Kondaikatti Velaalar or Thondaimandala Mudaliar is a

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...

caste in south India. Historically, they were a caste of non-cultivating land-holders and some of them were administrators and military leaders under various south Indian dynasties. Their original homeland was Thondaimandalam and from there they spread to other areas in south India and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka during expansionist times. Since they historically used the ''

Mudaliar Mudaliar (alternatively spelled: Muthaliar, Mudali, Muthali, or Moodley ) is a Tamil title and surname. As title, it was historically given to high-ranking military officers and their descendants. The surname is most prevalent among Tamils from Tami ...

'' title, they are sometimes referred to as Thondaimandala Mudaliar. However,

Kathleen Gough Eleanor Kathleen Gough Aberle (16 August 1925 – 8 September 1990) was a British anthropologist and feminist who was known for her work in South Asia and South-East Asia. As a part of her doctorate work, she did field research in Malabar d ...

considers them to be a separate subcaste of the Thondaimandala Mudali, as does Susan Neild.

Etymology

The word ''Kondaikatti'' was used to denote someone who bound his hair up in a tuft on top of the head.

History

The Kondaikatti Velaalar are sons of the soil and natives of the

Thondaimandalam Tondaimandalam, also known as Tondai Nadu, is a historical region located in the southern part of Andhra Pradesh and northernmost part of Tamil Nadu. The region comprises the districts which formed a part of the legendary kingdom of Athondai Ch ...

country from time immemorial. During the colonial period,

Colin Mackenzie Colonel Colin Mackenzie CB (1754–8 May 1821) was Scottish army officer in the British East India Company who later became the first Surveyor General of India. He was a collector of antiquities and an orientalist. He surveyed southern India, ...

an officer with the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

who later became the first

Surveyor General of India The Surveyor General of India is the Head of Department of Survey of India, A department under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Government of India. The Surveyor General is also the most senior member of the Survey of India Service, an org ...

collated the history of south India from inscriptions, oral traditions among other evidences and recorded them into what is now known as the ''Mackenzie Manuscripts''. As per these records, the Velalar settlement of Thondaimandalam is attributed to a king known variously as Adondai Cholan and Adondai Chakravarti. According to these records and the Velalar Puranas, the Kondaikatti Velalar were already residing in Thondaimandalam and were found by Adondai when he arrived there from the Chola country. Velaalar in the ancient

society were of two kinds, the ''Uzhuthunbor'' or those who eat by ploughing their fields and the ''Uzhuvithunbor'', that is those who ate by getting their fields ploughed by tenant cultivators. The Kondaikatti Velaalar and the Kaarukaatha Velaalar belonged to the latter group, that is they were landlords at least from the ninth century onwards and until the fall of the

Chola The Chola dynasty was a Tamils, Tamil thalassocratic Tamil Dynasties, empire of southern India and one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the history of the world. The earliest datable references to the Chola are from inscriptions dated ...

empire.

British Colonial period

During the Colonial era, this landed gentry were known as

Mirasidars The Madras Presidency, or the Presidency of Fort St. George, also known as Madras Province, was an Presidencies and provinces of British India, administrative subdivision (presidency) of British India. At its greatest extent, the presidency in ...

, named after the

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Jagir A jagir ( fa, , translit=Jāgir), also spelled as jageer, was a type of feudal land grant in the Indian subcontinent at the foundation of its Jagirdar (Zamindar) system. It developed during the Islamic rule era of the Indian subcontinent, start ...

'', that is the agrarian area of the

region, in the late eighteenth century (1782 CE), these Mirasidars and Dubashes put up a sustained and effective fight to thwart British attempts to control and collect taxes from this region. Historian

Eugene Irschick Eugene F. Irschick is an American historian. He is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley since 1978. Biography Irschick, a 1951 graduate of the Kodaikanal School, earned his B.A. Honors in History with minor in Religi ...

who did a study on the nature of the political society of the Thondaimandalam region between 1795 CE and 1895 CE notes: Many of these Kondaikatti vellala Dubashes were connected by kinship to Kondaikatti vellala Mirasdars in the Poonamallee and other rural areas of the Jagir. In contemporary documents these Kondaikattis were knowns as Mudalis-later lengthened to "Mudaliyar"-a term that literally meant a person of first rank. However, in the view of many of the Company officers, the term "Mudali" carried a pejorative meaning. Mudalis were despised by the British because they were considered both essential actors and great threats to individual British and Company operations. As a direct result of this confrontation and hostile British policy, many of the Kondaikatti Velaalar were persecuted and eventually lost their ''mirasi'' rights and ownership of their lands. They were systematically replaced by tenants from other castes who were essentially outsiders and strangers to the Thondaimandalam country. Those tenants who were amenable to British rule and who were willing to abide by British taxation laws were gradually given more rights from the time of tax collector Lionel Place (1794 CE) and were eventually made Mirasidars. Since the taxes were directly proportional to the produce, the British also deemed all uncultivated land regardless of ownership as Company property and redistributed these lands to those who were willing to cultivate and pay taxes .

Caste structure

The caste is divided into a number of unranked patrilineal exogamous clans called

gotra In Hindu culture, the term gotra (Sanskrit: गोत्र) is considered to be equivalent to lineage. It broadly refers to people who are descendants in an unbroken male line from a common male ancestor or patriline. Generally, the gotra fo ...

s. In addition, the caste is composed of four hierarchically ranked endogamous units called ''Vakaiyaras'' (varieties or kindreds). The members belonging to the higher Vakaiyaras will not interdine, intermarry or accept food or water from the lower Vakaiyaras. The Vakaiyaras comprise the same gotras and span across multiple village clusters. In the late 1920s, the more progressive members advocated the abrogation of the Vakaiyara system and after much deliberation, the caste passed a resolution to drop it.

Religion

The Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally

Jain Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

s. The larger Saiva Velaalar social group, to which the Kondaikatti Velaalar belong, are also believed to have been Jainas before they embraced

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...

. The

Tamil Jain Tamil Jains (Tamil Samaṇar, from Prakrit '' samaṇa'' "wandering renunciate") are Tamils from Tamil Nadu, India, who practice Jainism (Tamil ). The Tamil Jain is a microcommunity of around 85,000 (around 0.13% of the population of Tamil Nad ...

s refer to the Saiva Velaalar as ''nīr-pūci-nayinārs'' or ''nīr-pūci-vellalars'' meaning the Jains (''Nayinars'') who left Jainism and adopted

Shaivism Shaivism (; sa, शैवसम्प्रदायः, Śaivasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu traditions, which worships Shiva as the Supreme Being. One of the largest Hindu denominations, it incorporates many sub-traditions rangi ...

by smearing (''pūci'') the sacred ash or ''(tiru)-nīru''.

Varna Classification

During the British colonial period, the Vellalars who were land owners and tillers of the soil and held offices pertaining to land, were ranked as Sat- Sudra in the 1901 census; with the Government of Madras recognising that the 4-fold division (four varnas) did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately. While the

Shudra Shudra or ''Shoodra'' (Sanskrit: ') is one of the four '' varnas'' of the Hindu caste system and social order in ancient India. Various sources translate it into English as a caste, or alternatively as a social class. Theoretically, class ser ...

s are described as the slaves of the other three

Varna Varna may refer to: Places Europe *Varna, Bulgaria, a city in Bulgaria **Varna Province **Varna Municipality ** Gulf of Varna **Lake Varna **Varna Necropolis *Vahrn, or Varna, a municipality in Italy *Varniai, a city in Lithuania * Varna (Šaba ...

, the Vellalas are not described in such terms in the Tolkappiyam(''Velaan Maanthar'') or in other

Sangam literature The Sangam literature (Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam'';) historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cāṉṟōr ceyyuḷ'') connotes ...

. Moreover, the Varna system is essentially a

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

classification system that categorises people hierarchically whereas the Kondaikatti Velaalar were originally

s. Dr. Kamala Ganesh, former Professor and Head of Department of

Sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

at the University of Mumbai, states in her research that the Varna classification does not apply to certain sections like the Kondaikatti Velaalar. She further notes: "Barnett's detailed work (1970) on the Kondaikatti Vellalas defines them, both transactionally and attributionally, as a combination of the brahmanical and kshatriya models. This finding reflects a historically established fact, viz., in South India, vegetarian Vellalas, a sizeable and influential segment of the population do not fit into the four varna scheme and have constituted what could perhaps be called a parallel classical tradition which is both distinct from and overlaps with the orthodox sanskritic tradition." The Kondaikatti Velaalar are one of the six ancient vegetarian Velaalar castes of Tamil nadu.

Caste-based Reservation Status

The Kondaikatti Velaalar do not avail any benefits under the reservation quota for

Backward castes The Other Backward Class is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally or socially backward. It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with General castes, S ...

Notable people

* Sir P. T. Rajan, politician and former Chief Minister of Madras Presidency. *

Palanivel Thiagarajan Palanivel Thiagarajan (PTR) is an Indian politician and the current Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu. He was elected to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election in 2016 and 2021 from Madurai Central. Early life He is the son of the late P ...

, present Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu. * C. N. Muthuranga Mudaliar, former politician and Independence activist. * M. Bhakthavatsalam, politician and former Chief Minister of Madras state. *

Sarojini Varadappan Sarojini Varadappan (21 September 1921 − 17 October 2013) was an Indian social worker from the state of Tamil Nadu. She was the daughter of former Chief Minister of Madras, M. Bhaktavatsalam. Early life Sarojini was born in Madras on 21 S ...

, social activist. *

Jayanthi Natarajan Jayanthi Natarajan (born 7 June 1954) is an Indian lawyer and politician. She was a member of the Indian National Congress and has been thrice elected Member of Parliament representing the state of Tamil Nadu in the Rajya Sabha. From July 2011 ...

, former Minister and Member of Parliament, Tamil Nadu. * M. B. Nirmal, founder and chairman of

Exnora International Exnora International is a non-governmental environmental service organization started in 1989 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, by M. B. Nirmal, a social activist. It focuses on preserving nature and preventing environmental degradation. The nam ...

References

Notes Citations Bibliography * * * * * * * * * * * * * *{{cite book, title=Farmers of India, Band 2, author=Indian Council of Agricultural Research, publisher=Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1961 Vellalar Social groups of Tamil Nadu Indian castes