CHENNAI: In 2018, Thuvaraha Rangaroopan, then a final year ancient history student in England, chanced upon a dozen Asian history pages on Instagram. Wanting to join the trend, she wondered what she could post about. She didn’t have to look far — her own lived experiences were a rich source. As a young person of the Eelam Tamil diaspora, Thuvaraha always felt alienated from her roots.
“Growing up in the diaspora, it was hard to find a space where I could learn about my history — one that wasn’t submerged in nationalistic politics and conspiracy theories,” she says. Being unable to access texts in Tamil, too, was a hardship. Thus began her quest to curate research on the undocumented past of Tamil people through Instagram using academic and scholarly sources in English.
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The title of Thuvaraha’s Instagram page ‘dravidaarasi’ is a nod to both her roots and specialised interests. The page, which has 12.3k followers, features over 190 posts shedding light on the complex ethno-linguistic origins of groups who largely do not have written histories. A post on Rowthers, a sub-group of Tamil Muslims, is a case in point. It attempts to trace their ethnic origins, and finds links between their etymology (‘Irauttar’ meaning horse) and their occupation as horse merchants.
The people featured include Tamils from Sri Lanka, the Dongria Kondh of Odisha (they speak Kui, a South-Eastern Dravidian language), the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka, and Brahui (another Dravidian language) speakers of Balochistan. In an Instagram reel, the aspiring historian even points out Dravidian languages and their sub-groups. “I’m very interested in the history of the Dravidian language family and all its speakers,” says the 26-year-old History teacher, referring to the nearly 80 language varieties (including dialects) that form the family.
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Expressions of identity
Literary works are additional sources Thuvaraha draws from, to explore ancient cultures. For instance, “If they see breasts and long hair coming, they call it a woman; if they see beards and whiskers, they call it man; but look, the self that hovers in between is neither man nor woman, O Ramanatha”, written by mid-11th century Kannada poet Dasimayya, appear on the ‘dravidaarasi’ feed. These poems reiterate that gender is a social construct, says Thuvaraha. The theme of female sexuality, too, abounds on her page. “I share poems from Bhakti literature to show how women poets of yore wrote about the female body,” mentions Thuvaraha. Queer people and women comprise majority of the page’s followers, she says.
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Undertones of transsexuality in mythological tales find a place on the page. “The birth of princess Alli in the Tamil folk ballad Alliyarasanimalai happens when the flesh of Goddess Meenakshi is cast in a lily pond. And this is how the mother tells the Pandiyan kings to raise her child: “On the lily is a beautiful son — it is both male and female. Carry it”, keeping Alli’s gender identity ambiguous,” says Thuvaraha. The ‘dravidaarasi’ page at its core is about the identity spectrum — linguistic, ethnic, cultural, gender, sexual, and geographic. Thuvaraha describes identities to be a way of self-categorisation. “Even with my Tamil identity, I would still classify myself as Eelam Tamil, not merely Tamil. Tamil communities in Singapore, Malaysia, and South Africa, too, take pride in their unique Tamil identity. I’ve never felt the need to make sense of whether I identify more as a Dravidian or as a Tamil — they are just different sides of a dice to me,” she explains.
Diaspora dilemma
Identities can also be a burden, particularly for a people who have faced extended persecution. Young women in diaspora communities are often tasked with preserving the culture of the land they left behind. “Growing up, we diaspora women were caught between our cultures and of the West. Our family members, particularly women, constantly told us what Tamil women could and could not do,” she reveals. In a post critiquing this cultural policing, Thuvaraha says, “Many of us today have begun to reshape our relationship with our culture in a way that fits our own identities... Recognising Tamil women as individuals rather than cultural markers/bearers means releasing the control culture has over our lives.”
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Speaking of the past through stories is a way of reconciling suffering for communities. This form of collective healing is at the heart of the young Eelam Tamil woman’s endeavours. “For me, reclaiming my heritage is a way of acknowledging and healing the trauma my community has endured. It’s how we are reconnecting with our roots and homeland on our own terms,” concludes Thuvaraha.
Visit Instagram page: @dravidaarasi