*“Power, Pragmatism, and Memory: Reassessing Historical Identities in South India and Sri Lanka*”

Balananthini Balasubramaniam

19/01/2026

17.07

Great Britain

Certain fundamental historical truths that are deliberately concealed or selectively reinterpreted in many debates must first be properly understood. Historical interpretation is never neutral; it is shaped by power, context, and the interests of those who record and institutionalise memory. [1][1a]

During the Chola period, women referred to in inscriptions and literary sources as parathaiyar were not regarded as socially degraded or illicit figures in the modern sense. They were participants in a state-recognised and regulated profession, integrated with temple administration, urban centres, port towns, and taxation systems. Epigraphic records indicate these women received land grants, remuneration, and were subject to administrative oversight. In the Chola political economy, this profession was comparable to salt production, pearl fisheries, and maritime commerce. [2][3][4][5]

Arab merchants operating along the Coromandel Coast did not constitute a political authority. They functioned primarily as commercial actors within the Indian Ocean trade network. Their presence in ports such as Nagapattinam and Kayalpattinam was regulated by Chola maritime policies, and they relied on the protection and cooperation of local communities. Their success depended on negotiation and compliance with state authority, not political sovereignty. [6][7][8][9]

Within this context, available epigraphic, commercial, and social-historical evidence strongly suggests that children born to parathaiyar and Arab merchants constituted a significant social foundation of the earliest Islamic communities in Tamil Nadu. This did not immediately define a rigid religious identity. Religious conversion occurred gradually, often for practical reasons, including commercial advantage, personal security, and political protection. Conversion has frequently been a pragmatic social strategy rather than solely a spiritual choice, and social identities must be interpreted within the political, economic, and social conditions of their time. [10][11][12][13]

Political recognition for the Sri Lankan Sonakar community emerged only between the 1880s and 1890s, particularly after 1889. Prior to this, they were not recorded as a distinct indigenous ethnicity, political unit, or land-owning community. Before colonial codification, the Sonakars were largely defined through occupation, religion, and settlement patterns rather than formal political representation. Contemporary claims of indigeneity must therefore be interpreted in light of colonial administrative recognition and subsequent political developments, rather than as evidence of pre-colonial sovereignty. [14][15][16]

Indigeneity is not a political slogan; it is a historical status that must be demonstrated through:

*Archaeological continuity* – uninterrupted settlement over centuries or millennia.

*Land-based cultural practice* – long-standing ties to land, natural resources, and local institutions.

*Uninterrupted social presence* – continuity of social structures, occupations, and community networks across generations. [17][18][19]

The most profound political contradiction lies here: sections of organised political leadership within the Sri Lankan Sonakar community, while proclaiming themselves as “superior”, have participated—both historically and presently—in the oppression, marginalisation, and denial of political rights of the Eelam Tamil people, by aligning with the Sinhala-dominated state apparatus implicated in internationally documented mass atrocities.

A community that attained political recognition only after 1889, declaring itself an indigenous people, while standing alongside the same state apparatus against a genuinely indigenous people—the Eelam Tamils—is not merely a historical distortion, but a political injustice and a moral collapse.

This analysis adopts a moral-historical framework, recognising that political power relations and ethical responsibility are integral to historical interpretation. Power is temporary, but history has a long memory. And in that memory, it will be recorded clearly who was oppressed, and who stood with the oppressor. [20][21][22][23][24]

*References*

[1] E. H. Carr, What Is History?, Penguin Books, 1961.

[1a] Howard Zinn, The Politics of History, University of Illinois Press, 1990.

[2] K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Cholas, University of Madras, 1935.

[3] Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, Oxford University Press, 1980.

[4] Leslie C. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu, Oxford University Press, 2000.

[5] Epigraphia Indica, South Indian Inscriptions, Chola-period volumes.

[6] K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, Cambridge University Press, 1985.

[7] Rila Mukherjee, The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India, Routledge, 2010.

[8] S. Jeyaseela Stephen, The Coromandel Coast and Its Hinterland, Manohar, 1997.

[9] Ranabir Chakravarti, “Early Muslim Trade in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.

[10] Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

[11] Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, University of California Press, 1993.

[12] Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

[13] K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, Cambridge University Press, 1985.

[14] K. M. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, Oxford University Press, 1981.

[15] British Colonial Census of Ceylon, 1881 & 1891.

[16] Patrick Peebles, The History of Sri Lanka, Greenwood Press, 2006.

[17] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, 1983.

[18] Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Sage Publications, 1991.

[19] United Nations, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007.

[20] UTHR(J), Sri Lanka: The Politics of Impunity, 2001.

[21] International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka Reports (2007–2015).

[22] A. J. Wilson, The Break-Up of Sri Lanka, University of Hawaii Press, 1988.

[23] S. J. Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed?, University of Chicago Press, 1992.

[24] Howard Zinn, The Politics of History, University of Illinois Press, 1990.