Robert Caldwell - Wikiquote (2024)

Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a missionary for London Missionary Society. He arrived in India at age 24, and studied the local language to spread the word of the Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a text on comparative grammar of the South Indian languages. In his book, Caldwell proposed that there are Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the archaic Greek language, and the places named by Ptolemy.

• Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or the whole of its Sanskrit, and by dispensing with it, rise to a purer and more refined style . . . Of the entire number of words which are contained in this formula there is only one which could not be expressed with faultless propriety . . . in equivalent of pure Dravidian origin: that word is 'graven image' or 'idol'. Both word and thing are foreign to primitive Tamil usages and habits of thought; and were introduced into Tamil country by Brahmins, [along] with the Puranic system of religion and worship of idols.
  • quoted in Brook, Timothy, and Andre Schmid. Nation Work: Asian Elites and NationalIdentities. University of Michigan Press, 2000. quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

• it may be expected that the Dravidian mind will ere long be roused from its lethargy, and stimulated to enter upon a brighter career. If the national mind and heart were stirred to so great a degree a thousand years ago by the diffusion of Jainism . . . it is reasonable to expect still more important results from the propagation of the grand and soul-stirring truths of Christianity.
  • quoted in Brook, Timothy, and Andre Schmid. Nation Work: Asian Elites and NationalIdentities. University of Michigan Press, 2000. quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

• “Sanskrit has not disdained to borrow from its Dravidian neighbours…Tamil, the most highly cultivated ab intra of all Dravidian idioms can dispense with its Sanskrit…and not only stand alone, but flourish, without its aid…a Tamil poetical composition is regarded as…classical, not in proportion to the amount of Sanskrit it contains…but in proportion to its freedom from Sanskrit.”
  • quoted from [1]

• “You are of pure Dravidian race…I should like to see the pre-Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more...The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature as if it were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Cannarese [Kannada]. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as ‘nigg*rs,’ but they do not, like the proud speakers or writers of Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped up the Southern races as Rakshusas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions on Varna, Colour.”
  • quoted from [2]

• But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian race' was a missionary-scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814–91), an evangelist for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian race in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Race, which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidianists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in India before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryan. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstitions imposed by Aryans, Christian evangelization would reap the souls of Dravidians....
  His work had far-reaching consequences. It established the theological foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art-forms of South India. The concept of dissociating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization.
  • Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

• Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, in their work on the creation of identities in Asia, explain Caldwell's importance as the founder of today's Dravidian identity: It was through his Comparative Grammar (1856) that he systematically laid the foundation of Dravidian ideology . . . It was not so much the philological findings in the work that had such a profound impact, as the way Caldwell interpreted and expressed them in the lengthy introduction and appendix. He not only managed to erect a racial, linguistic, and religio-cultural divide between the minority Brahmin and majority non-Brahmin (Dravidian) population of South India, but also provided a systematic project for reclaiming and recovering an ancient and 'pure' Dravidian language and culture.
  • quoted in Brook, Timothy, and Andre Schmid. Nation Work: Asian Elites and NationalIdentities. University of Michigan Press, 2000. quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

• Dr Caldwell was a Christian missionary and although he has rendered some service to Tamil literature, still he cannot be said to be free from his Christian prejudice. 65
  • Sabaratna Mudaliar (1858–1922) examining the research of Caldwell on Saivite saints, Quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

• The general conviction underlying much Dravidian radicalism—that the subjection of non-Brahman Dravidian peoples and cultures was based on the Aryan conquest of the Dravidian south—was in large part an invention of Robert Caldwell. Caldwell, who labored for fifty years in the Tinnevelly Mission . . . like most other missonaries who had to justify the fact that they could only report conversions of the very lowest caste groups, was especially resentful of the Brahmans, who frustrated his effort to proselytize. . . . Caldwell's antipathy toward Brahmans . . . has secured a hallowed place in the citational structures and justificatory rhetorics of anti-Brahminism up to the present day.
  • Peter van der Veer . Quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

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