‘Retrieving’, Seeking, the Tamil Jaina Self: the Politics of Memory, Identity and Tamil Language

Abstract

This chapter analyses the Tamil Jaina community identity through their own assertions, at different times in history. These assertions are pegged on their persecution stories, memories of persecution through different periods in history, and their innate sense of identity with the language Tamil. The concept of persecution is also analysed: persecution need not be understood in a singular manner. The idea of ‘violence’ too is understood in a different sense, not as a physical violence unleashed on the people at some point in history, but also violence of the construction of the hegemonic, which suppresses ideas and people and wipes them out from history, in different ways. There is also an attempt to problematise the possibility of understanding conflicting identities against the backdrop of socio-economic tensions prevalent at the time. So there is the memory of persecution by the bhakti bards, such as Ñānacampantar, as there is about the attempt to ‘behead’ the Tamil Jainas by a certain king of Gingee of low-caste origins. These stories are also placed against the larger economic-political contestation over land, state patronage and agrarian conflict. Conflicting identities is a ‘constant’ in Tamil history. The manifestations of it happen in debates over appropriation of texts (the Tirukkuṟaḷ authorship debate, the sectarian acts of editing texts), Dravidian identity (in which Tamil Jainas take active part, including in the Self-Respect Movement of Periyar) and their memories of the persecution incident. There is also a discussion on Caste and the Tamil Jaina context. There are also the Tamil Jaina figures of eminence (Sripal) who initiate social debates. The chapter also critiques the dominant tendency among scholars to negate non-‘Hindu’ identities in the discourse on Tamil language and literature (refusing to go beyond the brāhminical) and at times overtly Śaivite renditions of the Tamil language history discourse. The negation of Jaina contribution to the movement from palm-leaf manuscripts to print is stark, even in writings about, around, ‘U.Ve’Ca’, who narrates in detail his ‘discovery’ of Cīvakacintāmaṇi and the help of his “Jaina friends” in his autobiography.