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irrespective
of their order of life, taking advantage of the gullibility of the Tamilians.
It is also to be noted that while the Brahmins
claimed (and still claim, but indirectly) celestial descent for their
community, the Tamilian counterpart had no such pretensions at all.
| (6) |
The
second division of the Tamil system refers only to rulers, whereas
its Aryan counterpart includes warlike tribes and communities also.
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| (7)
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The
third division of the Tamil system represents traders as having only
trade as their duty, while the corresponding Aryan division adds agriculture
to trade. |
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| (8) |
The
fourth division of the Tamil system constitutes the highest social
section of the Tamilians; but that of the Aryan system is a jumble
of all the lowest orders of society. |
The caste-system became more and more rigid
as time went on, and all Tamilians including kings and nobles were reduced
to the status of S‡dras, a status more humiliating
than that of the plebeians of ancient Rome.
As caste-distinctions became sharper and
sharper leading to communal bigotry and social disunity, Tamilians were
fighting among themselves like Kilkenny cats.
In addition to the numerous endogamous
divisions and subdivisions of castes based upon region, occupation, religion,
colour, mode of dress, mode of tying the hair on the head, pattern of
marriage badge, customs and ceremonies, food habits, ancestral abode etc.,
and dividing the Tamilian society into as many water-tight and air-tight
compartments, there arose before the advent of the British, a new disintegrating
force which divided all Tamilican castes and communities into four grades,
viz., touchables, untouchables, unapprochables and unseeables.
All Indian castes have become generally
unintermarriable and uninterdinable (except at public places and functions),
and this has not changed even after the ‘Independence.’
In order to show how deep and elaborate
the social division of Indian population is, I shall here give an illustration
and compare it to the Linnaean classification of plants and animals.
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