Colonisation of the Tamils

Sun, 23 Aug, 2020•ambarish

I’m a Tamil, tracing my ancestry to the ancient tamiṛakam. My people, the Tamils, have travelled widely over millennia for trade and profit. They have also waged war against neighbouring lands and colonised other realms. But this is about my people being colonised by other peoples.

Today, there are groups that make a stand against the different waves of colonisation. Yet, these same groups often gloss over other waves of colonisation: they deny their existence, they deny their effects, and they claim the good effects outweigh the bad. Below is a summary:

Colonisers	Timeline	Effects	Deniers & Apologists
The English and other Europeans	15th–19th c. CE	English fluency, wealth loss, native language disfluency	Westernised urban‐dwellers 1 2
The Mughals and other Turkic peoples	14th–18th c. CE	Persian flavours, wheat, Persian attire	Dravidian movement, the left‐wing 3
The Aryans	2000 BCE–present	Rice, loss of millets, eradication of native religions, syncretism with Dharmic religions, Hindustani cultural hegemony	Upper‐caste Hindus 4 5 6

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1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/british-rule-was-better-than-todays-govt-gandhis-pa/articleshowprint/66046622.cms ↩

2. https://medium.com/@srinath_987/positive-affects-of-british-rule-in-india-20ab613b3da8 ↩

3. https://www.thehindu.com/society/faith/the-spirit-of-iftar/article24162417.ece ↩

4. https://twitter.com/jsaideepak/status/1297097865471201282 ↩

5. https://www.firstpost.com/india/the-sanskrit-non-controversy-why-it-is-indeed-a-superior-language-1813201.html ↩

6. https://www.dailyo.in/voices/cow-slaughter-gau-rakshak-beef-ban/story/1/16616.html ↩