Caldwell, Beschi, Ramasamy Naicker: The Unmaking of Hindu Dharma in Tamil Nadu

Bishop Robert Caldwell, the Church-ordained missionary, had nearly three centuries’ worth of past masters to guide him. But more than Nobili, it was his worthy successor, the Italian missionary Constantius Beschi who decisively changed the direction, focus, and tactics of harvesting Hindu souls in Tamil Nadu. Beschi is also the first European scholar of the Tamil language who elaborately delineated the distinction between “chaste” and “colloquial” Tamil and expounded in detail on Tamil classical literature. In the heydays of his violent, streetside Dravidian activism, EV Ramasamy Naicker issued a public declaration: “When we think of ourselves as Sudras, we accept ourselves as the sons of prostitutes.” The fact that he is still hailed as Periyar by a significant chunk in Tamil Nadu is deeply reflective of a celebration of cultural destruction. Sure enough, riots and arson erupted in various parts of Tamil Nadu at regular intervals during the first two and half decades of the twentieth century, all thanks to these brazen tactics of the Dravidianists.