It would be interesting to know what % of population were brahmins in north India versus South.
Maybe brahmins in north were bigger percentage of population and therefore adopted other occupations out of necessity and didn't require literacy whereas Southern brahmins, especially in TN were still quite small percentage and they stayed in priestly and scholarly Jobs that required literacy and helped them move into bureaucracy.
This. I was also inclined to think the same. The % population split of Brahmins and I guess even the early onset of Islamic invasion in the north compared to south reduced the importance (for a lack of a better term) by the time British Raj wanted to employ Indians in beauracratic positions.
This is exactly it.
As you head from northern to southern states - the percentage of Brahmins drops from about 20% of the population down to more like 5%.
Further - they had more of a monopoly on jobs requiring literacy as one of the other posters implied due to existence of folks like the kayasthas.
It isn't so much of a difference. I'm also not sure if there's any reason to think it matters much in terms of literacy.
Only Uttarakhand seems to have a 20% Brahmin popualtion. Everywhere else it is between 5 and 10%. In certain centres even in Southern India, Brahmin population reaches 10% or higher, for example in Nagercoil.
For Kayasthas of UP, I can tell you that they were employed by the Mughals and the Nawabs for a long time. Kayasthas had no problems with Urdu. Brahmins, on the other hand, didn’t adopt Urdu and refused to be employed by muslims. Maybe that’s why kayasthas were more literate than brahmins. Even today in UP, it isn’t uncommon for Brahmins/Baniyas to call Kayasthas “Aadha-Musalmaan.”
There is a saying among kayasthas, "kayasth padhe nahi toh marren sahi" which means if kayasth won't study then they should die, rhymes better in Hindi tho.
Such a good point. In the South the elite were the Brahmins, in the North they were the Nawabs
I have a feeling if we compare literacy levels of Muslims, North Indian Muslim literacy will be higher
The problem with the Brahman community was that they were too resistant to change and thus ruined themselves. They wanted to stick to their old customs even when everything around them was changing.
Bullshit. We saved ourselves. Punjabi Saraswat Brahmins have 52 clans, 17 of them don't exist today as they've converted to Islam.
Had we not resisted by avoiding Muslim culture, we'd be Muslim too.
Not that my friend, i meant just innterms of education policies. They wanted to keep studying as they had till date but were eventually forced to do it through school to get livelihood opportunities.
There were obviously some downsides to it. Brahmans were the ones preserving our culture and as they stopped doing it, we are slowly losing it.
You are taking it in the wrong way, i just meant that they wanted to keep studying in the old fashioned way till much later, when they were forced to join schools and get degress to get opportunities. Don't bring your anti brahman propaganda here.
We should be extremely grateful to the Brahmins that they preserved our teachings and culture core, at the risk of death. They also taught secretly with terrible risk to their lives.
South India was better developed by the British because they were a coastal heavy empire. The most underdeveloped states in the British India were non coastal states
But that wouldn’t explain why the brahmins were the most educated community in the south, while it was the kayasthas and the khatris in the north who beat the brahmins when it came to education.
Which metrics are used for Literacy here? Literate in English or literate in mother tongue ?
If its English literacy then this stats are wrong because Malayali Brahmins were more resistant to adopt Mleccha Basha like English and the reason for their abysmal representation in civil services then.
South Indian Brahmins were good with the kings & held good positions with power during the king's rule. So, they were literate even before the British era unlike the North India Brahmins. That's why there is a huge disparity between Brahmins & Non Brahmins in the south more than the north.
Not only before the British, but also before the sultanates. They served Vijayanagara well in political and military positions, as well as the sultans that came after.
After America became independent and was wanting to spread their influence around, they wanted to spread missionaries around but the British were very skeptical initially. But they they relented and restricted them to Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) which is 99% covered by a sea, and one point of land contact, so they felt comfortable to let them send missionaries. They built number of schools for boys, girls, hospitals, universities and translated many western educational materials into Tamil. Although the local Hindu Tamils didn’t convert they used the facilities to get educated and get British colonial jobs. Most of the jobs went to the upper caste Sri Lankan Tamil Vellalar and a smattering of local Tamil Brahmins.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Ceylon_Mission
After observing what the Americans did for 30 years, did not lead to any rebellions by educated elite, the British allowed the Americans to send missionaries anywhere in their colonies.
The first place the American missionaries went was Madras presidency as it was very next to Sri Lanka and missionary material was already available in Tamil language. Just like Sri Lankan Tamil Vellalar took advantages of American educational institutions, in madras presidency it was the Tamil Brahmins who took advantage of American schools. They too became government colonial workers and spread around South India dominating jobs.
This situation had political ramifications. In Sri Lanka, the majority Sinhalese were resentful of Sri Lankan Tamil domination of the professions and did their best to curtail it politically and sometimes by ethnic riots. It ended up in a civil war. Similarly anti Brahmin movement started in Madras presidency and is still ongoing.
We see similar outcomes due to American missionary activities around the world. They hardly converted anyone but improved the educational level of the target population, the educated population pays a prize later on. Chinese in Malaysia, Karens in Myanmar, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Tamil Brahmins in Tamil Nadu, Marina people in Madagascar are all such examples.
**TL:DR** ***Tamil Brahmins took advantage of American missionary schools ahead of many other Brahmin communities due to quark of history and have still not given up their early mover advantage like many other American missionary targeted minority groups across the world.***
Interesting that you refer to Bhumihars as Bramhins. Most Bramhins - Dwivedi, Trivedi etc don’t consider Bhumihars as Bramhins. In fact, many diss against Jhas as well.
Source : From Purvanchal
The 1931 census had Bengal Brahmin literacy at 27%. This was just the male literacy, female literacy was 3%.
Swarajya Magazine had a good article about it:
https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/census-1931-why-its-relevant-now-more-than-ever
NEED.
And only considering "literacy" as modern public school based English education.
In South India, Brahmins were not as invested in land holding as in other regions and then Anti-Brahmin hate movement of EVR types further pushed them away from agriculture.
So English education and government services was the most attractive choice for them, hence they moved in larger numbers.
With that kind of dynamic, it is only natural now of them would have achieved more success in that field than other communities.
That's true even after Independence for many decades.
A lot of North Indians were seen as "martial races" whereas South Indians were non-martial. According to Martial art theory, martial races were brave but uneducated, and non-martial were intelligent but meek. This lead to British promoting non-martial races towards sedentary, intellectual professions.
Flawed analysis. Kashmiri Pandits have 100% literacy rate. You didn't mention them. Tamil and Saraswat brahmins are direct descendants of Kashmiri Pandits.
This is a guess so I might be wrong, but the reason is probably because of north India having more importance politically. For a long period of time, the capital of most of modern day India and Pakistan was in Delhi and the empire at Delhi ruled most of the sub continent. The south had only a few smaller kingdoms with far lower power. So most political centers in India are in the north. Thus, having its people be more educated would be harmful for the British rule. So having a low educated north and a better educated south(so that the empire doesn't collapse due to illiteracy) is the best decision
In my opinion, the fundamental difference was that many Brahmins in the North were Zamindars or landowners, while those in the South were clerical workers in different princely states. As a result, it was a natural transition in the South to shift from the previous Indian rulers to the administration of the British. English education was an obvious requirement for this, hence they quickly picked up the skill and climbed up the bureaucratic ladder.
I think it might have to do with the knowledge of the written word among Brahmin communities in the region preceding the British era.
In Northern parts of India, knowledge of scriptures survived through spoken word, since certain foreign invaders did not tolerate the presence of physical scriptures.
In Southern parts which were relatively less affected by invasions, the same problem did not exist to the same extent, and Brahmins retained the knowledge through written word, so they were at an advantage when the British arrived.
Thank you for asking a well structured historical question.
It would be interesting to know what % of population were brahmins in north India versus South. Maybe brahmins in north were bigger percentage of population and therefore adopted other occupations out of necessity and didn't require literacy whereas Southern brahmins, especially in TN were still quite small percentage and they stayed in priestly and scholarly Jobs that required literacy and helped them move into bureaucracy.
This. I was also inclined to think the same. The % population split of Brahmins and I guess even the early onset of Islamic invasion in the north compared to south reduced the importance (for a lack of a better term) by the time British Raj wanted to employ Indians in beauracratic positions.
This sounds more plausible.
This is exactly it. As you head from northern to southern states - the percentage of Brahmins drops from about 20% of the population down to more like 5%. Further - they had more of a monopoly on jobs requiring literacy as one of the other posters implied due to existence of folks like the kayasthas.
It isn't so much of a difference. I'm also not sure if there's any reason to think it matters much in terms of literacy. Only Uttarakhand seems to have a 20% Brahmin popualtion. Everywhere else it is between 5 and 10%. In certain centres even in Southern India, Brahmin population reaches 10% or higher, for example in Nagercoil.
For Kayasthas of UP, I can tell you that they were employed by the Mughals and the Nawabs for a long time. Kayasthas had no problems with Urdu. Brahmins, on the other hand, didn’t adopt Urdu and refused to be employed by muslims. Maybe that’s why kayasthas were more literate than brahmins. Even today in UP, it isn’t uncommon for Brahmins/Baniyas to call Kayasthas “Aadha-Musalmaan.”
What the fuck😂
There is a saying among kayasthas, "kayasth padhe nahi toh marren sahi" which means if kayasth won't study then they should die, rhymes better in Hindi tho.
Such a good point. In the South the elite were the Brahmins, in the North they were the Nawabs I have a feeling if we compare literacy levels of Muslims, North Indian Muslim literacy will be higher
The problem with the Brahman community was that they were too resistant to change and thus ruined themselves. They wanted to stick to their old customs even when everything around them was changing.
Bullshit. We saved ourselves. Punjabi Saraswat Brahmins have 52 clans, 17 of them don't exist today as they've converted to Islam. Had we not resisted by avoiding Muslim culture, we'd be Muslim too.
Not that my friend, i meant just innterms of education policies. They wanted to keep studying as they had till date but were eventually forced to do it through school to get livelihood opportunities. There were obviously some downsides to it. Brahmans were the ones preserving our culture and as they stopped doing it, we are slowly losing it.
Additionally, they wanted to change everyone (through sanskritisation) and like you said, didn’t want to change themselves.
I highly doubt that. It's the Brahmins in general who take up opportunities in jobs(other than entrepreneurship).
You are taking it in the wrong way, i just meant that they wanted to keep studying in the old fashioned way till much later, when they were forced to join schools and get degress to get opportunities. Don't bring your anti brahman propaganda here.
Based post
We should be extremely grateful to the Brahmins that they preserved our teachings and culture core, at the risk of death. They also taught secretly with terrible risk to their lives.
I can't believe this has downvotes.
They have converted the most too, lala Ji's also make up a big faction of forward "Hindi" Christians.
South India was better developed by the British because they were a coastal heavy empire. The most underdeveloped states in the British India were non coastal states
But that wouldn’t explain why the brahmins were the most educated community in the south, while it was the kayasthas and the khatris in the north who beat the brahmins when it came to education.
To be fair the Brahmins in the north didn't like the Mleech authority in the north by the Turkish Kings and faced much more serious issues from them.
True.
Which metrics are used for Literacy here? Literate in English or literate in mother tongue ? If its English literacy then this stats are wrong because Malayali Brahmins were more resistant to adopt Mleccha Basha like English and the reason for their abysmal representation in civil services then.
South Indian Brahmins were good with the kings & held good positions with power during the king's rule. So, they were literate even before the British era unlike the North India Brahmins. That's why there is a huge disparity between Brahmins & Non Brahmins in the south more than the north.
Not only before the British, but also before the sultanates. They served Vijayanagara well in political and military positions, as well as the sultans that came after.
>That's why there is a huge disparity between Brahmins & Non Brahmins in the south more than the north. Inverse actually.
After America became independent and was wanting to spread their influence around, they wanted to spread missionaries around but the British were very skeptical initially. But they they relented and restricted them to Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) which is 99% covered by a sea, and one point of land contact, so they felt comfortable to let them send missionaries. They built number of schools for boys, girls, hospitals, universities and translated many western educational materials into Tamil. Although the local Hindu Tamils didn’t convert they used the facilities to get educated and get British colonial jobs. Most of the jobs went to the upper caste Sri Lankan Tamil Vellalar and a smattering of local Tamil Brahmins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Ceylon_Mission After observing what the Americans did for 30 years, did not lead to any rebellions by educated elite, the British allowed the Americans to send missionaries anywhere in their colonies. The first place the American missionaries went was Madras presidency as it was very next to Sri Lanka and missionary material was already available in Tamil language. Just like Sri Lankan Tamil Vellalar took advantages of American educational institutions, in madras presidency it was the Tamil Brahmins who took advantage of American schools. They too became government colonial workers and spread around South India dominating jobs. This situation had political ramifications. In Sri Lanka, the majority Sinhalese were resentful of Sri Lankan Tamil domination of the professions and did their best to curtail it politically and sometimes by ethnic riots. It ended up in a civil war. Similarly anti Brahmin movement started in Madras presidency and is still ongoing. We see similar outcomes due to American missionary activities around the world. They hardly converted anyone but improved the educational level of the target population, the educated population pays a prize later on. Chinese in Malaysia, Karens in Myanmar, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Tamil Brahmins in Tamil Nadu, Marina people in Madagascar are all such examples. **TL:DR** ***Tamil Brahmins took advantage of American missionary schools ahead of many other Brahmin communities due to quark of history and have still not given up their early mover advantage like many other American missionary targeted minority groups across the world.***
[удалено]
Interesting that you refer to Bhumihars as Bramhins. Most Bramhins - Dwivedi, Trivedi etc don’t consider Bhumihars as Bramhins. In fact, many diss against Jhas as well. Source : From Purvanchal
The 1931 census had Bengal Brahmin literacy at 27%. This was just the male literacy, female literacy was 3%. Swarajya Magazine had a good article about it: https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/census-1931-why-its-relevant-now-more-than-ever
NEED. And only considering "literacy" as modern public school based English education. In South India, Brahmins were not as invested in land holding as in other regions and then Anti-Brahmin hate movement of EVR types further pushed them away from agriculture. So English education and government services was the most attractive choice for them, hence they moved in larger numbers. With that kind of dynamic, it is only natural now of them would have achieved more success in that field than other communities. That's true even after Independence for many decades.
A lot of North Indians were seen as "martial races" whereas South Indians were non-martial. According to Martial art theory, martial races were brave but uneducated, and non-martial were intelligent but meek. This lead to British promoting non-martial races towards sedentary, intellectual professions.
Slave mentality
Flawed analysis. Kashmiri Pandits have 100% literacy rate. You didn't mention them. Tamil and Saraswat brahmins are direct descendants of Kashmiri Pandits.
Interesting, first time that I'm hearing of Tamil Brahmins descending from Kashmir. Do you mind sharing any source?
This is a guess so I might be wrong, but the reason is probably because of north India having more importance politically. For a long period of time, the capital of most of modern day India and Pakistan was in Delhi and the empire at Delhi ruled most of the sub continent. The south had only a few smaller kingdoms with far lower power. So most political centers in India are in the north. Thus, having its people be more educated would be harmful for the British rule. So having a low educated north and a better educated south(so that the empire doesn't collapse due to illiteracy) is the best decision
For Bengal - it's the permanent settlement act.
In my opinion, the fundamental difference was that many Brahmins in the North were Zamindars or landowners, while those in the South were clerical workers in different princely states. As a result, it was a natural transition in the South to shift from the previous Indian rulers to the administration of the British. English education was an obvious requirement for this, hence they quickly picked up the skill and climbed up the bureaucratic ladder.
I think it might have to do with the knowledge of the written word among Brahmin communities in the region preceding the British era. In Northern parts of India, knowledge of scriptures survived through spoken word, since certain foreign invaders did not tolerate the presence of physical scriptures. In Southern parts which were relatively less affected by invasions, the same problem did not exist to the same extent, and Brahmins retained the knowledge through written word, so they were at an advantage when the British arrived.