She further boasts that the only thing that runs in her country is the new flood water with flowers (meaning there is none who has to run out of any fear); the only thing that diminishes is the mind of the yogi in meditation (not the wealth and health of the people); only thing that is slender are the waists of young women; only thing that has a fall are the grains sown on the ground. And so on.

Such is the great Kuttralam, south Aryan country, says the tribal woman. (Note also that the notion of Aryan as ‘upper caste’ or ‘North’ was unknown to traditional Tamil mind even in the eighteenth century). To this day Kuttrala Kuravanchi provides an excellent model for a literature that can attract nature enthusiasts, pilgrims and tourists to a remote town in large numbers. One can safely say that no modern advertisements by governmental and commercial tourism promoters have beaten Kuttrala Kuravanchi in that.

Given such a rich tradition of celebrating nature and communities living in harmony with nature in Tamil literary history, it needs extreme confidence on the part of the Marxist writer-politician, and abject ignorance or dishonesty or both on the part of the reporter to state that 'the cherished, celebrated bond between human beings and nature was lost when Bhakti literature took over’ and that 'for the next thousand years, there was hardly any mention about nature in Tamil literature’.

These visions of the embedded divine in nature is not limited to poetic celebrations. All the rulers of South India competed with each other and previous generations in creating traditional water management systems. These traditional water management systems were not charity works done by kings, but organically integrated with the local communities.

The Sthala Purana narratives associated with the water bodies made them sacred and the non-translatable Punya in turn made the meta-organism of local community and water body flourish through centuries.

In the period the Marxist writer-politician as well as his admiring reporter claim as ‘water neglected due to Bhakti’, huge water harvesting and water conservation systems were created. Hindu texts on town and village planning have actually necessitated that at least two water bodies should be created in every human habitat to be merited as a village or town.

From epigraphic data for the same period, we know that water bodies of different types existed with their own purposes. They are: ponds (Kulams); pools and channels (Vayakkal); drinking water tanks (urunikulam), sacred bathing ponds (thirumanjanakulam) and small tanks with filling and discharging pipes and sluices (EndiraVavi). The last thousand years in Tamil Nadu actually saw the continued development of water conservation as a combined science, art and a way of life.

Traditionally, trees were planted along the bunds of the water harvesting structures. Where they continue to exist, these have medicinal values and are used in the traditional, ethnic medical systems. Some of the most common trees thus found by the tanks because of this tradition are as follows: Gallnut (Tamil: Kadukkai; scientific name: Terminalia chebula); Indian gooseberry (Tamil: Nelli: scientific name: Phyllanthus emblica); Bedda nut tree (Tamil: Tanri ; scientific name: Terminalia bellirica); Indian Beech (Tamil: Pungam, scientific name: Pongamia pinnata); Fig Tree (Tamil: Arasu, scientific name: Ficus religiosa); Neem tree (Tamil: Vembu, scientific name: Azadirachta indica).

According to C P Venkatarama Iyer, who was a historian of ancient town planning in the Deccan, the trees at the banks of water bodies served to also clean the water of impurities in the same way as alum.

Far from being neglected after ‘the Bhakti movement’, the water conservation and management structures went on increasing and specific rules, regulations, legislation and community contracts to protect the water bodies also came into existence. Just consider the following inscription from Rajendra Chola, who succeeded the great Raja Raja: