History and Anthropology

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ghan20

Living Buddhism: Migration, memory, and

castelessness in South India

Gajendran Ayyathurai

To cite this article: Gajendran Ayyathurai (2020): Living Buddhism: Migration, memory, and
castelessness in South India, History and Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2020.1854751

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1854751

Published online: 14 Dec 2020.

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HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1854751

Living Buddhism: Migration, memory, and castelessness in

South India
Gajendran Ayyathurai
Centre of Modern Indian Studies, Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Studies on Indian communities which were denigrated as lower Caste/untouchability/Dalits;
castes and untouchables are yet to fully unravel their cultural, migration; memory; Tamil
religious, economic, and historical perceptions and practices in Buddhism; castelessness
India. Scholarship that is sympathetic to the oppressed of caste-
power have engaged with caste prejudice and bodily violence
under the colonial and postcolonial states. But the questions of
language, literature, philosophy, migration, knowledge traditions,
and intrinsic cultural self-identity of these discriminated Indians
have largely remained unanalysed. In contrast, based on
ethnographic field study in Hubli, Karnataka and in northern
Tamil Nadu, this article argues that the memory of the
marginalized is key to unravelling their alternative cultural and
religious history beyond caste. It shows that, on the one hand,
the ancient Tamil Buddhist literary corpus forms the deep cultural
memory of the marginalized Tamils, while on the other, the
organic Buddhist intellectuals, writers, publishers, and
practitioners, and their discursive and non-discursive practices
have perpetuated the communicative memory of being the
descendants of ancient Buddhism. This article further argues that
this memory of marginalized Indians points to their sense of
castelessness in modern South India.

Introduction
Buddhism has a complex cultural and political history in modern India. Recent scholarly
studies have analyzed the re-emergence of Buddhism against caste among people who
have been oppressed as untouchables, particularly in postcolonial western India (see
Beltz 2005; Queen and King 1996). Nevertheless, anticaste Buddhist history since the colo-
nial period remains under-examined, which represents blank spots about how caste-
hegemony has been addressed and contested. While modern colonialism and precolonial
casteism came together to dispossess and displace diverse Indian communities, those
who were relegated found ways not just to cope with caste discrimination but also to
thrive in various ways. Migrating to various regions of the Indian subcontinent to find
emancipation through colonial modernity was one of them. Such migrations by margin-
alized Indians enabled the acquisition of new skills, cultivation of diligent work ethics, and
a simultaneous transition from rural to urban life. In such social transformations, the

CONTACT Gajendran Ayyathurai gajendran.ayyathurai@cemis.uni-goettingen.de Centre of Modern Indian

Studies, Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, Gottingen, 37073 Germany
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 G. AYYATHURAI

memory of their own language, migration, settlement, religious and cultural practices are
vital in the emancipatory repertoire of Indians beleaguered by caste.
In this article, through historical and ethnographic research, I examine the collective
transformation among Tamil Buddhists in the city of Hubli in the southern state of Karna-
taka. The Tamils, who were subjugated as low castes and untouchables in their own vil-
lages in northern Tamil Nadu, south India, migrated to far flung newly emerging colonial
industrial towns, such as Hubli, in the nineteenth century. In spite of the travails of such
long journeys, these caste-based marginalized Tamils were able to rebuild their lives
against caste through their memory and history of cultural, religious, and knowledge tra-
ditions. Most importantly, their self-recognition as Buddhists has influenced their outlooks
and living conditions for more than five generations. This study, therefore, unravels the
modern history of Tamil Buddhists in Hubli by examining fieldwork-based data collected
in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka during mid-2006 and late-2007 and mid-2015. While it is
based on research in both states most of the ethnographic evidence cited here is
drawn from Hubli.
My interlocutors were either working or retired railway employees, self-employed
persons, men’s and women’s organization members, and women and men graduate
students, and the Tamil Buddhist children in Hubli, Karnataka. In Tamil Nadu, my con-
tributors were employed as lower level government officials, teachers in government
schools, agriculturalists, high court lawyers, self-employed persons, men’s and
women’s organization members, and women and men graduate students. In their
memory, narratives of self-representation, and lived realities, I argue, there is a histori-
cal sense of castelessness among the Tamil Buddhists. That is, the Hubli Tamils, for
instance, believe that their individual and collective life is not putatively determined
by or dependent on their birth into a caste; particularly as a lower caste or untouch-
able. They maintain that this self-understanding is due more to the modern Buddhist
movement in south India since the late nineteenth century, which has brought about
individual, familial, and collective realization of their long castefree cultural identity as
Buddhists.
In the Hubli Tamils’ self-perception their history as Buddhists dates back to the mid-
centuries of the first millennium BCE. One could view this as a Tamil Buddhist longue
durée assertion with a hindsight which is reliant on ahistorical claims. But the Tamil Bud-
dhists point out that it is not so for the following reasons: (1) Their Buddhist thoughts and
practices which discard caste are not based on timeless myths or fantasies – as is the case
with caste/casteism –, but founded from the history of Buddha and Buddhism in and
outside India. (2) Crucially they assert that the recent rediscovery of ancient and anticaste
Tamil Buddhist literary corpus and history, since the second-half of the nineteenth
century, is only a reaffirmation of the spatial and temporal aspects of the caste-based
oppressed Tamils’ humanity. And their self-recognition that they are casteless Tamilians,
i.e. Tamil as a non-caste person. (3) The Tamil Buddhist communicative practices are based
on a multilinear retracing of their casteless past. Definitively, their language, literature,
knowledge traditions, and religious practices that have come down for generations reas-
sured their associational life beyond caste. And reinforced their notions of deep cultural
and communicative memory about their historical castelessness. Clearly, this was in con-
trast to and unequivocal rejection of birth-based, socio-economic, caste segregation
across India, on the one hand, and imposition of caste-bearing and discriminating
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 3

religious identities i.e. religio-casteism of privileged caste groups, in the Tamil speaking
regions, on the other.

Migration of the oppressed Tamils

The British establishment of the Hubli railway workshop in northern Karnataka connected
Western and Central India with South India in the 1880s. Although Hubli was then yet
another Indian town historically steeped in brahminical traditions, communities that
were subalternised under caste and suffered extraction of free labour by the upper
castes looked to the British Hubli railway workshop as a source of a new lease of life
(see Nair 1998). This was not only to escape caste oppression of the upper caste land-
owners, and privileged caste groups’ monopoly of colonial education and employment,
but also to find non-agrarian employment opportunities (see Mallampalli 2011; Viswanath
2014; Washbrook 1993).1 The cumulative effect of colonialism and casteism in India is ana-
logous to what W. E. B. Du Bois writing of the racism and enslavement of African-Amer-
icans in North America described as a ‘man outcast in his own native land!’ (Du Bois 1928,
6). Against such dispossessing conditions, migration and emigration were crucial modes
of mitigation against caste-based oppression – an under-examined theme in labour
migration and diaspora studies. Those who were discriminated against and dispossessed
as untouchables were the earliest modern migrant labourers in India. The oppressed
Tamils were no exception.
As early as the late nineteenth century, people from distant villages, such as Sakaramal-
lur, Vannivedu, and others in northern Tamil Nadu were attracted by the railway employ-
ment opportunities in Hubli. Although Hubli itself was not a castefree space, Kulkarni
Hakkal, a subdivision of few thousand square metres around the Hubli railway junction,
was a convenient place for the migrants of diverse linguistic regions to settle in since it
was just a stone’s throw from the workshop and other Hubli railway locations. It is
where almost all the Tamil migrants were looking for opportunities or were employed.
Needless to say, Hubli railway junction was yet another project of British colonialism.
But the colonial British officials had no objections to employ a workforce from various lin-
guistic communities in the Madras Presidency as long as there were enough labourers to
meet colonial capitalist needs. ‘It is they who initially did the recruitment of personnel,
and not the upper caste Indians’, V. Sudhodhanan, the Hubli Tamil Buddhist said. More
importantly Suddhodhanan emphasized that his ancestors and other Tamils saw in colo-
nial officials’ recruitment a more reliable source of work in comparison to the Tamil speak-
ing areas where privileged caste nepotism and monopoly of colonial education and
occupational opportunities prevailed to keep them out. This is amply evident when
Fuller and Narasimhan write that ‘ … Brahmans dominated the government service and
the university, but the same group also dominated the nationalist movement … .’
(2014, 10). Furthermore, P. G. Kamalanathan, the President of Hubli Buddhist Association,
explained that the physical and technical skills required for the railway industry might
have deterred the privileged caste groups from participating in this workforce, since
this would have called for literally rubbing shoulders with members of many other
castes, including those against whom they discriminated as untouchable communities.
Though the Tamils who migrated to Hubli have been there for many generations
(some even say since the mid-nineteenth century), Tamil remains their primary language
4 G. AYYATHURAI

of communication at home to this day. Birth, marriage, death related ceremonies and sea-
sonal festivals have continually connected Tamil families in Hubli with Sakaramallur, Van-
nivedu, and other villages in northern Tamil Nadu.

Cultural memory, Tamil language and literature, and Hubli Tamils

The Tamil migrants in Hubli substantially aimed at retaining what they believe to be caste-
free Tamil ways of living. D. Maarimuthammal, one of the founder members of Hubli Tamil
Women’s Association said that ‘collective remembrance of recognizing their lives through
Buddhist humanistic and compassionate practices beyond caste has helped them to
thrive in Hubli’. This is not straightforward. As the art historian of modern slavery,
Marcus Wood, argues one should be careful about attempts to reconstruct the memory
of the oppressed in the context of slavery in the global North: ‘The experiences of millions
of individuals who were the victims of slavery is not collectible; it is unrecoverable as a set
of relics … a lost reality’ (Wood 2000, 7). But the trauma of slavery and its memory might
still be worth recovering as he does, so that slavery is never repeated to seal western
countries’ ever burgeoning prosperity over other cultures and regions of the world.
Indeed, reconstructing the positive memory and history of the people who have survived
and flourished despite the pogrom of slavery and untouchability is even more challen-
ging. Investigating the multimodal aspects is vital to learn about those who were subju-
gated under racism and casteism. Particularly regarding the cultural, religious, and
material history of the oppressed before and after they were ravaged by premodern brah-
minical casteism and its collusion with modern colonial racism. The marginalized Tamils/
Indians – their memory – is a crucial source to unravel their different pasts beyond caste.
In the railway industrial city Hubli, the Tamils could reorganize their lives uninhibited
by caste-based economic and social hierarchies within which they were or could have
been subjected to back in their villages. Retaining the Tamil language and social space
unencumbered by caste relations might have helped Tamils for generations in Hubli
with what Lars Eckstein calls ‘a collective cultivation of memory’ in his study of the des-
cendants of Atlantic slavery (2006, 178). Understanding, therefore, the migrant Tamils’
memory concerning their language and literature as well as of their cognizance of
space, their individual and collective assemblages and artefacts, is crucial to unravel
their past, present, and future. This is made clear when Aleida Assmann writes that ‘inter-
connections between memory and identity: i.e. with cultural acts of memory, commem-
oration, immortalization, referring back, projecting into the future, and not least with the
forgetting included in all these acts’ (quoted in Eckstein 2006, xiii). The scholarly need to
study the memories of caste-based oppressed Indians – an unexamined field so far – is
necessary to reject colonialist casteist embellishments placed on them. This would
mean understanding the memory of oppressed Tamils/Indians calls for an analysis of
their identity, culture, and history that are present outside the fold of caste.
How do we engage with the Hubli Tamils’ memory? It is necessary to analyze not just
the interconnections between Tamil language and Tamil literature and the Tamils who
have suffered caste oppression. In addition, analyzing how the Tamil language and litera-
ture serve as mnemonic sources of dialogic reference for alternative identities of the
oppressed Tamils against hegemonic discourse and dominance, i.e. religio-casteism, is
important. Here what Lars Eckstein states, by building on Aleida Assmann’s remarkable
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 5

contribution in the field of memory studies, is illuminating. That is, there is ‘a fundamental
connection between memory as ars – in the sense of a text’s perceivable structure of dia-
logic reference – and memory as vis – in the sense of its identity-giving potential, directed at
a specific historical reality’ (emphasis in original) (Eckstein 2006, xiv). In the context of
Hubli Tamils, this is evident in their pedagogic and socio-cultural practices as well as in
their work ethics which were enhanced by their references to castefree Tamil Buddhist
identity, Tamil linguistic proficiency, and Tamil Buddhist literature.
Hubli Tamil R. P. Munuswami said, ‘our ancestors were the first to establish a Tamil
school for their children in Hubli in the early twentieth century. Persons with proficiency
in the Tamil language were chosen as teachers from among the Tamil migrants’. Further-
more he added that the Kulkarni Hakkal Tamil school of Hubli enabled children of migrant
workers not only to acquire knowledge of Tamil but also made efforts to impart ‘a caste-
free worldview through this language’. Tamil grammar and Sangam Tamil literature
(extant since the 3rd century CE) were taught regularly.
Tirukkural, Silappatikaram, Manimekalai, Veeracoliyam, Pattinatar, Sittar Paatalkal, and other
Tamil classics, extant from the early first millennium CE, were the primary texts for teaching
Tamil to children once they had mastered the Tamil alphabet. Retaining Tamil linguistic iden-
tity enabled them to reject caste identities,

Munuswami explained. A closer analysis reveals that the Hubli Tamil Buddhists in the
account of their memory, identity, and history beyond caste are what Judith Butler
calls as ‘self-narrating beings’ of their castelessness (Butler 2005, 11).
The Sangam literature provided the much needed impetus to the migrant Tamils’ ‘cas-
tefree cultural assertion’ in the views of Hubli Tamil, D. P. Shanmugam. This was possible
due to their proficiency in Tamil language which provided the wherewithal needed to
engage with their cultural and social history, he clarified. In other words, the Hubli
Tamils’ determination to hold on to Tamil language and curriculum is conceivably
more to retain what Jan Assmann calls ‘cultural memory’, which connects their present
with a past stretching into centuries and millennia, on the one hand, and ‘communicative
memory’, spanning their last five generations or so in Hubli, on the other, in which their
discursive and non-discursive practices could take centre stage (Assmann 2008).
Arguably, as shown below in this and other sections, the Tamil Sangam literature
has served not only as a repository culturally, spatially, and materially evidencing the
casteless past but also as the source of their communicative practices constantly re-
excavating and re-asserting their castefree Buddhist cultural memory of Tamils. Sud-
hodhanan maintained that
the pedagogy of Tamil language facilitated the reembedding of everyday life in a faraway
land, and the ancient Tamil Sangam literature contributed to an internalization of what
they perceived to be their past, their cultural values, as Tamils, and not as marginalized
caste groups.

But this is not similar to what anthropologists Mintz and Price write about the orality of
the enslaved Africans who were ‘drawn from diverse cultures and societies and spoke
different and often mutually unintelligible languages’, and ‘ethnically heterogeneous
aggregate of individuals’ through creolization, structuring a new cultural identity in the
New World (1976, 8–21). In contrast, it appears that the Hubli Tamils not only cherished
6 G. AYYATHURAI

their oral Tamil proficiency that has come down for generations but also turned the
written Tamil Sangam literary corpus into an individual and collective vernacular docu-
mentation of what Jan Assmann describes as human communities’ ‘reference to the
past’ in order to ‘denote some kind of difference from today’ (2011, 18). That is, the
Tamil Buddhists’ communicative practices in Tamil rely on and enhanced with the empha-
sis on their written evidences of counter-caste-cultural-past in opposition to the brahmi-
nical written texts valorising caste/casteism. Particularly they see the authors of Buddhist
Sangam literature, such as Manimekalai, as their own castefree and anticaste predecessors
– V. Sudhodhanan often took out excerpts from Manimekalai to refer and assert why he
was a descendant of casteless Tamil Buddhism. In this sense, the Hubli Tamils’ rejection of
caste back in the Tamil country under colonialism and religio-casteism of the privileged
groups occurs through their interpretations of casteless Tamil Buddhist written and
oral sources, through their cultural and communicative memory. In addition, this deep
cultural memory of the Hubli Tamils points to and interconnects their castefree identity
in past and present, which confirms Jan Assmann’s observation that ‘memory can be a
weapon against oppression’ (2011, 69).
This is evident in what the Hubli Tamils claim to be the progressive pedagogic methods
employed at their school, their regular readings of Tamil literature, their Tamil language
based everyday social life fostered and reinforced their casteless identity assertion in prac-
tice. Crucially, the teacher and the taught did not have to worry about caste domination –
as is the case in most of the schools in India. Instead, the grounds for seeing each other on
a level playing field as Tamils, both in and outside the classroom, could strengthen inte-
gration among them.2 The Tamil school was thus a crucial vehicle for ‘recuperating and
cultivating a Tamilness which stood against caste and religious division’, Sudhodhanan
said. That is, for the Hubli Tamils, their proficiency in Tamil language and the Sangam
Tamil literary corpus hermeneutically embodied a long-term cultural memory and identity
against caste-based social and material conditions. In their hands, Tamil literature
signified what Nick Nesbitt describes in the connections between French Caribbean litera-
tures as the ‘concrete material of history’ of the Caribbean (2003, xiv). That is, the differ-
ences in fictional and non-fictional, poetic and historical, imagined and real forms of Tamil
literature did not matter in the communicative practices of the Hubli Tamils as long as
their castefree subjectivity, literature, and history could be upheld through them,
beyond the indignities invented and imposed by casteists. It is due to this deep casteless
memory that emancipating transformation emerged among Hubli Tamils subsequently.
The first generation of primary and middle school graduates were Tamil Buddhist
elders born in the 1920s and 1930s. Some of them are still active in the Hubli Tamil com-
munity today. M. Ganesan, who was born in 1933 and retired as a railway employee and
whose father Murugan Munuswami was a steam engine mechanic in the Hubli railways,
said that he could study until sixth grade at the ‘Tamil Buddhist’ school. Ganesan empha-
sizes that all the Tamil railway employees’ children studied in the Tamil school and those
Tamils who migrated to Hubli for non-railway work and belonged to various caste groups
also sent their children to study there.
This was further strengthened by the inauguration of the Young Men’s Buddhist
Reading Room (YMRR) in 1936. R. P. Munuswami who was born in 1930 and retired as
a railway employee in Hubli said that an Italian Buddhist monk, Lokanatha, who lived
with the Tamils then, inaugurated a Tamil reading circle. Their reading room was a
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 7

repository of Tamil literature, Buddhist books, English books, and newspapers. The fee per
month was eight annas (50 paise per month) then. In addition to reading, the YMRR also
encouraged performance of plays especially on themes related to Tamil Buddhism such as
Kovalan and Kannaki from the Tamil epic Silappatikaram. Furthermore, The Hubli Tamils
say that almost all the early Tamil migrants equipped themselves with rudimentary
English soon after their arrival in this industrial city, since they had to interact with the
British railway officials and Indian citizens of diverse linguistic origin there. This also
shows their determination to face the challenging transition from their agrarian social
life – even as they continued to retain their agrarian knowledge traditions – to the
labour demands of colonial capitalist economy. Likewise, they acquired the local
language, Kannada, and integrated their children in the Karnataka State Education, but
did not have to rescind their own language, Tamil, as usually happens to a migrant
community.
The proficiency in Tamil language and the ancient Sangam literature shows that the
Hubli Tamils cognize themselves in ways that are both self-affirming and command rec-
ognition. This is unlike the ‘Jewish Dalits’ of Bene Ephraim in Andhra Pradesh who ‘lacked
written history’. As Yulia Egorova and Shahid Perwez point out, this ‘Lost Tribes of Jews’
who, due to the lack of ‘conventional historical sources’ claim narratives of ‘oral traditions’
to ‘embed their past’ in Judaism (2012, 5–7). In contrast, the Hubli Tamils maintain that
their identity as derivative of the Tamil language they speak as well as the Sangam
Tamil literary corpus; thus, embodying a castefree worldview that has come down from
the casteless ancient Buddhist past. How do the casteless cultural memory of the Hubli
Tamils and their various religio-cultural practices work in their sense of spatial memory?

Cultural memory, space, and Hubli Tamils

Since their arrival in Hubli in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Tamils have
retained certain traditions about space and time from their villages of origin, such as Sak-
ramallur and Vannivedu in northern Tamil Nadu. Ancestral gods and goddesses, modes of
worship, and festivals associated with them were part of this spatial assemblage of the
early migrants. Interestingly the Hubli Tamils portray a non-dichotomous perception of
their social and religious life to connect their casteless past and anticaste present. This
is in contra-distinction to putative universal claims of ‘Hindu’ made in mythologies and
epics, on the one hand, even as ‘the Hindu society’ is riven with reprehensible caste clea-
vages, on the other (see Bronkhorst 2016; Figueira 2002).
How are religious replication, representation, and transformation in Hubli based on the
Tamils’ spatial memory? It is true that Indians in general, and Tamils in particular, have
always carried their Ishta Devata (favoured deity) to the places of migration across the
world.3 Apart from the spiritual aspects associated with deities, there are reasons
behind religious construction and reconstruction, especially to transform one’s self and
community, identity, and space (see Aloysius 1997; Juergensmeyer 1982; Omvedt 2011;
Roberts 2016). When gods and goddesses move from the private to public sphere and
vice versa, what transpires is, in addition to religious sentiments, the affirmation of simul-
taneously claiming and marking one’s own individual and collective space. This is similar
to what Ankur Datta writes in the context of ‘forced migration’ in Kashmir of ‘Saraswat
Brahmins’ who, through their memory and a religious replica, albeit establish their
8 G. AYYATHURAI

exclusionary caste ‘asserting presence in a new place’ (2019, 278). In contrast, however,
the memory of space among Tamil migrants in Hubli points to two significant features:
first, the recreation of religious symbols and practices in Hubli served as reminders of cul-
tural and material aspects that they had imported from their places of origin and second,
these Hubli Tamil religio-cultural formations were to serve their individual and collective
castefree emancipatory identity and space in the place of migration.
The Tamils re-established temples in Hubli for Mariamman (goddess) and Munisami
(god), deities that were taken along from their villages in northern Tamil Nadu. Hubli
Tamil R. P. Munuswami said this was to concomitantly perpetuate the memories of
their non-brahminical religious as well as non-religious ways of living in their villages of
origin. It is clear that god Munisami’s earlier open shrine in a gully (now enclosed in a
temple with Saivite features) in Hubli is a reminder of the early migrants’ spatial procliv-
ities that replicated religious beliefs and temporal practices from their villages of origin.
This replication and redundancy, use and disuse, and modification of gods and goddesses
(of old Mariamman and Munisami deities), is not what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pre-
judicially called the ‘uninhibited lunacy’ of the non-brahmin Indians in contrast to the
‘natural consciousness of the Brahmins’ (Rothermund 1986, 8). That is, the Hubli Tamils’
re-forming religious spaces that provide for collective and self-emancipation through
the rejection of orthodox religious ideas and exclusionary place of worship is in complete
contrast with birth-based, caste-centred, patriarchal brahminical Hindu temples in India
and among the Hindu diaspora. Yet these shrines of now largely redundant and refur-
bished gods and goddesses continue to exist in the gullies of Hubli – with some dedicated
worshippers. Although they remain part of their spatial memory, and yet they are at the
periphery. Why so?
The unorthodox presence of both temples, one in a shanty (Mariamman statue) and
the other right in the middle of a gully road (a Munisami) and the indifferent patronizing
of these temples for more than a century and a half signifies what the Hubli Tamils have
come to embody: the determination to forget certain experiences and traditions in order
to remember other religious and non-religious cultural, spatial, and social aspects. This
also points to the Hubli Tamils’ aspirations for more empowering and emancipating
socio-cultural practices, which reaffirm their discontinuity with a caste-imposing brahmi-
nical structure to embrace a castefree social and modern life. This is clearly confirmed by
the Hubli Tamils’ en masse turn to Buddhism in the early twentieth century.
Hubli Tamils’ openness to reform their religious beliefs and practices to suit their eman-
cipation from the caste system gave further impetus to their exchanging ideas with other
Tamil migrants in Madras Presidency at that time. The Kolar Gold Fields Tamils in eastern
Karnataka, who were also early Tamil migrants to the colonial gold mining industry in
Kolar, set off a new emancipatory wave among the Hubli Tamils living in western Karna-
taka. That is, the Tamil migrants in Kolar Gold Fields had taken the lead in reconstructing
their casteless identity through Buddhism since the late nineteenth century, and it was
only a matter of time that the Tamil migrants in Hubli were influenced by it. It appears
that the Hubli Tamils were well prepared to receive Buddhism to reconstruct their
social history and to reorganize their everyday life yet again. As seen earlier, the Hubli
Tamils had deep knowledge of Tamil Buddhist literature, such as Manimekalai, and pos-
sessed Tamil language and cultural memory for reimagining their castefree past and
present through Tamil Buddhist frameworks. Buddhism among Hubli Tamils now
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 9

assumed what Wim van Binsbergen calls ‘diffusion’ and ‘transformative localization’ in the
context of African influences in ancient Greek cultural and religious history (2011, 35). The
Hubli Tamils, thus, began a new religio-cultural transformation through Tamil Buddhism.

Communicative memory and the Tamil Buddhist movement in Hubli

The Hubli Tamils say that the Buddhist movement in the Tamil-speaking regions, which
flourished under Iyothee Thass (1845-1914) in Madras/Chennai since 1898, had its
impact both in South India and abroad. Beyond Chennai, Kolar Gold Fields (KGF)
emerged as the most important place in Karnataka for the consolidation of Tamil Bud-
dhism. The Marikuppam Buddhist Vihara in KGF, which was established in 1907, as well
as the Siddhartha and other presses, which produced Tamil Buddhist journals and pamph-
lets, continued to be active for many years after the demise of Iyothee Thass in 1914. In
fact, The Tamilian weekly (published by Thass from 1907 to 1914) was republished in 1926
as The Kolar Tamilan and was in circulation till 1935 from Kolar (see Aloysius 1998). These
publications provided the material and intellectual basis for the movement to grow and
consolidate as a counter-hegemonic project with a consistent sense of casteless selfhood
and humanity, the Hubli Tamils explain.
After Thass, among the many who continued the cause of spreading Tamil Buddhism,
G. Appaduraiyar of Kolar Gold Fields was exemplary. He was a colleague of Thass, and a
prolific writer and publisher of Tamil Buddhist literature with anticaste enunciations. Apart
from reviving and editing The Kolar Tamilan after Thass, Appaduraiyar established new
Buddhist centres across South India, especially in the non-Tamil speaking regions to
which the marginalized Tamils had migrated.4 The Hubli Tamils maintain that the inter-
action between Hubli Tamils and G. Appaduraiyar, led to the establishment of a
chapter of the South Indian Buddhist Association (SIBA) and the founding a Buddhist
Vihara in 1924, which functions to this day in Hubli.5 Kannayiram and Kandhaswami
were the first office bearers in 1924, R. P. Munuswami said.
Such instances indicate that these organic Tamil Buddhist intellectuals, writers, pub-
lishers, and their organizations as well as the Tamil Buddhist discursive and non-discursive
practices embodied their modes of communicative memory. That is, the Hubli Tamils con-
ceivably interconnected and transferred their castefree identity, knowledge traditions,
and history between generations which has led to the persistent formation, retention,
and perpetuation of their collective communicative memory. Particularly, the Tamil Bud-
dhist communicative memory points to what Jan Assmann writes, as a ‘knowledge with
an identity-index, it is knowledge about oneself, that is, one’s own diachronic identity, be
it as an individual or as a member of a family, a generation, a community, a nation, or a
cultural and religious tradition’ (2008, 114). In other words, the Hubli Tamils’ reconstruc-
tion of their castefree Buddhist identity and its inter-generational endurance is largely
achieved thorough their collective communicative memory evident in their diverse prac-
tices since the late nineteenth century, which calls for an analysis.
The SIBA Hubli chapter was initially set up at the northern intersections of Goods Shed
Road in Kulkarni Hakkal. The Hubli Tamils say that a majority of the Tamil migrants at Kulk-
arni Hakkal reacted favourably to Appaduraiyar’s underpinning the Tamil peoples’ history
of being castefree Buddhists, through the cultural and communicative memory enunci-
ations of Iyothee Thass and others who had by then been disseminating these
10 G. AYYATHURAI

interpretations for the past few decades. Furthermore, they explain that Thass’ articula-
tion of Tamils, who were oppressed by upper castes as untouchables, as those who
were, in fact, rational and casteless Buddhists with excellence in agricultural and medic-
inal knowledge systems as well as proficient in Tamil language and literature emerged as
the blueprint for the campaigns of Appaduraiyar. In this Appaduraiyar seems to have
relied on Thass’ Tamil Buddhist 1911 work, Adivedam, which is a Tamil discursive enunci-
ation of India as a Buddhist nation preceding the onslaught of brahminism/casteism. In
fact, Adivedam was a compilation of Thass’ articles on Tamil Buddhism which he had pub-
lished earlier in his weekly The Tamilian. In it Thass’ enunciation of Buddhist thoughts and
practices show his prolific cross-referencing of Pali, Sanskrit, English, and Tamil literatures.
Clearly, Thass’ Adivetam is a testimony of unprecedented indigenous scholarship on
modern Buddhism (see Ayyathurai 2011). Thass repudiates the brahminical caste violence
in the ancient and medieval history of India by emphasizing the anticaste critique of
Buddha and the Buddhist women and men who followed his ethical humanist values
through ages. Unsurprisingly, the Tamil Buddhists took to Adivedam as a modern and
ethical testament to the castelessness of oppressed Tamils/Indians and their Buddhist
history since the first millennium BCE. This brought forth among the Tamil Buddhists
what Valerie Smith observed as ‘self-discovery and authority’ in the context of African-
American production of literature that not only demonstrated their antirace conscious-
ness but also mobilized people to see their humanity beyond racism (see Smith 1987).
For these reasons Adivedam became the Hubli Tamils’ core Tamil text (along with
various other works of Tamil Buddhist literature) which interfaced their Buddhist vernacu-
lar cultural and communicative memories. Appaduraiyar presented a copy of Adivedam to
the Hubli SIBA in 1924, which is still preserved in the Hubli Buddhist Vihara complex.
Hubli Tamil V. Sudhodhanan said that with these new developments, the Tamils
encouraged the learning of Pali at Hubli Tamil School, along with Tamil, because it was
considered to be the language in which the Buddha spoke and through which he
preached ethical humanism. With such convictions the Hubli Tamils chant the five Bud-
dhist precepts (Seelam) whenever they assemble in the Buddhist Vihara at Hubli. They
do not see any incompatibilities between Tamil and Pali linguistic and literary connections
(some fluently read and speak Pali). In fact, the Hubli Tamils see Pali Buddhist literature
reinforcing their casteless Tamil Buddhist beliefs and practices. Sudhodhanan added
that the Tamils viewed Pali as the vehicle of Buddhist ethics because it not only
decried caste distinctions but also unequivocally emphasized the oneness of all
humans. That is, the Buddha was seen as one committed to finding solutions to this-
worldly human concerns, such as unequal relations among men and women, instead of
relegating them to putative other-worldly claims after death – a complete rejection of
brahminical mythologies and texts as well as cultural claims and practices of privileged
caste groups – Sudhodhanan emphasized. This perception of the Tamil Buddhists is
confirmed by the Sanskritist Johannes Bronkhorst in noting that brahmins fabricated
an ‘order of society and their role in it’ which ‘had far-reaching consequences, not only
on the subsequent cultural and religious history of South and South East Asia’ and that
such a ‘Brahmanism influenced, and to some extent even determined, the way academic
scholarship looked at India’s cultural and religious past’ (2017, 365–369).
Besides, such an understanding among Hubli Tamils understandably led to two crucial
developments: first, since they now viewed Mariamman and Munisami as part of an
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 11

‘irrational belief system’, they were rendered redundant; second, they upheld the Bud-
dhist cultural and communicative memory and practice as that which consolidated
one’s positive legacy and history in this world – in contrast to brahminical birth-based
denigration under caste hierarchy. It is thus clear that the Hubli Tamils took to social trans-
formation in their own lifetime, to live as castefree Tamil Buddhists.
Since 1924, well documented registers have been maintained at the Hubli SIBA. These
contain biographical details of each Hubli Tamil Buddhist member, such as the names of
father and mother, the village of origin in Tamil Nadu, the name of the member, date of
initiation into SIBA membership, and the signature of the member. These serve as a tes-
timony to their cultural and communicative memory and practice of being and becoming
Buddhists against caste.
A weekly gathering in the SIBA Vihara takes place regularly on Sundays at 8:30am The
meeting begins with the chanting of Seelam in Pali by the members assembled. Girls,
boys, women, and men sit on the floor in rows and chant the Seelam. Since it takes a
while to get used to saying the prayer in Pali, printed and laminated copies of transliter-
ated and translated Tamil versions are kept in the hall so that the new members can read
and recite without difficulty. Once the Seelam is done, the president of the Buddhist
association goes to the podium and announces the events of the previous week as
well as the upcoming programs. The president is followed by the secretary of the associ-
ation who announces other businesses of the association and discusses in detail the
present and future events among the Hubli Buddhists. When visitors from abroad and
other parts of India drop by, their presence is notified and sometimes the visitors are
asked to speak, and the speech is translated into Tamil, Kannada, and English as the audi-
ence may require. The weekly gathering ends the way it began, with the chanting of the
Seelam. The Pavurnami (full moon celebration) every month, signifying Buddha’s attain-
ment of nirvana, is an auspicious day in the Buddhist calendar. Almost all the families
gather at the Vihara on this day. SIBA, thus, serves as the place for the dissemination of
communicative memory between various generations.

Memory and history of Tamil Buddhist castelessness

The Tamil Buddhists in Hubli through a variety of religio-cultural and historical practices
consider themselves casteless. Sudhodhanan, Maarimuthammal, Munuswami, Kamala-
nathan, Shanmugam, Vajravelu, Arasu, and others underscored that their castefree stand-
points emerge from the persuasion that they are the descendants of those who had
embraced Buddhism long before the distortions of casteism, which wreaked the majority
of Indians’ lives. The caste system, Sudhodhanan explained, ‘was an infliction of groups
embracing later and alien hierarchical cultural forms such as brahminical Saivism and
Vaishnavism, the Hindu denominations, even by brutal annihilation of the Buddhists
who existed before them in the Tamil regions’. For him the existence of the Tamil Bud-
dhist literary corpus since the ancient period, preceding the Saivite and Vaishnavite vio-
lence of casteism, and the archaeological evidences of ancient Tamil sites are a vindication
of the Tamil Buddhist casteless past and present.
In fact, Tamil Buddhists in Hubli, such as Sudhodhanan, who literally carried the
excerpts of many works of Tamil (Buddhist) literature from the Sangam period in their
pockets, maintain that their identity as Tamil Buddhists is deeply connected with the
12 G. AYYATHURAI

Buddhist ethical rationalism which has come down through literary creations from yore to
the present. That is, for Hubli Tamils Buddhism is remarkable for fostering among Indians/
Tamils an ethical (other regarding), rational, this-worldly outlook to primarily reject caste
and to insist on human equality. This would mean that their assertion of casteless Tamil-
ness is embedded in the history of Buddhism. Interestingly, this viewpoint of the Hubli
Tamil Buddhists is in contrast to other Tamil speakers and their recent cultural and politi-
cal movements, such as, the Tamil Purist and Dravidian movements in the Tamil speaking
regions, which, ironically, uphold caste-division, religious discrimination, and violence
among Tamils even as they proclaim common Tamil linguistic identity (see Vaithees
2015). While it is true that the reconstruction of Tamil Buddhist memory and history is
deeply interlinked with the Tamil Sangam literary history, understanding the castefree
Tamil Buddhist articulation and manifestation in everyday social life points to the follow-
ing aspects.
Conceivably in their affirmation of human equality and dignity of labour in their agrar-
ian and non-agrarian work-ethics, on the one hand, and in their life sustaining knowledge
systems, on the other, that have been imbibed for generations, are embedded what the
Tamil Buddhists continue to uphold as the mark of a casteless Tamilian (Tamil as a non-
caste person). That is, in their knowledge skills and practices (such as, Paddy, Lentil, and
other crop cultivation, Siddha medicine, etc.) and artefacts (inventing diverse agrarian and
non-agrarian implements and technologies, etc.) in their native villages as well as in their
places of migration manifest Tamil Buddhists’ retention and articulation of castelessness.
In this sense the Tamil Buddhists are comparable to Africans who were subjugated under
racism and slavery. For instance, Simon Gikandi’s analysis of the few objects, such as the
African drum, which the Africans brought along in the ships are now considered vital to
reconstruct the positive history of the people who were subordinated under Atlantic
slavery (see Gikandi 2011). Likewise, Judith Carney’s study shows how the African knowl-
edge traditions influenced the rice production in the Americas (see Carney 2001). Simi-
larly, the culture and history of the oppressed Tamils/Indians and the facts about their
castefree knowledge practices, objects, and traditions potentially embody and signify
their casteless homelands in the Indian subcontinent preceding to and unconnected
with the brahminical discourse and violence of casteism – an unexamined field in
social sciences and humanities. Irrespective of the brutalities resulting from the casteism
of brahmins and non-brahmin upper castes, the Tamil Buddhists give the impression to
retain a deep cultural memory of castelessness that is personal, material, social, and his-
torical – unlike the modern transition of upper castes groups passing as casteless Indians
(see Deshpande 2013). Furthermore, studying the Tamil Buddhist marriage points to the
castelessness in Hubli Tamils’ cultural practices.
Historical and sociological studies confirm marriage in India is entrenched in caste and
religious pre-conditions (see Chakravarti 2002; Dhar 2013). Love marriages against one’s
own caste and/or religion often lead to parents’ antipathy and even organizing ‘honour’
killing i.e. caste murder. The ‘Hindu’ arranged marriage is ironically meant to perpetuate
caste-endogamy. In contrast, endogamous orthodoxies of caste or religion are
denounced in marriage among the Hubli Tamils. Many Tamil Buddhist men and
women have done love marriages by finding partners from within their own linguistic
community or from other linguistic communities such as Marathis, Telugus, Kannadigas,
and others in their own localities in Hubli and outside Karnataka. There are also instances
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 13

of love marriages between Tamil Buddhists and Muslims in Hubli (some couples have
retained both traditions).
Once a couple and their families decide, the marriage is conducted through Buddhist
cultural practices by men and women of Tamil Buddhists collectively gathered on the
appointed day of marriage. They begin the gathering with Seelam, which in itself are
instructions for the right life of the couple. Furthermore, the elders (women and men)
and/or Bhikkhus, according to their availability, ask the bride and the groom to repeat res-
olutions in Tamil to live well with mutual understanding and compassion that prepare the
couple for their future life together. Then the partners exchange garlands and/or the
groom ties a Buddhist Taali (marriage pendant) around the neck of the bride. After this
the newlywed couple sign the register that has existed since 1924, which ends the
minimal formalities of marriage, and dinner is hosted thereafter. The Hubli Tamils say
that the caste or religious identity of the bride or the groom does not determine parental,
familial, or Tamil Buddhist community’s acceptance or rejection of a couple’s decision to
get married. In this sense the Tamil Buddhist marriage practice has for many generations
marked their sense of castelessness. This is a reversal of what Gombrich and Obeyesekere
have called ‘[t]he Buddhicization of the previously secular [marriage] ceremony’ in the
context of Sinhala Buddhism in Sri Lanka (1990, 269). That is, the Tamil Buddhists have
continued to de-ritualize the marriage ceremony in order to remove the importance of
caste and gender hierarchies through Buddhicization.
The Tamil Buddhists’ rejection of caste-reinforcing statist policies also point to their
consciousness and practice of castelessness. In Sudhodhanan’s opinion,
seeking government jobs through affirmative action policies by availing certifications such as
Neo-Buddhists that are meant for those who were subordinated as untouchables and other
forms of invoking caste, especially declaring oneself as a lower-caste for want of jobs, is
demeaning and self-defeating.

Furthermore Sudhodhanan argued that people should avoid subscribing to a caste-iden-

tity as demanded by the government since it dehumanizes them. In his views dignified
living against caste is not impossible if one strives for it. Instead of succumbing to life-
long indignities resulting from allusions to what is ‘doled out’ to the ‘lower castes’ by
the privileged groups, who have self-appointed themselves as ‘upper castes’ to impose
their will on those they deem to be below them in independent India, one should
aspire for casteless freedom, he explained. Hubli as a modern railway industrial city and
its regular recruitment of Tamils in skilful and semi-skilled occupations over generations
has helped some Hubli Tamil Buddhists to resist caste-oriented governmental policies and
yet continue to retain their economic statuses.
P. G. Kamalanathan, the current president of HBA, substantiated what Sudhodhanan
argued by corroborating that ‘I and my family have never availed caste-based schemes
of employment. Instead, diligence, while retaining their identity as Buddhists has
helped them to prosper’. Many Tamil Buddhists of Hubli feel that the Indian central gov-
ernment’s census category, Neo-Buddhist, only re-marginalizes already caste-based mar-
ginalized Indians, such as those branded as untouchables, as recent converts to
Buddhism. For Tamil Buddhists such policies are castising the casteless Buddhists (for
similar views of Ambedkarites see Rao 2009). Therefore, in the Government of India’s
Census surveys, the Hubli Tamils have registered themselves only as Buddhists and
14 G. AYYATHURAI

have resisted re-imposition of caste stereotypes through statist measures by claiming

their Buddhist identity and upholding their discursive and non-discursive practices of cas-
telessness (for a critical analysis of affirmative action/ reservation policies see Berg 2019;
Deshpande 2011; Thorat and Newman 2009).
The Tamil Buddhist community’s inculcation of scientific knowledge and skills by
breaking the barriers of caste is seen in their work ethos sustained over many
generations. L. Arasu, who is an employee in the Hubli railways and whose father
K. Loganathan (born in 1934) retired as a ‘sign writer’ in the railways there, said that
the work ethics of the Tamil Buddhists is evidently distinguishable from others in the
Hubli railways. He insists that, ‘whatever might be the Hubli Tamils’ jobs i.e. welder,
fitter, painter and kalasi (manual worker), they are at the top in comparison to all other
employees through their dedication’. For Arasu, this is clearly due to the castelessness
of the Tamils. Tamil Buddhists’ acquirement of non-agrarian skills, in addition to the reten-
tion of agrarian knowledge skills, could enhance their prospects for economic transform-
ation in the place of migration. Looking for jobs in the Hubli railways remains the most
coveted pursuit for these Buddhist Tamils even today just as it was in the nineteenth
century.6 Some Tamil Buddhists have taken up Karnataka government clerical and
officer jobs and a few have become bank officials.
Nevertheless the Tamil Buddhists, through their casteless memory and history, refute
and reject any re-marginalizing statist categories and caste-based developmental policies
attributed to them. That is, in the Hubli Tamil Buddhists’ views the brahminical impo-
sitions of categories such as untouchable, or the statist invention of categories such as
Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Neo-Buddhists (supposedly to recognize the converts to Bud-
dhism) or even self-proclaimed categories, such as Dalits or Neo-Dalits or Dalit-Bahujans
among the marginalized Indian communities, do not substantiate the positive intrinsic
casteless nativity of the oppressed Indians. Ironically, these categories re-impose casteism
and continue to misrecognize their caseless memory and history, they contend.
Critique of gender and caste inequalities have always been part of the tenets and prac-
tice of the Tamil Buddhist movement, particularly to reclaim their sense of castelessness.
Iyothee Thass, Swapneswari Ambal (1846-1936), and other Tamil Buddhists’ critique of
gender disparities, through the ‘Lady’s Column’ in the weekly The Tamilian since 1907,
remain exemplary (see Ayyathurai 2011). Therefore one is keen to understand Hubli
Tamil Buddhist girls’ and women’s wellbeing.

Sujata Madhar Sangam in Hubli – 1957

The inauguration of Sujata Madhar Sangam (Sujata Women’s Association) by Tamil Bud-
dhist women in Hubli in 1957 was a significant moment among Tamil Buddhists. Kannam-
bal was its first president. In her later years, she moved from Hubli to Sakramallur, an
instance of a typical Tamil Buddhist migrant who moved back and forth between
Hubli, Karnataka, and his or her village of origin in Tamil Nadu. She said, ‘issues unique
to women called for the creation of a separate chapter that was run by and for
women, with women office bearers, supported by funds raised from their own
subscriptions’.
The Hubli Tamil Buddhist women say that the Sujata Madhar Sangam (named after
Buddha’s wife Sujata) functioned at two levels. First, it was meant to take care of the
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 15

everyday needs among Tamil Buddhist women in Hubli. Occasions such as marriages,
births, and deaths called for extra labour and exchange of materials among women.
Such topics were discussed among women members of the Sangam who volunteered
to help with such needs in the neighbourhood, Kulkarni Hakkal. Activities such as mobiliz-
ing funds for women whose families would have encountered difficulties resulting from
the death of a relative or some other difficulty and helping the Buddhist Vihara during
various celebrations were some of the tasks taken up by the Sangam. Second, the
women’s association was to keep in focus a Buddhist sense of equality among women,
men and humanity at large. In the words of Maarimuthamal, a founding member of
the Sangam,
to view Buddhar (Buddha in Tamil) as yet another god is wrong. Rather his sermons and prac-
tices were meant to insist that one ought to be humane with all, since there is no natural and
hierarchical division between men and women, of religion and caste.

Such standpoints of Hubli Tamil Buddhist women seem to strengthen the values they
have imbibed from the Tamil Buddhist movement’s century old history.
Although it is still within the constraints of the patriarchal society of Tamil Buddhist
migrants, the Sangam tries to improve the lives of Buddhist women most of whom are
homemakers. The young members of the Sujatha Sangam today are willing to take up
issues of higher education and employment. Pattamal said that
the scope for self-employment and profit making is enormous among the Buddhist women.
However, it depends on the proclivities of the office bearers (mostly men) of the HBA to
support such initiatives. If we are determined, then the Maathar Sangam can get them
done with some efforts.

The Sangam holds regular meetings at the SIBA Vihara. It has more college going women
in its membership now, whose activism for women’s rights is changing the Tamil Buddhist
community as a whole towards better gender relation.

SIBA to HBA – 1967

Now and then, Buddhist monks visit the SIBA Vihara of Hubli. Some would live in the SIBA
for months, even years. Paramasanthi Thero was one such Buddhist monk. He was also a
Tamil and anticaste person, true to his Buddhist principles. Hubli Tamils say that Parama-
santhi, as Thero was known among the Hubli Tamils, was deeply committed to strength-
ening the SIBA of Hubli as an institution and was keen on expanding it. It was during his
presence that SIBA’s location was moved from the northern intersection to the southern
end of Kulkarni Hakkal, at which time it was renamed the Hubli Buddhist Association
(HBA), so as to mark the fact that its affiliation was to the town as a whole and not just
to a part of it, the Hubli Tamils explain. In addition, they emphasize that although the lea-
dership of the HBA is under the Tamil Buddhists, HBA has consciously served as a Buddhist
place of worship and a community inclusive of local and global Buddhists from across
India and around the world.
HBA’s larger space of around 5000 square feet made it possible to build a Vihara where
a large number of people could gather and celebrate their Buddhism. The main prayer
hall has a seven-foot statue of the sitting Buddha that was designed and constructed ele-
gantly by a Sinhala mason and sculptor from Sri Lanka. The present Dalai Lama
16 G. AYYATHURAI

inaugurated the new buildings of the renamed HBA in 1967. Some rare photos of Iyothee
Thass and the young Dalai Lama adorn the rooms at HBA. Hubli Tamil Buddhist,
S. Vajravelu, said he took on the responsibility and challenge of travelling to Dharmasala
in Himachal Pradesh, which took weeks to and fro then, to invite the Dalai Lama to inau-
gurate the HBA. Shanmugam, who lived into his late nineties as a member of HBA, said
that he had seen many historic events in his own life and in the lives of other Tamil Bud-
dhists of Hubli. He had not only achieved enormous success as an educated and well-
employed Tamil Buddhist, but also served as the president of the HBA during its
transition.7
The Tamil Buddhists, like other Buddhist denominations around the world, have their
own Buddhist practices. But they have retained certain unique religio-cultural aspects to
continue their castefree Buddhist ways of life. For instance, their chanting of Seelam is not
to propitiate the Buddha in a brahminical way, but to reiterate the need to foster one’s
humanity i.e. goodness with others and oneself, they clarify. The Tamil Buddhist children
nonchalantly say that it is nallathu (good in Tamil) to say Seelam and practice Buddhism.
These collective Tamil Buddhist rituals indicate that they are in contra-distinction to caste-
valorising brahminical gods, goddesses, and rituals that demand a brahmin priest who,
through his birth and caste-exhibiting bodily postures and accoutrements (such as a
sacred thread across his shoulder and waist), assumes the role of the mediator by subor-
dinating the worshipper. The Hubli Tamil Buddhists say that they reject such notions of
priesthood and god. Most of the times, a senior member of HBA leads the Seelam chant-
ing and enunciation of Buddhist ethics. From the 1920s many Bhikkhus (monks) and Bhik-
khunis (nuns) have visited HBA; some have lived there for long till their death.
The ascendance of HBA has given new impetus for the Tamil Buddhists of Hubli since
the 1960s. Now, more than a hundred join the weekly prayer meetings. Buddhists from
various parts of India are welcomed to HBA and they may deliver speeches and pray
while staying in the Vihara complex. Visitors’ donations and members’ contributions
provide much-needed resources to sustain regular activities. Marathi, Telugu, Kannada,
Hindi, and other Buddhists also participate in the weekly meetings.

Conclusion
The re-embedding of Tamil Buddhism in Hubli is not an instance of the utopian aspira-
tions of oppressed Tamils. In fact, the Hubli Tamils’ modern history is in contrast to Sar-
gent’s explication of utopia as ‘social dreaming’ and ‘eutopia or a non-existent society
… normally located in time and space that a … contemporaneous reader to view as con-
siderably better than the society in which that reader lived’ (2010, 4–6). For the Hubli
Tamil Buddhist practices reiterate their cultural, social, economic, and political history
as well as everyday life against hegemonic caste structures. Likewise, instead of a futuristic
desire, the memory and practice of caste-based marginalized communities emphasize
how they belong to a casteless past and present.
Furthermore, although it is not yet available in academic theory and institutional prac-
tice, it is productive to make the critical caste turn to see the Indians besieged by caste in a
new light. That is, the theoretical standpoint of seeing the oppressed communities’ cul-
tural and economic history either through caste-reinforcing brahminical structural per-
spectives or through the postcolonial critique of colonial apparatuses has undermined
 HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY 17

the effort to perceive their precaste and anticaste discursive and non-discursive practices.
This is comparable to the dehistoricisation of racialized communities in North America.
For instance, Judith Carney writes in the context of Atlantic slavery: ‘As bondage
placed males and females in the social category of slaves, scholarship dispossessed
them of their preexisting ethnic and gendered forms of knowledge, robbing them of
their real contributions to the Americas’ (2001, 5). Similarly, the caste-based oppressed
communities’ alternative history, their ethical humanism, their casteless knowledge tra-
ditions, and their castefree cultural contributions to Indian societies are yet to gain the
attention of the local and global academy.
The Tamil Buddhist movement, which began with the pioneering founder of modern
anticaste Buddhism, Iyothee Thass, in late nineteenth century south India, could spread
among the migrant oppressed Tamils only because of its ability to offer a positive cultural
identity. In this revival of Tamil Buddhism, the deep cultural memory through a Buddhist
literary corpus – which disavows caste-oriented Vedic texts, their authors’ and their des-
cendants’ edification of the brahminical society – is significant in reconstructing the cas-
teless and anticaste history of the oppressed against caste-hegemony. Furthermore, the
vernacular communicative memory of discursive and non-discursive practices of recent
generations has played an indispensable role in the retention of Buddhism since coloni-
alism, on the one hand, and in the casteless consciousness as a force behind emancipa-
tory practices against the brahminical barriers, on the other. And that a few hundred
oppressed Tamils dared to overlook the religio-casteism of their places of origin, resist,
migrate, and emigrate in order to retain their castelessness. Re-membering and re-
embedding their casteless Buddhist identity, thus, has opened new ways of life that
were not available to oppressed Tamils before.

Notes
1. Indians who were categorized as untouchables pursued diverse professions such as traders,
butlers, military personnel, and liquor suppliers under colonialism (see Washbrook 1993 and
Mallampalli 2011).
2. For a study on brahmin prejudice and the nexus between students and teachers see Subra-
manian (2015).
3. This is evidenced in the cultural practices of the Indian diaspora that has descended from the
indentured labourers in Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, Martinique, Mauritius, Malaysia, Singa-
pore, Burma, and so on.
4. G. Appaduraiyar was also a prolific writer in many Tamil journals, including Kudiarasu which
was published by E. V. Ramasamy, also known as Periyar, since 1925. Periyar was a close
associate of Appaduraiyar.
5. Thass had established the first Sakya Buddhist Association in Rayapettai, Madras in 1899 and
later renamed it as South Indian Buddhist Association (SIBA). Later many SIBA branches
emerged in Kolar Gold Fields, Bangalore, Secunderabad, Rangoon (Burma/Myanmar),
Durban (South Africa) and elsewhere. In the 1911 Census of India, a few hundred followers
of this movement declared themselves as Indian Buddhists.
6. However, the life situations among some of around 300 Tamil Buddhist families are still chal-
lenging. Kulkarni Hakkal, which is accessible from the railway station, has been passed over by
wide-scale urbanisation, even after all these years of its existence. That is, they are compelled
to live in the cramped houses and streets of Kulkarni Hakkal, owned and rented, in and
around the Hubli railway quarters. The economic boom on the other side of the Hubli
18 G. AYYATHURAI

railway station, enjoyed mostly by the high castes and classes, has continued to elude Kulk-
arni Hakkal’s Tamil Buddhists.
7. For Shanmugam, having been chosen to represent HBA and KGF Tamil Buddhists in the World
Congress of Religions in Nepal in 1956 was the high point of his life. Particularly, he cherished
his meeting with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in Nepal, especially since the anticaste leader had warmly
received them.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Hubli Tamil Buddhist elders K. Kannambal, A. Vedhamani, D. Maarimuthamal,
D.P. Shanmugam, A. Devaraj, V. Sudhodhanan, R. P. Munuswami, S. Vajravelu, T. G. Kathavarayan,
Tailor Gopal and Kannamal, and P. G. Kamalanathan. The office-bearers of the Sujatha Madhar
Sangam, President Mekalai Tamizhkumar, General Secretary Bhuvanesvari Paneerselvam, and Treas-
urer Geetha Purushothaman and other sisters as well as the office-bearers of the Hubli Buddhist
Association, President P.G. Kamalanathan, Secretary T. G. K. Chakravarthi, M. Tamizhkumar, T. G.
K. Paneerselvam, K. Loganathan, C. Murugan, P. Thiagaraj, G. Purushothaman and other brothers
always welcomed me with their generous hospitality. Lawyer A. Gauthaman of Madras High
Court, the son of A. Vedhamani, has been an invaluable source of my understanding of the Hubli
Tamil Buddhist history. I thank the two anonymous referees for their comments which helped
me to rework some sections. Ashwin Subramanian promptly read the draft and asked for clarifica-
tions. This article is dedicated to the Hubli descendants of Tamil Buddhism.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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