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Sociology of South Asia pp 235–265Cite as

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Of Tigers and Temples: The Jaffna Caste System in Transition During the Sri Lankan Civil War

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Abstract

The study of caste in northern Sri Lanka is distinctive from similar studies in India because the non-Brahmin Veḷḷāḷars are the socially, economically, and politically privileged and dominant endogamous group, not Brahmins. Centuries of Veḷḷāḷar supremacy in Tamil Sri Lanka were contested at the commencement of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) when the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) claimed to be the sole representative of the island’s ethnic Tamil minority. The LTTE was commanded by Velupillai Prabhakaran (1954–2009), who belonged to the non-dominant Karaiyār caste. This chapter looks at the transition of caste in Jaffna during the war based on ethnographic field research and interviews. Focusing primarily on LTTE militant rule and Hindu religious practices, it shows how this system evolved during the war but was not eliminated. Theoretically, it argues for the reconceptualization of caste stratification outside the framework of varṇa, as caste manifestation is affected and influenced contextually.

E. Valentine Daniel, Rachel McDermott, Amarnath Amarasingam, Francesca Bremner, Joel Lee, Smitha Radhakrishnan, and Gowri Vijayakumar read various drafts of this chapter and provided necessary modifications. Darshan Ambalavanar, Mark Balmforth, Victoria Gross, Kaori Hatsumi, Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Delon Madavan, John Rogers, Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran, Paramsothy Thanges, and Sharika Thiranagama pointed me in the right direction at one point in time or another and/or provided me with their own work for me to use. This research was partially funded by the Dissertation Research Award in Sri Lankan Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, the Dean’s Grant for Student Research, and the International & Transcultural Studies Summer Research Grant, both from Teachers College, Columbia University.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pfaffenberger (1994, 155) writes, “Jaffna’s Hindu revival movement … has long sought to ensure that the region’s shrines are constructed in strict accordance to medieval temple-building manuals called the Śaiva Āgamas. These texts, or so claimed the temple management, prohibit Untouchable temple entry.”

  2. 2.

    As this is a Tamil world, it is spelled a variety of ways in English academic literature, including Vellala or Vellalah.

  3. 3.

    According to the Dharmaśāstras, there are four hierarchical varṇas or “cosmogonic human social types”: Brāhmaṇa (priest), Kṣatriya (ruler), Vaiśya (commoners), and Śūdra (servant) (Marriott 2002, 1–3). The former three are considered dvija varṇas or “twice-born” (Pfaffenberger 1982, 7), while Śūdras and those outside the system of varṇa are only “once-born.”

  4. 4.

    Pulikaḷ in Tamil.

  5. 5.

    Iyakkam in Tamil.

  6. 6.

    In making this argument, I recognize the stark realities of life under authoritarian militancy (Thiranagama 2011) and am not positing an argument that condones militant rule. Rather, I analyze the social policy of caste under militant rule in a nuanced and multilayered environment.

  7. 7.

    Tamil word for temple sometimes spelled and pronounced as kōyil.

  8. 8.

    While used in some academic literature on Sri Lanka, Ambedkar’s term Dalit is not a common appellation for those formerly considered untouchable in Sri Lanka, nor is it a common term of self-identification by people from these communities.

  9. 9.

    The term “reservations” in India is akin to affirmative action in the United States.

  10. 10.

    McKim Marriott (2002, 1) refers to jāti as “one of the many thousands of marriage networks among South Asian families.”

  11. 11.

    In English transliteration from the Tamil original: Kallar, Maravar, Kaṉatākampaṭiyar mella mella vantu Veḷḷāḷar āvār. It is important to note that this Indian proverb applies analogically to the Jaffna experience but is not derived from the Jaffna experience as such.

  12. 12.

    Two very recent articles by Balmforth (2020) and Wickramasinghe and Schrikker (2019) look at the history of slavery in Jaffna.

  13. 13.

    In South India, the kuṭimai are known as the right-side castes and the aṭimai are known as the left-side castes (Pfaffenberger 1982, 38).

  14. 14.

    Described in detail by David (1972).

  15. 15.

    This can be correlated to Muslims in Sri Lanka, who speak Tamil as their mother tongue but do not identify as ethnic Tamils.

  16. 16.

    Indigenous people of Sri Lanka.

  17. 17.

    This view is not restricted to Jaffna Tamils. Other Sri Lankans view the Veddas in a similar light.

  18. 18.

    Original Dravidians. While āṭitirāviṭa is not a common term of self-identification in Jaffna, it is used by Indian Tamils in the Hill Country region of Sri Lanka (Balasundaram et al. 2009, 82) and by Dalits in Tamil Nadu.

  19. 19.

    “Minority Tamils” is a term Wickramasinghe (2006) and Pfaffenberger (1994) use to describe Pañcamars, as these castes used to form a minority within Veḷḷāḷar-dominated Jaffna Tamil society. I refrain from using this term in order to avoid confusion with the status of Tamils in general vis-à-vis the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka.

  20. 20.

    Described in detail by Pfaffenberger (1994). People from oppressed castes protested peacefully demanding temple entry at Maviddapuram, one of Jaffna’s most revered Āgamic Hindu shrines. Veḷḷāḷars retaliated with violence, causing riots. After the riots ended, temple doors all over the peninsula were gradually opened to the oppressed castes.

  21. 21.

    See Sangarasivam (2000) and Trawick (2007).

  22. 22.

    While many Sri Lankan Tamils fled to neighboring India as refugees, most have gone to western countries. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora has exponentially increased since 1983. George (2011, 459) estimates the number to be more than one million. Toronto has the largest number, with the diaspora population being at least 150,000 (465). Thiranagama (2011, 247) calls Colombo the “shadow diaspora,” as Tamils who have left the north and east were often in a transitional period of waiting while residing in Colombo, looking for any means to migrate abroad.

  23. 23.

    While much academic research has been published on the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, none specifically include caste compositions of communities. There is increasing research, however, on specific caste communities within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, most recently by Paramsothy (2018).

  24. 24.

    In 1990, the LTTE expelled Muslims in areas under their control in the Northern Province, including the Jaffna Peninsula. Thiranagama (2011) has written in detail about this and calls this process of ethnic cleansing “the Eviction.”

  25. 25.

    Marriott (1968) in intricate detail explains the correlation between caste ranking and food consumption. Typically, “higher” castes will not consume cooked food from “lower” castes.

  26. 26.

    A non-Āgamic version of the mother goddess.

  27. 27.

    While Māriyammaṉ temples are also run by non-Brahmin priests, this particular one was Veḷḷāḷar owned and Brahmin operated.

  28. 28.

    Hindu temples are often closed in the afternoons, particularly on weekdays, from about 12:00 to 16:00. This may be due to a combination of the fact that many devotees are at their day jobs and that this timeframe is considered somewhat inauspicious.

  29. 29.

    I use “normalcy” within quotes to bring attention to the fact that what is “normal” in postwar Tamil areas is not the same “normal” in other areas of the country. “Normal” to those interviewed meant the freedom of mobility without curfew restrictions, the availability of education and employment opportunities, the availability of the same products in shops and markets at the same prices as the rest of the country, and so on. There was still concern over the heavy military presence in the north, which was also linked to intimidation, harassment, and abuse both directly and indirectly experienced by inhabitants.

  30. 30.

    Non-Brahmin priests, often presiding over non-Āgamic temples dedicated to village deities.

  31. 31.

    Ambalavanar (2006, 392–393) attributes the decline to the efforts of Jaffna Caiva reformist Arumuga Navalar (1822–1879), who influenced the Sanskritized transformation of “large numbers” of Kaṇṇaki, Kāḷi, and Ammaṉ kōvils into orthodox Durga temples in the early twentieth century.

  32. 32.

    The EPDP is a paramilitary and political party that opposed the LTTE. During the war, they were linked to a number of disappearances and killings in the north. They tend to be unpopular with most Tamils and have faced criticism for being a part of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) during the war in 2009, which is seen as Sinhala nationalist and anti-Tamil, especially due to the government’s role in ending the war by killing thousands of Tamil civilians en masse.

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  1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Prashanth Kuganathan

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  1. Department of Sociology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA

    Smitha Radhakrishnan

  2. Department of Sociology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

    Gowri Vijayakumar

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Kuganathan, P. (2022). Of Tigers and Temples: The Jaffna Caste System in Transition During the Sri Lankan Civil War. In: Radhakrishnan, S., Vijayakumar, G. (eds) Sociology of South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97030-7_9

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