Departing sharply from the principal focus on language and the ‘secular–modern’ in contemporary studies of nationalism, this volume examines the religious roots of nationalism, specifically the religious roots of non-Brahmin Tamil nationalism and the Dravidian movement in India. The book advances the argument that it was the anti-Aryan, anti-Sanskritic imperatives and spirit of the neo-Saivite movement—forged in the context of the rising tide of neo-Vedantic and Vaishnavite revivalist currents as well as the Orientalist discourse privileging the Aryan and the Sanskritic—that came to inform and ... More

Departing sharply from the principal focus on language and the ‘secular–modern’ in contemporary studies of nationalism, this volume examines the religious roots of nationalism, specifically the religious roots of non-Brahmin Tamil nationalism and the Dravidian movement in India. The book advances the argument that it was the anti-Aryan, anti-Sanskritic imperatives and spirit of the neo-Saivite movement—forged in the context of the rising tide of neo-Vedantic and Vaishnavite revivalist currents as well as the Orientalist discourse privileging the Aryan and the Sanskritic—that came to inform and animate the neo-Saivite readings of the Tamil and Indian past and indeed the articulation of neo-Saivism as a form of non-Brahmin Tamil nationalism. Drawing from a range of influences including colonial and Christian missionary critique of the philosophical idealism found in Brahminism and neo-Vedantic currents, the neo-Saivite articulation of non-Brahmin Tamil nationalism endowed it with a critical spirit and grammar that not only eschewed such idealism—equated loosely with the doctrine of Mayavada (world as illusion)—but also celebrated what it regarded as the more firmly grounded and sensuous Tamil tradition, as reflected and celebrated in ancient Tamil and Bhakti poetry and Tamil Saiva Siddhanta tradition. The book presents these insights and arguments through a close and critical analysis of the life and career of Maraimalai Adigal (1876–1950), whose life not only intersected with the pioneer figures in the neo-Saivite and Dravidian movement but who played a central role in consolidating the intellectual and cultural foundation for non-Brahmin Tamil nationalism and the Dravidian movement.