Iyodhee Thass Pandithar ,Dravidian
Buddhist Leader
(His 175 Birth Jyanti falling on 20 May 2020)
By:- Er.H.R.Phonsa,Jammu ( J&K)
Tamil Nadu has a
long history of providing guides, teachers and mystic saints. The Important
Religious Revolution commonly named as Bhagati Movemenr also originated from
South in the 7th-8th Centaury AD. Although Bhagati movement started against
religious excesses of Brahminical domination who denial of human rights to the
lower Hindu castes say untouchables. Although
untouchable were not Hindus but aboriginal Natives of India who
professed Buddhism. They were won over by Aryan invaders and declared their
servile class. But the Bhagati Movement saints even oppose the man devised unnatural methods of Bhagati or
prayer devised in other religions more so Islam. Protestant Reformation of
Christianity although started much later( 16th Century AD) was akin
to Bhakti movement as it also was a revolt
against Catholic Church and in particular to papal authority. In South India Nandanar also called Tirunalaippovar (Thirunaallaippovaar)
a Dalit saint of 8th centaury was
important Bhagati Movement saint India has ever given birth. Nandanar was born in the Pulaiya caste, who were regarded "untouchables" . He is generally counted as the eighteenth in the list of 63
Nandanars. Another Dalit saint of south was Thiruppaan Alvar born in
Pulaiya( out caste) also known as paanar ( Musician) community also a untouchable caste now Scheduled Caste. Both did a pioneering work in Bhagati
Movement in South India.
Tamil Nadu holds a special place in Indian Dalit political history
and many Tamlians have played a
significant role in Dalit ( untouchable) political history. Many important Dalit
politicians were born in 19th
century namely Iyothee
Thass (1845-1914), Raja Sir Panaganti Ramarayaningar (1866 –1928),
Dr. C. Natesa Mudaliar (1875–1937), Periyar E.V Ramasamy (1879-1973),
M.C. Rajah (1883-1943), Dewan Bahadur Rettaimalai Sreenivasan (1859-1945), Mrs.Meenambal (1904-1992), Madam Alamelumangai
Thayarammal and Rao Bahadur N. Sivaraj (1892-1964) and many more.
Many of these leaders were part of Baba Sahib Dr. B.R. Ambedka’s struggle of
Indian untouchable emancipation.
The collective work of Dravian leaders lead to form Justice Party, officially the South Indian non Brahminical Liberal Federation. This
political party in the Madras Presidency of British India which declared
its Manifesto of anti Brahminical movement in
South India. They declared that Nagars or Dasas of the North and Dravids of south were
natural habitants of their land, others
had intruded. However
the Justice party also did not include
all non-Brahmin caste. In December 1920 elections Justice Party
formed its first Non Brahmin government in Madras Presidency and issued orders
of granting reservation for non-Brahmins in 1921, nearly 19 years after
Chharpati Sahu ji of Kohlapur ordered in his state 50% reservation for Backward
caste in 1902. In August 1944, Periyar created the 'Dravidar Kazhagham' out of the Justice Party and
demanded Independent Dravida Nadu . This party said Davidian land was free of caste divide before arrival
of Brahmins . With manifesto changes and
divisions, its divides is ruling Tamil
Nadu since 1969 except Central rule for nearly 40 month.
Senior most of the names given above was
Iyodhee Thass Pandithar alias Kathavarayan who was born on May 20th, 1845. He undisputedly was a
pioneer to these leaders. How ever biased historians have neglected him and his
works, Present writers are now trying to fill up the shortfalls. Iyothee was
born in Thousand Lights locality , a neighbourhood in Madras (now Chennai), and later
migrated to the Nilgiris district. His family had
backing of conventional education and
practitioners of Siddha medicine from Chennai. His grandfather Kanthappan worked as a butler
at the residences of Britishers. Butlers employed by the British were invariably
Dalits as other castes hated Britishers as untouchable too. Upper caste people
due to their education back ground were employed with Britishers as their
subordinate employees and performed as main suppressors of Indian freedom
movements. Inspired by Kolkata’s Asiatic Society ( 1784),Chennai Education
Society was founded in 1812. Mr. Kanthappan supplied to the District collector
Chennai Mr. Ellis, who had first joined
East India Company in 1796 as a writer important Tamil classic book Thirukkural.
Mr. Ellis rose to become the Collector of Madras in 1810 subsequently land
revenue collector.
Iyothee Thass who’s name is also spelt as Pandit
C. Ayodhya Dasa, C. Iyothee Doss, C. Iyodhi Doss, C. Iyothee Thoss, K.
Ayōttitācar (avarkal) or K. Ayōttitāsa (pallitaravarkal) ,possessed
deep knowledge in Tamil, Siddha medicine and philosophy . He had good literary
knowledge in languages such as English, Sanskrit and Pali. He approached the
British authorities to list Panchamas ( untouchables) in 1881 censes as
separate and he pleaded they were not
Hindus but natives of India.
Ooty had become the summer capital of
the Madras presidency and the employees
serving the British were transferred, Kanthappan was also moved to the hill
station. Iyodhee Thass accompanied him, grew up in Ooty and began his social
work by organising the tribal’s. Later, it led to the founding of Dravida
Pandian magazine and the establishment of Dravida Mahajana Sabha worked
towards land, education and other civil rights of the people. The Dravida
Mahajan Sabha was formed in 1890 and later named as Pariah Mahajan Sabha. It
sent a petition to Chelmsford Viceroy of India from 1916 to 1921 and B.S. Montagu the Financial Secretary for directing the Madras Government to give agrarian
concessions to the Parih and also lower
qualification for them for admission to
subordinate medical services. Their demands were conceded in 1899. On their
insistence the government in 1922 passed orders renaming Paiah as Adi Dravida, which
specifies them as original inhabitants of Dravida land. Similarly there was movements
in Andhara, Karnataka, Punjab to name aboriginals of their areas as Adi
Andhara, Adi Karnataka ,Adi Dharmi . Many of these Adi prefixed associations formed
part of the 18 untouchable
associations to submit memorandum to
Statuary Commission headed by Sir Johan
Simon in 1927 demanding separate electorate to Depressed classes. The Dravida
Mahajana Sabha chief spokesman was Rau Bahadur
M.C. Raja, Adi Dhama ( North India)
Mangu Ram Magowalia and Achhunand Soami..
Iyodhee Thass along
with his contemporary R. Sreenivasan’s work is still a source for a critical
approach towards nationalism and to analyse the pros and cons of the rise in
nationalism. Voices on reservation, rational thinking and anti-Brahmin
movements that later became the framework for 20th century Tamil Nadu politics
find roots in the works of these Dalit intellectuals. Recent research has also
proved that their work has significantly contributed to Tamil Nadu’s unique
political identity that we see today. Dewan Bahadur R. Sreenivasan and Rao Bahadar M.C. Raja
along with Baba Sahib Dr.Ambedkar were invited by British Government to
represent the case of untouchables in the Round Table Conferences held in
London between 1930-32.
Iyodhee Thass was also
one of the early critics of the idea of Swadeshi movement for India proposed at the time of freedom movement
by Bal Ganga Dhar Tilak and Gandhi. He
said it would merely end up catering to the benefits of the Brahmanical
political class. When the Swadeshi movement got aggressive during the Bengal
partition in 1905 and its influence was being felt in Tamil Nadu, Iyodhee Thass
strongly opposed it. No doubts their
apprihensions have proven right in the last 73 years after India attained
independence in 1947.
Shri Iyothee Thass propagated that the
Paraiyars of Tamil were originally Buddhists and owned the land which had later been
robbed from them by Aryan invaders. He met Colonel H. S. Olcott(1832-1907) with his followers and expressed a sincere desire to
convert to Buddhism. Colonel Olcott was
an American military officer, journalist, lawyer , the co-founder and first
President of the Theosophical Society. He was the first well-known American of
European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism. With Olcott's help,
Thass visit Ceylon and obtain Diksha from the Sinhalese Buddhist
monk Bikkhu Sumangala Nayake. On returning to his native land, Thass with the
assistance of his associates established in 1898 the Sakya Buddhist Society
alias Indian Buddhist Association in Madras with branches at other places .
The Dravidian worker were working
in Kolar Gold Mines, Banglore , Rangoon,
Durban and Thass tried to contact and
convinced them to embrace Buddhism. When
Buddhism in India with Thass efforts went through a period of revitalization
with emerging of its two main branches namely
1.
spiritual and
scholarly purpose
2.
social reformation
purpose
Iyodhee Thass
chose the latter as he was committed to carry on social reformation. He said intimate
need of his people was social, political, spiritual and education, elevation .
To manage and
co-ordinate the functioning of the Indian Buddhist society, he began a
weekly magazine, Tamizhan in 1907. Its operation was briefly
interrupted due to his death in 1914. This magazine was renewed later by
others. Thass’s approach stands clear through his evidence based methods and
documentation of Buddhism for which, Tamizhan magazine stands
as a testimony to his contribution on Buddhist writings. As contained in “ Politics of Belonging to Contemporary India by Kustav
Chakerborty” there were 42
journals between 1850-1947 in Tamil Nadu, dedicated to social change. Iyodhee Thass
was profile writer too and had written many books in Tamil on different subjects including Buddhism.
Thass’s writing on Buddhism argued that texts, statues and other visible
evidence could have been destroyed due to religious invasions, but, the life
practices inspired by Buddhism remain as proof. He also added that adversaries
of Buddhism, when unable to fully
eliminate the traces of this religion resorted to either forced newer forms or distorted the
existing framework or both.
In Tamil Nadu, he
cited temples like Madurai Pandi Munni and Salem Thalaivetti Munneswaram as
examples, where beheaded statues of Buddha were replaced with local deities. He
claimed that while the heads were replaced, the statue’s body remained to be
that of Buddha’s meditative posture. Iyodhee Thass also saw contradictions not
just in these statues, but in various other aspects of society and how these
changes stayed on. He explicitly said the Hindu festivals are residues of
Buddhism remain. He inferred that somewhere between the early and modern
times, distortions would have occurred in the course of history. He says due to
the reversal of power structures, the early Buddhists were made untouchables
and resulted in caste discriminations. Iyodhee Thass stressed that finding the period
and reason behind this distortion and its restoration would be reasons for annihilation of caste. By
advocating that the oppressed society should embrace the Buddhism of ancient times so he attempted to
build modern politics over the ancient
framework of Buddhism.
Iyodhee Thass was highly proficient in Tamil,
he wrote texts to books written by Tamil classical writers Thiruvalluvar ( a low caste Shudra converted to
Jainism or Buddhism) and Avvayai (lady
saint). There is strong tradition that considers Thiruvalluvar as a priest
belonging to the Paraiyars – a Dalit sub caste. This leads Iyodhee Thass to
link Thiruvalluvar, a pioneer of Tamil literature, as an early Buddhist, which
later formed basis of Bhagati Movement.
Iyodhee Thass, one of the first intellectuals
to view the Dalits as a set of highly educated people with high conduct passed
away in 1914 at an age of 69 years. The colonial period’s printing press and
his scholarly approach to traditional literature contributed to the alternative
history making shall be long remembered.
Words 1883
Er.H. R. Phonsa
Date:-20-05-2020
Contact: +9194934060, E mail hrphonsa@gmail.com.
Further reading:-
1.
Dalit Movement in
India and its Leaders, by R.K. Kashirsahar
2.
"Iyothee Thass
and the Politics of Naming by Ravi Kumar.
4.
Wikipedia
