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The weltanschauung of the Dravidian movement was that the Dravidians, the folk of South India, were systematically expropriated and enslaved by Brahmins and their ideology of Brahminical superiority, which they — originally migrants from north India — derived from the Sanskrit texts of north Indian Hindu injunctive scripture. The Dravidian movement was anti-Brahmin; anti-Sanskrit, the language of Brahminism; anti-north India, the homeland of Brahmins and Brahminism; and anti-Hindi, the Sanskrit-derived language of north India. For the first decade or so of Indian independence, the Dravidian movement was secessionist.[1]Thanks for the A2A, Sagar. This is a long-ass answer.This ‘contest’ over the supremacy and/or antiquity of the Sanskrit and Tamil languages can be attributed to Dravidian politics and the political parties that espouse the divisive ideology of ‘Dravidian Nationalism’. Mutual respect for one another’s beliefs, languages and culture is an important aspect of living in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, pluralistic nation-state. Sadly, some of us forget this tenet.Ever since the start of the Dravidian movement and the Dravidian Self-Respect Movement in the Madras Presidency in the early 20th century, the political mainstream in Tamil-speaking lands became entrenched with Hinduphobia, anti-Brahminism, linguistic jingoism and anti-Hindi rhetoric. Obviously, not all Tamilians are ‘Dravidian’ jingoists, but the Dravidian parties have almost always dominated the political terrain in pre-independence Madras Province and post-independence Tamil Nadu, drowning out the voices of more inclusive Tamil people and political organisations. This dominant ‘Dravidian’ voice has seeped from the political discourse into popular imagination.The differences between the North and South are very much real, yet much of the animosity and aversion between the two regions is relatively recent and due to historical myth rather than reality. Some European historians and philologists such as Sir John Marshall, George Uglow Pope and Robert Caldwell, in their research and hypotheses provided the basis for a regional historical mythos, which goes back to the days of former power and glory. Dravidian ideology reconstructs history from scanty resources and ample conjecture, recalling an antiquity dating from the Indus Valley Civilisation to the powerful Tamil kingdoms of the South.The Dravidian movement — which seemingly stood for championing the lofty ideals of self-respect, social and economic equality, upliftment of the downtrodden, women’s rights, socialism, atheism and Russellian rationalism — found its way into politics of a foul nature.Brahmins, who were the erstwhile Indian priestly class and who are currently in no way numerically and politically significant in India, and Sanskrit, a language used in liturgy, high culture and secular literature, were targeted and portrayed by the proponents of Dravidian ideology as oppressive and discriminatory against the so-called ‘lower castes’. The Dravidian ideology resulted in the alienation of Brahmins and North Indians in Tamil-speaking lands. North Indians and Tamil Brahmins were (and in some cases, still are) viewed with suspicion & contempt, and were (are?) accused of allegedly imposing their language and culture in an apparent bid to undermine Dravidian/Tamil supremacy.The fierce anti-Brahmin stance of the Dravidian parties post-Independence also led to an exodus of Tamil brahmins from the state of Tamil Nadu from the 1970s to the 1990s.Ironically, most of the men who spearheaded early Dravidian politics were neither poor and nor were they from the lower socio-economic strata of society. Some were not even born in Tamil-speaking families. The Dravidian movement wasn’t a grassroots movement either, although some would like to give it that hue. The pro-British Justice Party, or the South Indian Liberation Federation, was created for the sole purpose of ending Brahmin domination in the politics and civil services of British India’s Madras Presidency. It would be delusional not to call the Justice Party an elite affair presided over by the ‘middle’ castes. One of its co-founders was a lawyer and an industrialist. Another co-founder was a well-settled Nair, who quit the Indian National Congress after his electoral defeat in 1916 and accused the Congress of harbouring caste-based prejudices. The third co-founder was a Mudaliar, from a non-Brahmin family of feudal landlords. Two of the Justice Party’s Presidents were wealthy zamindars (landholders) — the Raja of Panagal and the Raja of Bobbili. The Justice Party and its offshoots — the newly-formed ‘Dravidian parties’ — were also hostile to the Indian Home Rule movement, MK Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and the Indian National Congress.‘Dravidian’ has never been a racial or a separate anti-‘Aryan’/anti-North Indian cultural identity. It is purely a political identity legitimised by the vague and highly suspect narratives of the “Aryan” Brahmin’s 2000 year-old suppression of the “Dravidian” non-Brahmin by supposed denial of education and other opportunities. This narrative, which is based on conjecture alone, is never questioned and is always assumed to be real.I would like to address a few things regarding the anti-Brahmin narrative of the Dravidian ideology and some other issues mentioned in another answer on this thread.1 — Some pointers about the Hindu caste system’s transformation in the Mughal & Colonial period and the idea of ‘Sanskritisation’There are two terms — varṇa and jāti — which are sometimes used interchangeably. However, these words do not mean the same thing. The Indic varṇa system is perhaps an example of what Dumézil called “Trifunctionalism”. While Dumézil, at the time, limited this organisation of a society along three functional lines to only Indo-European societies, examples of such social arrangements exist in non-Indo-European societies too. These three functions were:Sovereignty — over both the temporal and spiritual realms. Temporal sovereignty was one of order or political organisation, concerning law, the State and administration. The sovereignty over the spiritual or the supernatural was otherworldly, wild, sometimes violent and unpredictable (like nature) and also creative. Sovereignty was also highly ritualistic.Military — connected with force, violence and war.Productivity — herding, farming, crafts, mercantilism or trade, and other activities or services that were necessary for the generation of wealth and resources.The Indo-Europeans had Gods whose functions corresponded with these three functions as well. Trifunctionalism, believed Dumézil, pervaded all aspects of Indo-European life — worldview, mythology, theology, political thought, cosmology and social life.The Indo-Europeans’ gods of the first function tend to include one god who falls into each of these two categories. One is a “magician-creator” who rules “by virtue of [his] creative violence,” while the other is a “jurist-organizer” who rules “by virtue of [his] organizing wisdom.” The two types of sovereign gods form an “antithesis,” but complement one another rather than being in conflict.The second function “carries the trait of physical force in all its manifestations, from energy, to heroism, to courage.” Its “insatiable champions… vanquish demons and save the universe.” In human society, the second function is the class of warriors, who carry out the orders of the first class and fight on behalf of their people. The gods of the second function are warriors whose intellectual abilities are inferior to those of the first, but who possess the necessary strength to actually put the decisions of the intellectual gods into action.The third function “is the generative function. It is the domain of the healers, of youth, of luxury, of fecundity, of prosperity; also the domain of the healing gods, the patron deities of goods, of opulence – and also of the ‘people,’ as opposed to the small number of warriors and kings.” The third function’s human social class consists of the farmers, herders, and other “common people” engaged in productive physical labor, who provide the goods necessary for the sustenance of themselves and of the rest of society. Its gods are those who preside over fertility, abundance, and peace. They tend to be simple but wealthy and fun-loving.The Indo-European vision of a smoothly functioning world required an ‘organization’ in which the representatives of the first function commanded, the second fought for and defended the community, and the third (the greatest number of them) worked and were productive. In their eyes, it was in this hierarchy that one found the harmony necessary to the proper functioning of the cosmos, as well as that of the society. It’s an Indo-European version of the ‘social contract.’Dumézil’s theory isn’t perfect but it does offer some necessary understanding on how ancient societies probably functioned.The origin of the four social orders or the varṇas is usually traced to the Puruṣa sūkta (RV X.90) and is thus said to have had ‘religious sanction’:When they divided Purusa how many portions did they make?What do they call his mouth, his arms? What do they call his thighs and feet?The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rajanya made.His thighs became the Vaisya, from his feet the Sudra was produced.[2]Remember that the Vedic texts do not mention the concept of untouchable people nor do they mention any practice of untouchability. Some Vedic rituals, at some point, ask the nobleman or the king to eat from the same vessel , along with the commoner-subject.[3]The caste system goes beyond mere socio-economic stratification, in that it is based more on ever-changing kinship and clan affiliations than on just some permanent social hierarchy with little or no opportunities for advancement. One must also consider the role of sacral kingship in early Vedic society and the fact that there is no fixed ‘caste-origin’ theory.… the caste system [is] an ever-evolving social reality that can only be properly understood by the study of historical evidence of actual practice and the examination of verifiable circumstances in the economic, political and material history of India.[4]19th century and 20th century scholarship on the Indian caste system was more or less based on Louis Dumont’s “structuralism”. It was Dumont who was one of the few people who described what is now popularly known as ‘Sanskritization’. The sociologist MN Srinivas, who later coined the term, had this to say:The caste system is far from a rigid system in which the position of each component caste is fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible, and especially in the middle regions of the hierarchy. A caste was able, in a generation or two, to rise to a higher position in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, and by Sanskritising its ritual and pantheon. In short, it took over, as far as possible, the customs, rites, and beliefs of the Brahmins, and adoption of the Brahminic way of life by a low caste seems to have been frequent, though theoretically forbidden. This process has been called 'Sanskritisation' in this book, in preference to 'Brahminisation', as certain Vedic rites are confined to the Brahmins and the two other 'twice-born' castes.[5]This definition (if you can call it that) of Sanskritisation, in and of itself, indicates in the strongest of terms that there was opportunity for ‘upward mobility’ in the caste system. One should not forget that even a cursory reading of the various Dharma-sūtras and Dharma-śāstras would show that in addition to this ‘upward mobility’, there were also several ways by which an individual from the ‘higher’ castes could lose their caste-status and fall from grace.In another book, Srinivas adds:Sanskritisation is a profound and many-sided cultural process … Village goddesses in most parts of India have been identified with Shakti, who is in turn a manifestation of Parvati, the wife of Shiva. The cobra deity is identified in South India with Subrahmanya, the warrior son of Shiva. The Kaveri river is identified with the Ganga. Rama and Buddha are both regarded as avatars of Vishnu, and so on.[6]By this definition(?), Sanskritisation seems to be a process that has more to do with a broad, inclusive encompassing of non-Vedic cultures and peoples, rather than supposed domination over them.Patrick Olivelle, known for his works on Vedic literature, Dharma-sūtras and Dharma-śāstras, states that ancient and medieval Indian texts do not support the permanent ritual pollution and the premise of ‘purity’ (śuci) and ‘impurity’ (mālinya), which are pretty much implied in Dumont’s theory. While ‘purity-impurity’ is discussed in the Dharma-śāstra texts, it is only in the context of an individual's moral, ritual and biological pollution. There are no instances when a term of pure/impure is used with reference to a group of individuals or a varṇa or caste. Mention of impurity in Śāstra texts from the 1st millennium CE is about people who commit grievous crimes and thereby fall out of their varṇa. These "fallen people" are considered impure in the medieval Indian texts. The texts call for these people to be ostracised. Olivelle says that most of the matters relating to ‘purity’/’impurity’ in the Dharma-śāstra texts concern "individuals irrespective of their varṇa affiliation" and all four varṇas could attain ‘purity’ or ‘impurity’ by virtue of their character, actions, ethics, intent, innocence, ignorance and ritualistic behaviours. [7]In a revised second edition of his book on the Indian caste system, Dumont acknowledged the fact that the ancient varṇa system was not based on some ‘purity-impurity’ ranking principle.[8]How, then, did the caste system transform into what it has become today?There are, of course, several opinions and theories on how, when and why the caste system, as it exists today, developed. The general consensus points towards the fact that this complex system evolved over time from a fluid, dynamic, organic system in Ancient and Classical India into a crystallised, rigid, disparate system in Late Medieval and Early Modern India.I will list out the opinions of some of the scholars here.We do know that, under the Islamic sultanates of medieval India, caste descent and social stratification were used as tools of tax collection and governance.[9]The anthropologist Susan Bayly states that the jāti system emerged because it was advantageous in a pre-Independence society plagued with an unpredictable political environment, poverty, economic insecurity and absolute lack of institutional human rights.[10]Bayly further writes[11]:…until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance as a source of corporate and individual lifestyles. This would include much of Bengal, the Punjab and Southern India, as well as the far northwest and the central Deccan plain… Even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland of Gangetic upper India, the institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early eighteenth century - that is the period of collapse of Mughal period and the expansion of western power in the subcontinent.She observes that "caste is not and never has been a fixed fact of Indian life" and the caste system as we know it today, which is a "ritualised scheme of social stratification," evolved in two phases in the post-Mughal era, in 18th and early 19th century. Three sets of value played a significant role in this development, according to Bayly: priestly hierarchy, kingship, and armed ascetics.[12]With the Mughal empire in a state of array and disintegration in the 18th century, the regional post-Mughal ruling elite and new dynasties from varied religious, geographical and linguistic backgrounds tried to assert their power in different parts of India. [13]What happened in the initial phase of this two-stage sequence was the rise of the royal man of prowess. In this period, both kings and the priests and ascetics with whom men of power were able to associate their rule became a growing focus for the affirmation of a martial and regal form of caste ideal. (...) The other key feature of this period was the reshaping of many apparently casteless forms of devotional faith in a direction which further affirmed these differentiations of rank and community.[14]…. strategies of collective classing and ranking proved particularly valuable in circumstances where state power was fluid or insecure, and where large numbers of people had to adjust to the unpredictable in their everyday environments.[15]Dipankar Gupta opines that the various guilds (śreṇis) which developed during the Mauryan era solidified into jātis with members of the guild becoming specialists in one or more related occupations. There were no hierarchies or rankings, however, in how society was then organised and there was no strict separation of these social orders either. With the emergence of ‘feudalism’ (or rather, quasi-feudalism IMO) in India, the social orders finally became rigid during the 7–12th centuries.[16]There are other scholars as well who trace the formation of the rigid caste system to the Mughal and Colonial era.Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf write[17]:One of the surprising arguments of fresh scholarship, based on inscriptional and other contemporaneous evidence, is that until relatively recent centuries, social organisation in much of the subcontinent was little touched by the four normative hierarchic categories (varṇas)… Nor were subcastes or jāti (endogamous groups idenitified by varṇas) the building blocks of society. A major stimulus to the use of the Sanskrit categories appears to have been the claims of aspiring dynasts in the Mughal period, who as parvenu kshatriya, in turn identified peasants and soldiery as ranked groups, giving new meanings to old titles that earlier had had only loose regional or occupational meaning.…[instance] of kingly social mobility is that of Shivaji Bhonsle, the pivotal figure in the Maratha insurgency that so plagued Aurangzeb in the Deccan. Shivaji was of cultivator background, from peoples known in western India as Marathas. By the sixteenth century, the term ‘Maratha’ had acquired greater respectability …… the term Rajput had become the symbol of legitimate kshatriya rule … Shivaji [was] determined to acquire that status for himself. He recruited a learned Brahman, … [who] with other Brahmans, provided Shivaji with the ritual genealogical services that legitimized him as a descendant of warrior forebears.Coming to Tamil Nadu, Leslie C. Orr writes:Chola period inscriptions challenge our ideas not only about the situation and activity of women but also about the structuring of society in general. In contrast to what Brahmanical legal texts may lead us to expect, we do not find that caste is the organising principle of society or that boundaries between different social groups is sharply demarcated.[18]In Tamil Nadu the Vellalar (a landholding gentry) were, during the ancient and medieval period, the elite caste who were major patrons of literature.[19][20]They ranked equal to, if not higher than, the Brahmins in the social hierarchy.[21]En masse conversion theories of ‘lower castes’ into Islam under the rule of Delhi Sultans and the Mughal Emperors was not based on historical proof or verifiable sources, but by personal agendas and assumptions of Muslim historians about Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Conversions corroborated by historical evidence shows that the few who did convert to Islam were Brahmins.[22][23]Richard Eaton states:Looking at Bengal's Hindu society as a whole, it seems likely that the caste system – far from being the ancient and unchanging essence of Indian civilisation as supposed by generations of Orientalists – emerged into something resembling its modern form only in the period 1200 – 1500. Central to this process, as Ronald Inden has argued was the collapse of Hindu kingship.[24]The 18th and 19th centuries brought colonialism, race science and Christian evangelism to India. This, undoubtedly, brought about a huge change in how caste was seen and how people identified with their caste. The modern caste system was a result of political (often violent) struggles and processes, very much like the modern Indian republic, the modern Indian society and the modern Indian outlook of life.…the colonial intervention…actively removed the politics from colonial societies. It was not merely convenient for the British to detach caste from politics; it was necessary for them to do so in order to rule an immensely complex society by a variety of indirect means. But caste--now disembodied from its former political contexts--lived on. In this dissociated form it was appropriated, and reconstructed, by the British. Paradoxically, they were able to change caste only because caste in fact continued to be permeable to political influence.The study of the history of Orientalism not only reveals clearly the participation of early knowledge about India in the project of conquest and control, it also helps to document some of the most critical aspects of the colonial enterprise in India, an enterprise that was part of the more general documentation and certification project of the nation/colonial state discussed above.—- THE INVENTION OF CASTE: CIVIL SOCIETY IN COLONIAL INDIA by Nicholas B. DirksAnd surprise, surprise! This immense documentation and certification project continues to this day in India.Colin Mackenzie, an admirable British social historian of his time, amassed great numbers of texts and inscriptions on Indian religions, traditions, culture and local histories & narratives from the Deccan and southern India. This vast collection of writings and Mackenzie's own works have very little on caste system in 18th-century India. There are arguably major distinctions between the ethnography of India as envisioned by Mackenzie and some of his peers and the ethnography of India that became sanctioned in the 19th century.[25]Under the colonial regime, the caste system and caste organisation truly became a pivotal mechanism for administration, early forms of such a system already having been utilised in the Medieval period.In the 1881 census and thereafter, colonial ethnographers used caste (jāti) headings, to count and classify people. The 1891 census included 60 sub-groups, each of which were further divided into six occupational and racial categories; these numbers increased in later censuses.Colonial administrator Herbert Hope Risley was an ethnographer and a colonial administrator in British India. A missionary for race science, Risley used the ratio of the width of the nose to its height to divide Indians into the Aryan and Dravidian races; the Indian castes were also divided into seven racial types. Risley formally applied the caste system into the 1901 census, which further cemented caste divide in Indian society and politics.The map of the prevailing "races" of India, based on the 1901 Census of British India | Image from Wikimedia CommonsThe colonial-era census gave birth to ‘caste tables’, which ranked, standardised and cross-referenced jāti indexes for Indians on lines similar to Western classifications in the sciences of zoology and botany. These ‘caste tables’ aimed to determine who was superior to whom by virtue of their supposed purity, occupational origins and the caste’s collective moral worth. Some British officials criticised these exercises of zoological grouping as being little more than a caricature. British colonial officials used this list of census-driven jātis to decide which group of people were qualified for which jobs in the colonial army and government, people of which jātis were to be excluded as unreliable and people of which jātis were to be segregated as criminals.[26]These categorisations were also utilised in the late 19th century and early 20th century, to formulate land tax rates and to often profile and target some social groups as "criminal" castes and castes prone to "rebellion".[27]For instance, the Criminal Tribes Act declared everyone belonging to certain castes to be born with criminal tendencies, be they man, woman, child, aged or even newborn babes. The ‘criminal-by-birth’ castes under this Act initially included Ahirs, Gurjars and Jats, but its enforcement and expansion by the late 19th century led to the inclusion of most shūdras, Chamars, Sannyasis and hill tribes. Castes who practised martial arts, such as the Kallars and Mukkulathor in South India, were included in this list too. Entire caste groups were presumed to be guilty of crime by birth. People were arrested, children were separated from their parents, ‘criminals’ were held in penal colonies or quarantined without conviction or due process. Hundreds of Hindu communities were inserted into the Criminal Tribes Act. By 1931, the colonial government had included 237 criminal castes and tribes in Madras Presidency alone. Also see: The agony of StuartpuramThe Land Alienation Act in 1900 and Punjab Pre-Emption Act in 1913 listed castes that could legally own land and denied equivalent property rights to other census-determined ‘unreliable’ castes. These laws further prohibited the inter-generational and intra-generational transfer of land from land-owning castes to any non-agricultural castes. This prevented economic mobility of property and stunted economic growth, all the while preventing upward social mobility of castes and creating consequent caste barriers in India.Britain's own rigid class system provided the British with a model for understanding Indian society and Indian castes. Indian castes were often equated with British social classes, often viewing caste identities as a hint for occupation, social status and intellect.[28][29]Caste, as it is known today, is a modern construct. It is the offspring of a nearly 200-year long abusive relationship between India and colonial rule.All in all, one must not be too hasty in pinning blame for social evils on one particular language or people. Language is a tool of communication, used to communicate identity, ideas and culture; it is not a tool of subjugation. However, ideologies, like the Dravidian ideology or Nazism or Communism, may perhaps be used as tools of subjugation and social & political discord.2 — The antiquity of the Sanskrit and Tamil languagesI’ll just quote Wikipedia on this.Sanskrit - Wikipedia:Sanskrit (/ˈsænskrɪt/; IAST: Saṃskṛtam [sə̃skr̩t̪əm] [note 1] , Sanskrit: संस्कृतम्) is a language of ancient India with a documented history of nearly 3,500 years. [6] [7] [8] It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism; the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophyas well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its various variants and dialects, was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India. [9] [10] [11]Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in a form known as the Vedic Sanskrit, with the Rigveda as the earliest surviving text. A more refined and an exact grammatical form called the Classical Sanskrit emerged in mid-1st millennium BCE with the Aṣṭādhyāyītreatise of Pāṇini. [6] Sanskrit, though not necessarily Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit languages. [22] Examples include numerous modern daughter Northern Indian subcontinental languages such as Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi. [23] [24] [25]Tamil language - Wikipedia:Tamil is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. [16] [17] It is stated as 20th in the Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages worldwide. [18] Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur [19] and 2,200-year-old Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions have been found on Samanamalai. [20]A recorded Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years. [25] The earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca. 300 BC – AD 300. [26] [27]Now, proto-Tamil or proto-Dravidian isn’t the Tamil that is spoken today, just the same as Sanskrit is not the same as PIE or the proto-Indo-Iranian language which branched out to become Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit. Modern Tamil has a lot of loanwords and colloquialisms from other languages like Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, etc. Its phonology is different too.Debates on this are usually a quagmire.3 — Standardisation and codification of languageClaiming that standardisation of language — which mainly involves codification and authorisation of a particular form of grammar & dictionaries, a confirmed conventional way of spelling & pronunciation and public approval of these standards — is a way of subjugating a certain part of the populace, is quite absurd, IMO.In fact, Tamil has the second-longest history of standardisation in the Indian subcontinent, , having been codified by the author of Tolkāppiyam (written between the 3rd century BCE and the 5th century CE). The current standard written form of Tamil has been in use for roughly the past 700 years (Nannūl was written around the 13th century).In 1978, the government of Tamilnadu reformed some syllables of the modern Tamil script; does that count as subjugation? EV Ramaswamy, of the Dravidian Self-Respect Movement fame, headed a Script Reform Committee in 1947, whose recommendations were accepted by the Tamilnadu government in 1951.Interested readers may read these links:https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/Standardization.pdfStandardization of lexical usages in Tamil: a sociolinguistic study4 — ‘Aryans’ in ancient Tamil landsTamil traditions trace the Tamil language to the venerable sage Agastya. He is regarded as the father of Tamil and the compiler of the first Tamil grammar. Agastya is indeed a culture hero in the oldest of the Tamil narratives and texts. He is also associated with the legendary Tamil sangams. Representations of Agastya abound in ancient and medieval temples in South India and South-east Asia. Agastya is linked with the maritime culture of Southern India too.Oddly enough, Agastya and his wife Lopamudra feature in the Vedas too. The couple are the authors of Rigvedic hymns and other Vedic literature. Agastya is mentioned in all the four Vedas, and makes an appearance in several Vedic and post-Vedic texts. In some Vedic narratives, he is the twin of the Vedic sage Vasiṣṭha and son of the Gods Mitra and Varuṇa. Ikṣvāku, the founder of the Solar Dynasty and ancestor of the God-king Rāma, is associated with the descendants of Agastya in the Rigveda. Vedic hymns attributed to Agastya, known for verbal play, similes, puns and puzzles, have themes of lasting reconciliation and mutual understanding, among others. We must look towards the sage’s compositions, I guess.Footnotes[1] Changing India[2] The Rig Veda/Mandala 10/Hymn 90[3] Interrogating Caste[4] Caste system in India - Wikipedia[5] Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India[6] Village, Caste, Gender, and Method[7] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=P_Jx52VYRssC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=Caste+and+Purity+in+Collected+essays&source=bl&ots=zjVuHAOPhi&sig=t4Gf2ZQog66MGQ3v41Uup0IONkE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiw6b6y_pzdAhUMo48KHR5xAB0Q6AEwCnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=moral%20ritual&f=false[8] Homo Hierarchicus[9] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Essays_in_Indian_History.html?id=foG83i6XPuMC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=tax%20collection%20caste&f=false[10] Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age[11] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=well+into+the+colonial+period&source=bl&ots=U_Hm4UaihJ&sig=7BOlBQMqX-WRtbrQL1vvbQ82Bv4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivkITUtJXdAhUKRo8KHRMrDM4Q6AEwDHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=well%20into%20the%20colonial%20period&f=false[12] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=well+into+the+colonial+period&source=bl&ots=U_Hm4UaihJ&sig=7BOlBQMqX-WRtbrQL1vvbQ82Bv4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivkITUtJXdAhUKRo8KHRMrDM4Q6AEwDHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=priestly%20hierarchy&f=false[13] Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age[14] Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age[15] Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age[16] Interrogating Caste[17] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/A_Concise_History_of_Modern_India.html?id=iuESgYNYPl0C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fresh%20scholarship&f=false[18] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=F___xKcP8lMC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Chola+period+inscriptions+challenge+our+ideas+about+the+structuring+of&source=bl&ots=iVRw9qzNdX&sig=gmUomsv1AQNzbDi0E5-Bj5UFGfg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1q4KhzqDdAhUR448KHTjMBJEQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Chola%20period%20inscriptions%20challenge%20our%20ideas%20about%20the%20structuring%20of&f=false[19] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/The_New_Cambridge_History_of_India.html?id=OpxeaYQbGDMC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=vellalar&f=false[20] Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God[21] Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-West Pakistan[22] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Religion_and_Society_in_Arab_Sind.html?id=xxAVAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=conversions&f=false[23] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/The_Rise_of_Islam_and_the_Bengal_Frontie.html?id=H76-23A9GUYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=conversions&f=false[24] The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760[25] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Castes_of_Mind.html?id=G0D1K4Zn_9QC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=mackenzie%20caste&f=false[26] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=HbAjKR_iHogC&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=ranked,+standardised+and+cross-referenced+jati+listings+for+Indians+on+principles+similar+to+zoolo&source=bl&ots=U_Hn_XagjQ&sig=XP1y-YLU049XkbQd8zKImmmrLq8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd8c7x9aHdAhXZbX0KHfTXChcQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=snippet&q=rank%20botany%20zoology&f=false[27] https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Colonial_Subjects.html?id=R9YPYpVE64wC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=criminal%20caste&f=false[28] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=I8OuIjo6KOAC&pg=PA102&dq=indian+caste+system+%22equatE%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=indian%20caste%20system%20%22equatE%22&f=false[29] https://books.google.co.in/books?id=rrSEAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&dq=british+class+system+india+origin&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=british%20class%20system%20india%20origin&f=false