of brahmanical values B. Stein, ; B. Beck, Kallar and Maravar during the Chola times progressively converted their lands to peasant agriculture and also adopted Vellala titles.

This process has been described as "Vellalization" or "brahmanization" and gave rise to the Tamil proverb, "Kallar, Maravar and Agambediyar becoming fat, turn into Vellalar". The caste society as we know it today, began to emerge from process in the tenth century, with its left-hand and right-hand structural divisions. It would then follow that the dominant values of the Tamil society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are typically caste values that is, "hierarchy" and "consensus" - in opposition to "conflict" M.

In this context, the Kallar and Maravar who continued to inhabit the remaining marginal or peripheral tracts at this time, may be seen to represent a classical ethosthat was receding into oblivion. There is no doubt that the Kallar and Maravar remained an irritant to the British Raj, as they had been to the Chola and Pandya overlords.

On the other hand because they existed outside the larger caste society, neither a Kallan nor a Maravan could during the time become a paradigmatic figure worthy of imitation by the vast majority of the Tamils. In short, Mr. Sivaram has exaggerated their influence on the Tamil society during that period. In his account he is illegitimately glorifying them.

He seems to be implying that they were treated unambiguously with awe and veneratio, at the time of their exploits. Tamil literary documents of the period are not reliable on this score. Poets and bards were hired-hands in the service of chiefs and could be paid to praise and exaggerate their struggles and victories. In any case there are other Tamil poems that portray the Maravar as blood-thirsty savages, uncouth, undisciplined and lawless who lived by robbing unarmed travellers.

The Silapathikaram for instance mentions them as practising "the glorious art of stripping travellers of their wealth - for the brave Maravar virtue lies in the heartlessness of plunder. In fact there were many ruling castes in ancient Tamil society. The Maravar were one such group. These many castes were always in contention for power and the Maravar won, at times.

They were not overpowering and dominant all the time and over the entire territory. In this respect, Mr. In fact it is possible to show that they were a "fierce maravar tribe - who prefer to die a glorious death on the battle field to a village funeral pyre," as the Silapadikaram puts it, they lacked a theory of government and civil society. For them a civil society is not something that people live in but something that one robs and devours because the Maravar never produce anything.

Long before the British came to suppress them, they had shown an inability to govern a civil society of many castes for any extended period of time. Governance needs intelligence, political wisdom, historical knowledge, forebearance and a capacity for trust, all of which, if we are to judge by the descriptions in the ancient Tamil texts, the Maravar conspicuously lack.

A readiness to kill and be killed, as we know only too well, is not the way to create a civilized society. Sivaram [courtesy: Lanka Guardian , May 15, , pp. It was confined to those castes and classes which exercised the use of arms as matter of birth right and was unevenly distributed throughout India…" 14 At the turn of the [20 th ] century there were two groups in the Tamil region which had a decidedly militarist and anti-British outlook.

If division of the community remember the Karuna factor! With family members separated according to UN reports , youth gradually disappearing and the security of a family life denied, the Tamil Homeland is now getting prepared by the Sinhalese for the benfit of the external players. In his articles, Sivaram refered to the conflict in Chad, where the rebels are splintered and the world media writes only about killings now and then.

Behind the 'fog of war' in Chad, he points out that there is a huge plundering of natural resources precious metals and minnerals underway by non-Chadian enterprises — which the mass media chooses not to report. China is keen on sea lanes in the Indian Ocean to keep its Middle East oil flowing. India wants to keep the US and China out of its backyard, while muffling the Tamil separatist movement it considers dangerous to its own union.

The US needs a strategic location to observe and contain both China and India. However, to their dismay, the Tamil movement hitherto with a strong unified leadership and a population united to push forward the national struggle has made their goals problematic for these powers. Learning Politics from Sivaram 3. The Family Elephant 4. Ananthan and the Readers Circle 5.

From SR to Taraki - a 'serious unserious' journey 6.