Download or read book Caste, Hybridity and the Construction of Cultural Identity in Colonial India, Maraimalai Adigal and the Intellectual Genealogy of Dravidian Nationalism, 1800-1950 written by Ravindiran Vaitheespara and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scholarly accounts of Dravidian nationalism have focused on tracing the socio-economic and political dimensions of the movement. This primary emphasis has precluded scholarly interest and a deeper understanding of the important regional, socio-cultural and religious roots of the movement. Contemporary scholars engaged with the politics of Dravidian nationalism have also contributed to this significant lacunae by focusing largely on the "progressive" post-Saivite, "Self Respect" phase of the Dravidian movement. As a result, important questions regarding the early intellectual, socio-cultural and religious roots of the Dravidian movement remain unclear. Despite conceding the important role that missionaries and missionary Orientalism played in the Dravidian movement, there has been no significant attempt to locate their contribution to the movement, that is sensitive at the same time, to their wider missionary objectives for South Indian society. Similarly, despite the fact that Tamil/Saivite revivalists formed the "indigenous" vanguard of the Dravidian movement, there has been little detailed scholarly analysis of the Tamil/Saivite revivalist movement in Tamil Nadu and its relationship to the Dravidian movement. The central concern of the dissertation, is to fill these major lacunae in the scholarship on the Dravidian movement. The dissertation is divided into two parts. Part one traces the early intellectual genealogy of Dravidian nationalism--in the process, it traces both the early missionary-led Orientalism as well as the work of the pioneer non-Brahmin Tamil/Saivite Dravidian ideologues who followed them. The second part shifts to a detailed analysis of the life and work of the central "indigenizer" of Dravidian ideology, Maraimalai Adigal (1876-1950). It seeks to locate him and his work both in the regional religio-cultural terrain as well as in the wider context of "modern" colonial India with its English intellectual, cultural and colonial impact. As one of the most popular Saiva Siddhanta and Tamil revivalist and emerging to prominence at a crucial juncture in the history of the Dravidian movement, Adigal in his life and work provides an ideal window to the impulses as well as to the personalities, groups and institutions behind the Dravidian movement. Through a detailed analysis of Adigal's life and work, as well as the complex network of individuals and institutions involved in his efforts to translate, build upon and popularize through the Tamil language the ideas formulated by his predecessors, this work seeks to arrive at a deeper understanding of the intellectual, socio-cultural and religious roots of Dravidian nationalism.