Will Iyers Become Extinct By 2025 Ad

Will Iyers become extinct by 2025 AD ?

Among the several wedding invitations I have received in the last fortnight, are two from Iyer friends of long standing. For their daughters' wedding. You may ask me, well, what is so unusual about it?

Yes, it is unusual. That's why i am writing this. Both the girls are marrying non-Brahmins. One is marrying a Gujarati Patel, the other one is marrying a Malayalee theeya.

But these aren't the only marriages I plan to attend or have attended. In the past 12 months I have attended close to 19 marriages where Iyer girls/boys have tied the knot with men/women of other castes, other regions and other religions. But in this list, it is Iyer girls who predominate.

Who is to blame for this trend? The beer guzzling pot-bellied thaiyir vadais the Iyer boys are?. Or the Iyer parents who have not inculcated in their children a pride and a sense of belo nging to the community, groomed them into forging the convication that Iyers have India's richest social, spiritual, cultural heritage that many non Iyers envy ?.. Reared the children into strong conviction about the uniqueness of being an Iyer and bred a strong loyalty to the community?

Sadly, most of the Iyer stenogrpahers and clerkswho moved to the metros of the country themselves did not hae the right attitude and orientation for this. In fact, in ninety nine out of hundred instances, these myopic iyers went through life suffering under an acute complex of inferiiroty. A majority of them even went to the extent of trying to hide their Iyer-ness by picking up and handing over to their children, the gutterish pidgin Hindi. As if being an IYer was a matter of shame. And what they concealed only proved their "madrasiishness" . thanks to the heavy Palakkad accent. This only provided fodder to the cheap Bollywood humor mill, a la Mehmood, Dhumal and Mukri who were famous for their Madrasi/\Swami acts.

This rubbed off on their Venkies and Lallis. They are too ashamed to speak to one another in Tamil. Lest they be recognized as "madrasis" . The biggest compliment you can pay to a Lalli or a Venky is to tell him or her "hey you don't appear to be a Madrasi".

In fact I have heard some mamis addressing their children in pidgin Madrasi HIndi "yey, too madrasi nahi dikhti hai" (you dont look like a madrasi).

A large number of kids, particularly girls, carry this negative feeling of the community too far. They disown every bit of their heritage. And end up marrying allnkinds of people. It is not that bad if they marry Hindus from other communities. But it is sad that a large number of them end marrying up becoming Mahalakshmi D''souzas or Saraswati Fernandeses. I don't know why our girls have this great affinity for Christians. And boys who end up marrying Kattlikk (Cahtolic) girls end up becoming Christianswith Balus becoming Pauls and Subramaniams becoming Sebastians.

Forget the parents. Wht about the various Samajams that throw gargantuan gastronomical orgies in the name of Ramanavamis and sastaa preethis. The mosquito sized guys controlling these Sabhas and \Samajams have not only elephant sized egos...their ignorance, lack of pride in and belonging to the community... is also elephant sized.

Apart from carrying on the agraharam style petty politicking, nit picking and gossiping, these worthies, most of them in their late sixties and seventies, have aged in years. Not in knowledge or wisdom. Or social concisouness. All they do is to cling to their chairs, through hook or crook, live off the temple kitchens and boss around like tin pot dictators. Discussing whether they should hae chakkai poduttuval for the next major event in November and whree to import the delicacy (not in
season).

Have the worthies ever bothered to think about the fate of the community. Have they ever bothered to start outreach programmes for our youth, Seminars and classes to tutor our youth in our customs, our rich culture, or way of life, create in them a sense of pride and belonging to the community?

Perish the thought !!! With their minds fully occupied in satiating their gargantuan appetites through orgies of gluttony, and in satiating their elephant sized egos, these community flies who buzz around the gratification that the samajs offer, just havent the capacity to even think of these things.

In the north west of Mumbai is a huge pattar ghetto land with a couple of temples. When christians and muslims were making inroads into the commun ity by taking away the pattar girls, the worthies of the institutions here were claiming "aaiii, addu ellam purrssonnal myatter akkkumm' nammal...nammolody kkonnsttittutionlai adukku or vaizyum illai", And against this attitude compare the attitude of the Christians who rallied as one person in favour of their boys.

Shame on us pattar parents. Shame on the petty, ignorant lumpen elements who control the samajams.

As I have written elsewhere, our population is just around 300000, Palakkad pattars, I mean. And it is dwindling. And will dwindle further.

Let us realize that when we give away a girl from our community, we are giving away not just the body of the girl, or her soul. We are giving away thousands of years of culture, traidtion and values. And not only that, We are styming the passing on of these values to our future generations. Because it is only through a mother that these values are handed over to the children from one geeneration to the next.

Even though it is too late, I will say, Wake Up Pattars. Do some damage control. And you Samajam worthies, get out of your posts and hand over the Samajams to people who have the welfare of the community at heart. bHANAN SAMAJS are not eating joints. They are instruments of social activism. And how much and how long can you and the community keep eating? Till dooms day? Well doom's day is near enough. But you worthies, don't hasten it !!!! At least for the sake of your chakkai poduttuvals.

A DISCUSSION HERE U CAN GIVE YOUR VIEW POINT..SUNKAN

what u are advocating is ethnic cleansing....iyer girls and boys who marry into other communities dont just die by doing so...they do continue to raise good children and contribute good to the soceity...thousands of years of vedic knowledge and intelligence cannot just disappear just becoz they marry someone else....
above all the choice of whom to marry IS a girl or boy's right and it IS their personal matter...if their parents consent to the marriage then their is absolutely nothing anyone can say abt it....

vidhya,
then u agree that the community will vanish right

I do agree with sunkan. Some damage control has to be done before it is too late

dear sister,
i belong to an iyer family and staying in kerala.you were saying about the extinct of iyer community.but in my opinion this type of mixed race marriages will only increase in the coming days because of so many reasons.nowadays nuclear families are only seen in our community and also girls are given good education in so many fields including professional.they will get chances to go abroad either for higher studies or job wise.most of them will be away from their family surroundings and their circumstances will lead them to select their own partners of choice.we cannot blame them in such a situation.since there are only one or two chid in the house parents will be forced to agree to their wishes.they don't want to hurt their children.these are some of the reasons of this type of situation.also i am not of the opinion that we will lose our religious culture by this reason.even otherwise we can see the detioration of family values and religious values in our community for the past few years.even if one brahmin girl marry a boy of her own community,it is not certain that they lead a real iyer family life.so in my opinion it is better to walk over the road which goes along .
i hope more members will come over and give their words in this discussion.

with regards,
bipasu

Dear Sunkan,
WOW.. My admiration to you for bringing up this post.I will not rate or treat this post as controversial for...you have wrote the in thing!
Also,dear Ilites please bear in mind that i do not have any enemity towards any other caster/creed or religion.I respect all individuals& i have many friends who are from different castes too.....but on the other hand, i do respect my caste a lot and the vedas/samjams..They have all the values of life bundled in them which are very much essential for life.What's not in our Gita?? I'm just enjoying the every thursday's post and learning the various spheres and aspects of life explained by Lord krishna - Okay.. let me not deviate..I'm(in fact my DH too) of the strongest opinion that we would inculcate our tradition , rituals and teachings in our vedas/Paramacharyal's teachings etc to our kids and make sure that our community does not go obsolete.

But, sunkan.. what you have come across about weddings(cross) is the happening of the day....It indeed throws fears about what ur title is...Its peer pressure that parents are forced to perfomed these weddings.. but in hearsts of hearsts they cry...Again, I do not want to hurt any one here my writing this.. but i have enough examples in my friends circle and distant relatives too...But i'm sure i wud do a little bit of what i can to save my community values/teachings without bringing any differences in my (future) kids!!!

A nice topic - in need of the hour!

Originally Posted by bipasu_1950

dear sister,
i belong to an iyer family and staying in kerala.you were saying about the extinct of iyer community.but in my opinion this type of mixed race marriages will only increase in the coming days because of so many reasons.nowadays nuclear families are only seen in our community and also girls are given good education in so many fields including professional.they will get chances to go abroad either for higher studies or job wise.most of them will be away from their family surroundings and their circumstances will lead them to select their own partners of choice.we cannot blame them in such a situation.since there are only one or two chid in the house parents will be forced to agree to their wishes.they don't want to hurt their children.these are some of the reasons of this type of situation.also i am not of the opinion that we will lose our religious culture by this reason.even otherwise we can see the detioration of family values and religious values in our community for the past few years.even if one brahmin girl marry a boy of her own community,it is not certain that they lead a real iyer family life.so in my opinion it is better to walk over the road which goes along .
i hope more members will come over and give their words in this discussion.

with regards,
bipasu

dear bipasu,
what u have mentioned is the basic structure here, so they feel the pattars of kerala that due to exposure and children more travelling abroad and that particular exposure will lead to many things vanishing,do you see a child doing namaskaram morning and evening and if there is a festival they refuse to wear the clothes in appropriation, and liking a boy by a girl is real tough leave alone foreign exposure or not, who want to be bickered not to do this or that is the present trend of mind,so slowly the pattar community feel that because of all these happenings it may vanish into mixed iyer groups and will not remain a kerala pattar as a different identity...sunkan

Originally Posted by aishu22

Dear Sunkan,
WOW.. My admiration to you for bringing up this post.I will not rate or treat this post as controversial for...you have wrote the in thing!
Also,dear Ilites please bear in mind that i do not have any enemity towards any other caster/creed or religion.I respect all individuals& i have many friends who are from different castes too.....but on the other hand, i do respect my caste a lot and the vedas/samjams..They have all the values of life bundled in them which are very much essential for life.What's not in our Gita?? I'm just enjoying the every thursday's post and learning the various spheres and aspects of life explained by Lord krishna - Okay.. let me not deviate..I'm(in fact my DH too) of the strongest opinion that we would inculcate our tradition , rituals and teachings in our vedas/Paramacharyal's teachings etc to our kids and make sure that our community does not go obsolete.

But, sunkan.. what you have come across about weddings(cross) is the happening of the day....It indeed throws fears about what ur title is...Its peer pressure that parents are forced to perfomed these weddings.. but in hearsts of hearsts they cry...Again, I do not want to hurt any one here my writing this.. but i have enough examples in my friends circle and distant relatives too...But i'm sure i wud do a little bit of what i can to save my community values/teachings without bringing any differences in my (future) kids!!!

A nice topic - in need of the hour!

don't worry aishu,
about what or how you are with your friends, here it is a topic of a particular clan which has its own norms and lifestyle which is vanishing or has started receding very fast, i and my orpadi are both from tanjore we married into palghat,now this sort of changes could bring about a revolution in food habits, as the mother is more cooking what she knows best so a mother out of kerala would prefer to cook what she knows and likes, and slowly the onam will take a back seat and diwali and pongal will come foreward, so little things as these will change the pattar community and they are worried that it might vanish...sunkan

Originally Posted by sunkan

vidhya,
then u agree that the community will vanish right

no i dont agree with you that they will become extinct...a caste is a cultural identity......cultural identities can never become extinct, though they may be redefined from time to time...change is the only unchangeable thing....in our grandmothers time, a girl after attaining puberty, going out of the house and interacting with the soceity was considered extremely bad and would affect the virtue of her character...but today we go out as easily as men do and accomplish so much, so does that mean our cutural identity is extinct? or that we are not respecting our values and traditions?....same way, every other custom and tradition will get redefined and will be here to stay for a long time in some form or the other....

Dear Sunkan,

Inter caste marriage is prevalent today. In my opinion the rate will increase in future.
All religions don’t have the same rules and that is a big problem. The impact on future generation will be worse. They will be in a quandary as they don’t know which religion to follow, which way to pray, which culture to adopt etc., and they start following their own which will be neither mother’s nor father’s.

Lakshmi