Kondaikatti Vellalar

Template:Infobox ethnic group

Kondaikatti Velaalar or Thondaimandala MudaliarTemplate:Efn is a TamilTemplate:Efn caste in south India. Historically, they were a caste of non-cultivating land-holders and some of them were administrators and military leaders under various south Indian dynasties.Template:EfnTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn Their original homeland was Thondaimandalam and from there they spread to other areas in south India and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka during expansionist times.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfnp Since they historically used the Mudaliar title, they are sometimes referred to as Thondaimandala Mudaliar.Template:Sfnp However, Kathleen Gough considers them to be a separate subcaste of the Thondaimandala Mudali, as does Susan Neild.

Etymology

The word Kondaikatti was used to denote someone who bound his hair up in a tuft on top of the head.Template:Sfnp

History

The Kondaikatti Velaalar are sons of the soil and natives of the Thondaimandalam country from time immemorial.Template:EfnTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Velaalar in the ancient Tamil society were of two kinds, the Uzhuthunbor or those who eat by ploughing their fields and the Uzhuvithunbor, that is those who ate by getting their fields ploughed by tenant cultivators. The Kondaikatti Velaalar belonged to the latter group, that is they were landlords.Template:Sfnp

British Colonial period

During the Colonial era, this landed gentry were known as Mirasidars, named after the Arabic/Urdu term mirasi. The mirasi system was similar to a co-operative society where lands in a village were collectively owned by a group of people called Mirasdars. The Mirasidars were entitled to a share of the agricultural produce based upon the percentage of ownership.Template:Sfnp Some of the Kondaikatti Velaalar were employed as dubashes, literally, a person who could speak two languages, in the Company. When the British took over the Jagir, that is the agrarian area of the Thondaimandalam region, in the late eighteenth century (1782 CE), these Mirasidars and Dubashes put up a sustained and effective fight to thwart British attempts to control and collect taxes from this region.Template:Sfnp Historian Eugene Irschick who did a study on the nature of the political society of the Thondaimandalam region between 1795 CE and 1895 CE notes:Template:Sfnp

"Many of these Kondaikatti vellala Dubashes were connected by kinship to Kondaikatti vellala Mirasdars in the Poonamallee and other rural areas of the Jagir. In contemporary documents these Kondaikattis were knowns as Mudalis-later lengthened to "Mudaliyar"-a term that literally meant a person of first rank. However, in the view of many of the Company officers, the term "Mudali" carried a pejorative meaning. Mudalis were despised by the British because they were considered both essential actors and great threats to individual British and Company operations."

As a direct result of this confrontation and hostile British policy, many of the Kondaikatti Velaalar were persecuted and eventually lost their mirasi rights and ownership of their lands.Template:Sfnp They were systematically replaced by tenants from other castes who were essentially outsiders and strangers to the Thondaimandalam country. Those tenants who were amenable to British rule and who were willing to abide by British taxation laws were gradually given more rights from the time of tax collector Lionel Place (1794 CE) and were eventually made Mirasidars.Template:Sfnp Since the taxes were directly proportional to the produce, the British also deemed all uncultivated land regardless of ownership as Company property and redistributed these lands to those who were willing to cultivate and pay taxes .Template:Sfnp

Caste structure

The caste is divided into a number of unranked patrilineal exogamous clans called gotras.Template:Sfnp In addition, the caste is composed of four hierarchically ranked endogamous units called Vakaiyaras (varieties or kindreds). The members belonging to the higher Vakaiyaras will not interdine, intermarry or accept food or water from the lower Vakaiyaras. The Vakaiyaras comprise the same gotras and span across multiple village clusters. In the late 1920s, the more progressive members advocated the abrogation of the Vakaiyara system and after much deliberation, the caste passed a resolution to drop it.Template:Sfnp

Religion

The Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally Jains. The larger Saiva Velaalar social group, to which the Kondaikatti Velaalar belong,Template:Sfnp are also believed to have been Jainas before they embraced Hinduism.Template:Efn The Tamil Jains refer to the Saiva Velaalar as nīr-pūci-nayinārs or nīr-pūci-vellalars meaning the Jains (Nayinars) who left Jainism and adopted Shaivism by smearing (pūci) the sacred ash or (tiru)-nīru.Template:Sfnp

Varna Classification

During the British colonial period, the Vellalars who were land owners and tillers of the soil and held offices pertaining to land, were ranked as Sat-Shudra in the 1901 census; with the Government of Madras recognising that the 4-fold division (four varnas) did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately.

While the Shudras are described as the slaves of the other three Varna, the Vellalas are not described in such terms in the Tolkappiyam (Velaan Maanthar) or in other Sangam literature (Paripaadal).Template:Sfnp Moreover, the Varna system is essentially a Hindu classification system that categorises people hierarchically whereas the Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally Jains.Template:Sfnp

Dr. Kamala Ganesh, former Professor and Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Mumbai, states in her research that the Varna classification does not apply to certain sections like the Kondaikatti Velaalar. She further notes:Template:Sfnp

"Barnett's detailed work (1970) on the Kondaikatti Vellalas defines them, both transactionally and attributionally, as a combination of the brahmanical and kshatriya models. This finding reflects a historically established fact, viz., in South India, vegetarian Vellalas, a sizeable and influential segment of the population do not fit into the four varna scheme and have constituted what could perhaps be called a parallel classical tradition which is both distinct from and overlaps with the orthodox sanskritic tradition."

The Kondaikatti Velaalar are one of the six ancient vegetarian Velaalar castes of Tamil nadu.

Caste-based Reservation Status

The Kondaikatti Velaalar do not avail any benefits under the reservation quota for Backward castes.

Notable people

• Sir P. T. Rajan, politician and former Chief Minister of Madras Presidency.

• Palanivel Thiagarajan, Minister in the current Tamil Nadu assembly.

• C. N. Muthuranga Mudaliar, former politician and Independence activist.

• M. Bhakthavatsalam, politician and former Chief Minister of Madras state.

• Sarojini Varadappan, social activist.

• Jayanthi Natarajan, former Minister and Member of Parliament, Tamil Nadu.
• M. B. Nirmal, founder and chairman of Exnora International

References

Notes Template:Notelist

Citations

Bibliography

• The Caste System in Tamil Nadu{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. University of Madras, 1977(1977)

• Tamil Culture in Ceylon: A General Introduction{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Kalai Nilayam, 1971

• Urban Is As Urban Does: Two Incidents On One Street In Madras City, South India. Urban Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1973, pp. 129–160.{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}(1973)

• The Female Bridegroom: A Comparative Study of Life-crisis Rituals in South India and Sri Lanka{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Clarendon, 1991(1991)

• Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. University of California Press(1994)

• Meanings of Agriculture Essays in South Asian History and Economics{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Oxford University Press(1996)

• Gender and the Household Domain Social and Cultural Dimensions{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Sage Publications(1989)

• Societas to Civitas Evolution of Political Society in South India : Pre-Pallavan Tamilakam{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Kalinga Publications(1993)

• The Contributions of the Tamils to Indian Culture: Socio-cultural aspects{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. International Institute of Tamil Studies(1994)

• Sociology of Indian Society{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. S. Chand Limited(2004)

• Boundary Walls: Caste and Women in a Tamil Community Studies in sociology and social anthropology{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Hindustan Publishing Corporation(1993)

• Reading History with the Tamil Jainas. A Study on Identity, Memory and Marginalisation. Volume 22 of Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Springer(2018)

• Literature, Language, and the Media in India: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on South Asian Studies, Amsterdam, 1990, Panel 13{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Manohar Publications, 1992(1992)

• Farmers of India, Band 2{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1961