Adi Shankara-A Malayali

“Adi Shankara was a Malayali”

The statement was made in all earnestness and, hearing that, as you’d ve done, my first instinct was to laugh.
Then I looked at the expression on the young lady’s face and it reminded me of my nine -year old son’s face when he thought he’d discovered an Earth-shattering truth.
We were discussing her thesis on the vernacular architecture of Kerala and the discussion had turned to the great men the state had produced.
I reminded her gently that, even by the post-dating standards of white and
Brown babu-“scholars”, Shankara lived more than 1500 years back and Malayalam had not been born then.
She seemed to accept and I think that was because, unfortunately for her, she happened to be a student pursuing a degree in architecture and I happened to be her guide.
“Ma’m, he must’ve spoken Tamil then!” Said a colleague who believes that Tamil pre dates all the other languages in the world . ( I don’t believe that, call me a traitor –of- the-Tamils if you want!)
Well, Sanskrit must’ve been the English of those times and Shankara composed all his great works in that language,though he calls himself a “Dravida –shisu”(Aryan invasion theorists, note! Shankara didn’t consider himself an Aryan! These divisions were once only geographical and now, political J)
However he might have spoken Tamil when he had to talk to people who didn’t know Sanskrit.
Such arguments have no end, and it doesn’t do any of us any good when we call Ramana maharishi a Tamilian or Ramakrishna paramhamsa , a Bengali.

Great men like them carried a message for mankind and they should be respected as such
And not as a “Malyali or a Mara [means brave-word courtesy, regional parties] Tamilian!

All this linguistic talk reminds me of a friend in Hyderabad, who lamented the formation of linguistic states and said that it ‘d divided the country needlessly.

“I thought the first martyr in the language struggle spoke Telugu, I am surprised you say this” I told my Telugu –speaking friend.

“That was mere politics and what do ordinary folks like us have in common with that?
Why, do you agree with everything that your Dravidian party politicians in Tamil nadu say?”
He was right.
Even though I told him I thought that the divisions based on languages were inevitable, in a place like ours, I cant help thinking that it has done more harm than good,especially
statements like the title of this article.

The State less Sindhis

And not all of us are happy. I’ll always remember what the kindly old shopkeeper in Sharjah said of himself.
I was wondering in Tamil whether he was a fellow Indian or someone from the sub continent.

“I am one of those stateless Sindhis”.
He said in perfect Tamil and surprised me further by saying that his family had lived for a while in Madras after the partition.
We take our state-hood for granted and forget that a community which has suffered the pain of 1948 doesn’t have a state like we do. They have their own language, unique culture and customs not to mention high-profile leaders and yet no state of their own.
We have new states like Jharkhand and Uttaranchal and our power-mongering babus might be planning more, but what about the Sindhis?
Too many questions remain and as ordinary folks what else can we do but ask questions?
Glad we have the freedom to ask questions,anyway.

Coming back to the problem, now that we have linguistic states are we doomed for ever?

I don’t think so.
Instead of stuffing their version of History in the name of detoxification down our collective throats, our babus can try to enlighten people about the culture of other states in a more detailed way.
A lot of changes can be made in and through the text books. People can retain some regional pride, doesn’t hurt, but they can still be made aware of the greatness of the whole.