“I write with the same hands that carried shit”: Reading Pandiyakannan’s ‘Salavaan’

The five landscapes into which the Tamil country has been classified since the Sangam age are common knowledge: kurinci (hills), mullai (forest), marutam (fields), neytal (coast) and palai (wasteland). In the earliest known Tamil poems, each landscape, along with its attendant gods, people, flora and fauna, is associated with a different stage of love: the hills, for example, are for clandestine union, while the coast is for anxious waiting.

The Kuravars are the indigenous people of kurinci land. The earliest Sangam poems describe the men as hunters of honey and game and the women as soothsayers. The description of Kuravars in the classic Tamil poem Kuttrala Kuravanci – made popular through modern-day versions by the Dravidian leader M Karunanidhi and the Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale – shows some consistency with descriptions of them from the Sangam age, suggesting that the Kuravars were engaged in their traditional vocations as late as the 18th century, when the Kuravanci was written. The 19th century brought seismic changes. The British colonial government razed vast swathes of forest in the hills to make way for plantations, railways and towns. The Kuravars, like many other indigenous communities, were displaced and made nomads, living off any work they could get.