In the Dravidian circles, another incident is narrated of how when C N Annadurai, former chief minister, had an opportunity to meet the Pope, he demanded the release of Mohan Ranade – a Savarkarite – arrested by the Portuguese government during the Goa liberation movement. Apart from the historicity of this event, which most probably is true, the narrative shows that Annadurai, who too was a staunch Dravidian racist, was coming to realise the cultural oneness of India.

It is interesting to note that to the contrary, Golwalkar of the RSS congratulated Annadurai on forming the ministry. Even before Annadurai came to power, Ranade had contacted him for his support to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, which he secured. While rejecting the Dravidian race theory, the RSS was able to see the real grievances which in turn comes from the rootedness of the Sangh in the spiritual oneness of India.

So when Modi expressed his love for Tamizh and recognised its past, it was not just political posturing. It comes from his schooling at Sangh. Having worked closely with him, Ranade’s life and ideals played a profound role in shaping Modi’s politics.

On the other hand, consider this:

On Maha Shivaratri day, Vairamuthu, a Tamil lyricist, spoke about the greatness of the Tamil language. He spoke about “Lemuria” as the place of birth of Tamizh and humanity. The outlandish and unscientific myth of Lemuria is a theosophical version of an Eastern Atlantis. It combines the racist views of the period with exotic pseudo-scientific theories of human origin – speculations that were doing the rounds in the century prior to the discovery of the continental drift.

Even worse, Seeman, a fringe Tamizh ultra-nationalist who has mastered the art of whipping up gullible audience into a frenzy with his hyped histrionics and is actively promoted by the Church, quotes Alex Collier as the linguistic authority to claim that Tamizh was the oldest language in the world, from which all other languages came about. It is like quoting Erich von Däniken, an author who claims early human culture was influenced by extraterrestrial beings, to prove the existence of ancient nuclear weapons in India. Collier is an American cultist who claims to have received the real history of earth from an extraterrestrial civilisation in Andromeda.