[radikal]

Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.
Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.
Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.
Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.
It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.
The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy