CHENNAI : While researching on Madras, I happened to read Vestiges of Old Madras, 12 years back. I found a lot of mention of left- and right-hand caste. Why did they manifest themselves so much during colonial rule? This intrigued me and I went through various documents like government-oriented manuscripts. The problem dates back to the 10th century,” begins KRA Narasiah, a well-known cultural enthusiast, writer and a historian. After a successful career as a naval officer, he wrote books like Madras: Tracing the Growth of the City since 1639. He presented a talk on the left- and right-hand castes recently at the Madras Literary Society.
The vertical binary division of Valangai (right hand) and Idangai (left hand) started in the 10th century. The classification and differentiation were predominantly based on profession and social structure. Historian KK Pillai wrote about the disputes in Tamil Nadu. There is a stone inscription that talks about it 1,000 years back. It narrates an incident where temples were demolished and burned due to caste dispute. “I chanced upon many authors while referring.
While some of them simplified the issue, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s book worked the best for me. He talks about imaginary and ethnoscapes in one of his essays. Professor John B Thompson talks about social imaginary in his book called Theory of ideology. The creative and symbolic dimension of the social world. It is the dimension through which human beings create their space of living together and a space for representing their collectives. This is a primary cause for left-hand right-hand caste division,” he said adding that the exact reasons for vertical division are not known.
Professor C S Srinivasachari was the first to present the paper on various complexities of these divisions. He talks about the violence between them in his paper for the Andhra Historical Research Society journal on the origin of left-and right-hand castes. He said, “The two main fractions were ready to fall out with each other at the smallest provocation as Orangemen (protestants) and Ribbonment (Catholics) in Ireland or the Montagues and Capulets of Verona.”
Meanwhile, temple inscriptions in Tiruvannamalai dating to 1418 and in Thiruvaiyaru from 1428 mention and left-and right-hand groups. It has a list of 98 such castes along with the restrictions and privileges enjoyed by each caste. Researcher Y Subbarayalu mentioned that the group existed since the time of the Cholas. During the 11th century when the Cholas returned after the war, they were given land. They called themselves valangai (right hand). Farmers with land were considered superior and called right-hand castes. On the other side, artisans and worksmen were under the left-hand caste.
A dispute in 1652-1653 resulted in major violence and the English divided the black town, originally the old native quarter and grew up outside the walls of Fort St George to the north, into east and west. The eastern portion was allotted to left-hand castes and the west to the right-hand castes. The classification kept evolving over the years.
In 1707, there was another major fight over using the streets in Pedda Naickan Peta and army was called in to control the groups. Following which there were several disputes in famous temples like Kapaleeswar and Parthasarathy. As time passed, the caste equation transformed with the changing economy.