New Delhi etc: New Age International, 1998. — 255 p.
Religion as Emancipatory Identity is a sociological study of a socio-religious movement among the Tamils during the colonial period. It investigates and brings to light for the first time the forgotten movement of Buddhist revivalism — the life and writings of Pandit lyothee Thass, the organisation and activities of Sakya/South Indian Buddhist Association and the birth and growth of the ideology of anti- Brahminism, Dravidianism and Rationalism, in the Northern districts of Tamil Nadu, Bangalore, Kolar Gold Fields and Hubli of Karnataka as well as in Burma, Ceylon, South Africa etc., wherever the Tamils had migrated as labourers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using primary sources — the movement’s own massive literary output-journals, tracts etc., generally not available in archieves and libraries and in-depth interviews in the field, the study examines the various aspects of the revived Tamil religion — its symbols, rituals and belief system. The movement, though basically a response of the subalternised groups among the Tamils, is viewed and interpreted also as an attempt to encompass the entire society and create a Tamil identity, through an alternate hegemonic principle of ‘castelessness’. Herein found the cluster of concepts — Dravidianism, anti-Brahminism, rationalism, self-respect etc., formulated and propagated in the course of a collective socio-political practice well, two decades prior to the emergence of the Dravidian Movement. The work is of interest to historians, sociologists and general readers who are concerned with the re-examination of the ideological past of South India.
G. Aloysius is a researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has been an occasional contributor to scholarly journals. His first full- length work Nationalism without a Nation in India was published early 1997 by Oxford University Press, Delhi. Presently, he is engaged in editing the writings of Pandit lyothee Thass in Tamil.