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Arabuttamil/Arwi: the Identity of the Tamil Muslims

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Arabuttamil/Arwi: the Identity of the Tamil Muslims International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN(P): 2249-6912; ISSN(E): 2249-8028 Vol. 4, Issue 6, Dec 2014, 73-78 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd. ARABUTTAMIL/ARWI: THE IDENTITY OF THE TAMIL MUSLIMS YUNUSH AHAMED MOHAMED S HERIF Research Scholar, Department of Cultural Studies, the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India ABSTRACT It is claimed that the India Office Library, London has around 60 Arabuttamil/Arwi books in its possession. In India and Sri Lanka alone, around 2,000 books written in Arabuttamil/Arwi have been identified and it is still believed that many more books are yet to be discovered. Arabuttamil/Arwi was a unique language which is a mixture of both Arabic and Tamil languages, written in the Arabic script and following the Tamil grammatical pattern and was used by the Tamil Muslims for a long time. This article will focus on issue like, the relationship between Tamil language, Muslims and Arabuttamil/Arwi, the role played by Arabuttamil/Arwi among the Tamil Muslims and the reasons for its decline during the first half of the twentieth century. The Muslim Tamils who used Arabuttamil as their identity transformed into Tamil Muslims with Tamil as their identity in order to cope with the political and social changes that were taking place during that time. This paper will try to analyse this transformation of the Tamil Muslim identity with particular focus on the Arabuttamil/Arwi. KEYWORDS: Sociolinguistics, Identity, Arabuttami/Arwi, Endangered Language INTRODUCTION The role of language in maintaining the identity of a society is immense. Particularly in the context of India, where around 22 official languages are there, it would be a mistake if we ignore the importance of a language in maintaining the identity of a society or a community. But language used by any society doesn’t stay with them for infinity, there will be moments when a community has to sacrifice their language in order to survive or for some other benefits like employment, political force, etc. This sacrifice can both be conscious as well as unconscious, for instance, in India, after independence it has been decided that English will be the official language for 10 years, and after that it will be reconsidered. But till today English continues to dominate the linguistic scenario of the country and many Indian s learn English at the cost of their mother tongue. Because of this reason many people who are concerned about the loss of their mother tongue, are trying various measure to make the young learners learn their mother tongue. But despite their best efforts, language still disappear from being used. The present paper will elaborate one such scenario where a variety of a language used by the Tamil Muslims slowly loses its hold and was replaced by another language. Arabuttamil/Arwi Tamil Muslims constitute 5.6% of the total population of the present day Tamil Nadu. Apart from Tamil Nadu, Tamil Muslims can be found in other parts of the world like Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. Next to Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka has the largest concentration of Tamil Muslims. Though they form a small minority in the state of Tamil Nadu, they have a history as old as Islam itself. One of the oldest mosques in the world is situated in Kilakkarai, Tamil Nadu which is www.tjprc.org [email protected] 74 Yunush Ahamed Mohamed Sherif claimed to have been constructed in the 7th century (628 – 630 A.D.)1. This is one of the evidences to prove that Islam had reached the shores of Tamil Nadu during the lifetime of Prophet Mohammed. Well before the advent of Islam, Tamil Nadu had trade contacts with many countries in the world and Arabia is one among them. So, when Prophet Mohammed started advocating Islam, the Tamil people also might have been influenced by it and converted into Islam. We can find in the Tamil literature references to prove the presence of Muslims in Tamil Nadu as early as the 12th century2. Even before that, during the Sangam age (1000 BCE – 300 CE), Purananuru, a collection of poems that belongs to the Sangam literature, points out about the trade contacts between the Arabs and the Tamil people. When Mohammed started spreading Islam among the people of the world he did his propaganda in the Arabic language. Among the Muslims it is mandatory for them to learn Arabic. They consider Arabic language as sacred, and it is a necessity for every Muslim to learn it because of three reasons: The Quran is in Arabic language, the Prophet Mohammed spoke in Arabic language and the language of the Heaven will be in Arabic. So, wherever Islam spread the Arabic language also accompanied and similarly it reached Tamil Nadu too. The Tamil Muslims started learning Arabic in order to perform their Islamic duties. But the Tamil culture or the Dravidian culture which the Tamil Muslims belonged before their conversion was very ancient and powerful with its own literature and language. Therefore the Tamil Muslims were not able to leave their Tamil culture behind and adopt Islam completely. As an outcome of this situation a unique culture of the Tamil Muslims evolved through the intertwining of Tamil and Islamic culture. One of the oldest mosques in India as mentioned above, The Old Jumma Masjid of Kilakkarai, is constructed using the style of Dravidian architecture. Similarly we can observe a seamless integration of Dravidian and Islamic culture among the Tamil Muslims. During the 9th to 11th century period a large scale ethnic cleansing took place in the southern part of India in order to eradicate Buddhism. During this turmoil many of the Buddhists converted into Islam in order to escape the cruelty perpetrated upon them. Many of the words that the Tamil Muslims use today, such as palli (Mosque), nonbu (fasting), thozhugai (prayer) and perunaal (festival) are influenced by Buddhists traditions (Anwar, 2006). But there were no recorded violence or conflict between the Tamil Muslims and other Dravidians even after this incident and until the late 20th century. This is a remarkable feature considering the fact that the Tamil Muslims were almost always ruled by Dravidian Kings. Figure 1 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_mosques_in_the_world 2 Kambaramayanam, 112 Impact Factor (JCC): 4.0867 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0 Arabuttamil/Arwi: the Identity of the Tamil Muslims 75 Apart from these remarkable features, there is another point that highlights the assimilation between Dravidian and Islamic culture, which is also the focus of this paper. It is Arabuttami, a linguistic variety used by the Tamil Muslims. As the term Arabuttamil indicates, it is a mixture of Arabic and Tamil. But it is not just Tamil written in the Arabic script. Along with the 28 alphabets of Arabic, 13 new letters added and used as Arabuttamil. Though it used the Arabic script, it followed the Tamil grammatical pattern. It is interesting to analyse the origin of this variety. When the two community similar in religion but different in language came together, the necessity for a link language arose. Arabuttamil was the outcome of this necessity. There was another reason which might have given rise to Arabuttamil. The Tamil language doesn’t have all the sounds that are there in the Arabic language. Therefore while explaining the basic tenets of Islam to the Tamil Muslim in the Tamil Language, it might have been difficult to render it into Tamil language and moreover the concept of translating the Quran was not accepted by the Muslims until recently. Therefore they had to use Arabic words as it is and Arabuttamil facilitated this. Though it is very difficult to pin-point the period when Arabuttamil came into use, Tayka Shuayb Alim claims that it was being used by the Tamil Muslim as early as the 9th century onwards. Apart from Arabuttamil, this variety was also identified as Lisanul Arwi (the language of Arwi) or just Arwi (Alim, 1993). But it is very difficult to trace the origin of the word ‘Arwi’. Robert Caldwell claims that ‘the Tamil language is called ‘Aravam’ by the Mussulmans of the Dekhan, the Telugus, and the Canarese’ and the Tamil people were called ‘Aravas’ (Caldwell, 1875). Another instant where the term ‘Arwi’ was used is in the Modi documents written by the Maratta rulers of Thanjavur (Subramanian, 1989). In one of the documents, there is a reference to a book which is in the ‘Arawi bhashai (Arawi language)’ and the editor points out that ‘Arawi’ refers to the Tamil Language. Therefore we can say that either Tamil language was also known as ‘Arwi’ or the Arabuttamil variety was identified as another way of writing Tamil. The Tamil Muslims produced many works using this variety of language. Both prose and poetry was written and apart from religious subjects, secular subjects like medicine, sports, astronomy, dictionary, architecture, history, etc. were written using this variety. Despite being so widely used by the Tamil Muslims, it is very difficult to find Arabuttamil/Arwi works today. Tayka Shu’ayb Alim points out that the Portuguese colonisers might have been the reason behind this; they were antagonistic towards the Muslims and might have destroyed everything related to the Muslims during the 16th century (87). But during the 18th century it started flourishing again and many people started using it again. Many of the Arabuttamil/Arwi works that survive today are works that were written during the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest Quran translations were not done in the Tamil script; instead they were translated into Arabuttamil/Arwi. In the year 1876, Habib Mohamed Alim Saheb translated the Quran in to Arabuttamil/Arwi.
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