There is no Aryam or Dravidam: Governor R N Ravi
Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi on Monday claimed that great national freedom fighters like the Maruthu brothers and Muthuramalinga Thevar have been reduced to the stature of caste leaders in the state due to a political conspiracy to promote the British Dravidian narrative.
Celebrations commemorating their sacrifices have been privatised, he said.
“A concerted attempt has been made in this state to erase the history of this place, to write a parallel history. A false narrative on racial divide of Dravidian and Aryan was created,” RN Ravi claimed at an event here after paying floral tributes to a portrait of the Maruthu brothers, Periya Maruthu and Chinna Maruthu.
“Do you know who the father of Dravidian theory is? Who gave it? It was Robert Caldwell who created the hypothesis that Dravidian is a separate race,” the Governor said.
Robert Caldwell, a missionary, was a school dropout and over time he became an expert on languages, he added.
“It was the British design to divide the country and they picked up collaborators during the freedom movement,” he said.
A counter-freedom movement on Aryan and Dravidian divide was created during the Independence movement and it started destroying the institutions that defined this place, the Governor claimed.
But Tamil Nadu, RN Ravi said, was a land of great spiritual leaders, ‘siddhars’, ‘rishis’, and a land that produced a large number of warriors.
The Maruthu brothers were perhaps the first freedom fighters of India who ignited the national freedom movement long before others woke up to it, by giving up their lives and by providing a conceptual framework — Jambudweep prakatanam — for the whole of India, RN Ravi said, adding that the declaration was placed in Srirangam temple in Tiruchirappalli.