Оңтүстік Үндістан теңізшілер қауымдастығы: Параварлар тарихы

Maritime community in South India
Paravar (also known as Bharathar or Bharathakula Kshatriyar and sometimes colloquially as 'Fernando') is a Tamil maritime community, mainly living in the state of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and in Sri Lanka. Early Pandyas were believed to be Parathavars, due to several similarities of profile. Historically, they were inhabitants of the Neithal (coastal) lands of Tamil Nadu, and find mention in various ancient Tamil literary works. In modern India, Paravars are concentrated along the coastal belt extending along the Gulf of Mannar, from Kilakarai to Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin). They also live in some pockets along the Arabian Sea coast in Kanyakumari District as well as central Kerala. Paravars have been significant among the population of the port city of Thoothukudi, since the 1580s. Today, they are found in significant numbers in the cities of Negombo and Colombo. whereas another section which identifies itself as Sri Lankan Tamil live in towns such as Vankalai in Mannar District and Puttalam. The Paravars have a rich history, starting from their major economic contributions to the coffers of the ancient Pandya kings through their pearl harvesting and trade, to their later interactions with the Portuguese in the 16th century and later. The arrival of Portuguese soldiers and missionaries in their midst, including the great missionary St. Francis Xavier, resulted in their conversion to the Catholic faith, adoption of Portuguese names and also protection against marauding enemies. The Paravars may have been the Paradavar mentioned in Sangam literature, who are mentioned in the Pattinappaalai. They were maritime inhabitants of the littoral Sangam landscape known as Neithal, who were involved in pearls harvesting, boat building, salt making, fishing, among other maritime activities. Professor Subramaniam says, they were “ferocious warriors” and constituted the most part of Tamil Navy at all times The name Parathavar may have been derived from the Tamil root word paravai. Another theory proposes that the community originated from ancient Ayodhya and are descendants of the Bharatas clan from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, who were the ancestors of the heroes in the epic.

Regardless of any doubt regarding their claims to be warriors under the liege of Pandyan kings, the Paravars certainly did have armies at a later time, these being created to protect the fisheries and their people from attack. The Arab Muslim invasion began in 712 AD at the Sindh Valley and by around 1300 AD they had taken over the entire northern India. However, even prior to the invasion there were Arabs in southern areas such as Calicut, Quilon and Malabar, chiefly traders interested in the spices, pearls, precious stones and cottons which were available there. Another advantage of the location was that it was on a major sea trade route running through south east Asia and on to China. Some of these Arabs were also pearl divers, having gained their experience in the waters of the Persian Gulf. The descendants of these Muslim people became known as the Lebbais and their main settlement was the town of Kayal, a presence which was noted by Vasco da Gama and Duarte Barbosa by the early sixteenth century. There is some ambiguity regarding this town: there was a harbour on the Tamraparani River in Pandyan times which was known as Korkai and when the river at this point became too silted to use (it is situated approximately 8 km inland nowadays), it was replaced by a port called Kayal, thought to be situated variously either at the mouth of the river or at the village of Palayakayal which was 4 km downstream of Korkai but is itself nowadays about 3 km inland. Marco Polo described Kayal as a bustling port and the centre of the pearl trade in 1292 but by the mid 16th century this too had probably ceased to operate and was replaced by another port, Punnaikayal (new Kayal) under the influence of the Portuguese colonists. Punnaikayal was again at the mouth of the river, which as part of an estuary was under constant change, around 4 km from Palayakayal. It is difficult to determine with any consistency which of these locations is being referred to at various times by various authors but what does appear to be a common factor is that this was until modern times a major port for the pearl trade. Kayal is the Tamil and Malayalam word for a backwater. The 1901 Madras Census noted three groups who called themselves Paravars. It speculated that their common root were the mostly Christian Tamil speaking Paravars, The other groups were the Canarese speaking Paravars, who were umbrella makers and devil dancers and the Malayalam speaking Paravars, who were lime burners, gymnasts, midwives and shell collectors. It has been further speculated that the splitting of the latter two groups from the first may have been as a consequence of a desire to move away from the ancient tribal area when faced with the arrival of Muslims.

There are differences of opinion regarding events up to the early 1500s. Donkin and Ray believe that the Muslims gained influence over the Paravars to the point that the latter became at best hired labour and at worst enslaved, and Neill has claimed that there was a belief among Paravars that the Muslims sought completely to exterminate them following various squabbles. By this time, Maynard has claimed, the south Indian coastal areas around Kanyakumari were "the greatest pearl fishery in the world", and that the Hindu people who fished for oysters there " were known as the Paravas". He says that the Hindus were essentially peaceful in nature and temperamentally unsuited to counter physical threat, although Frykenberg has described them as a " proud and venturesome seafaring folk engaged in fishing, pearl diving, trading, and piracy." Hastings has pointed out that the piracy (and some smuggling) was only an occasional activity and that their more normal occupations demanded courage, strength and stamina, which made them "hardened adventurers". From 1527 the Paravars were being threatened by Arab fleets offshore, headed by the Muslim supporting Zamorin of Calicut, This continuing situation, and the desire to be relieved of the rivalry from Lebbai divers, caused the Paravars to seek the protection of Portuguese explorers who had moved into the area. A delegation led by Vikirama Aditha Pandya visited Goa to seek talks to this end in 1532. The protection was granted on the condition that the leaders were immediately baptised as Catholics and that they would encourage their people also to convert to Catholicism; the Portuguese would also gain a strategic foothold and control of the pearl fisheries. The deal was agreed to and Vikrama Aditya Pandya baptised as Joao de Cruz became the first subject of the king of Portugal and some months later 20,000 Paravars were baptised en masse, and became subjects of Portugal, during the visit of Pedro Gonsalves, Vicar of Cochin. By the end of 1537 the entire community had declared itself to be Catholics, according to Hastings, and the Portuguese proceeded to destroy the Arab fleet when they met fortuitously at Vedalai on 27 June 1538. From that point the Paravar people as a whole enjoyed renewed prosperity. Their declaration of acceptance of the Catholic faith did not prevent them from continuing to worship in the manner which they had done previously because there were no translators to spread the Catholic message and also because the conversion was seen by the Paravar people as being merely a convenient arrangement to obtain protection, not a statement of belief. St Francis Xavier, then a Jesuit priest, had been working in Goa prior to his journey to Kanyakumari, where he arrived in October 1542. He took with him some interpreters with the intention of spreading the Gospel and bringing about further religious conversions. Maynard claims that a further 10,000 Paravars were baptised during the first month of his mission, and 30,000 in total by its end; and that "His conversion of the Paravas, as is pointed out by Père Lhande, is the only instance of an entire caste being brought into the Church." More modest figures have been proposed, such as 15,000 people including re baptisms. Xavier appointed catechists in the Paravar villages up and down the of coastline to spread and reinforce his teachings, the method for much of which was to recite repetitively (and in poorly translated Tamil) These appointments necessitated that he obtained funds with which to pay them, the primary source being money granted to him by the Queen of Portugal. There is at least one source which believes that Francis Xavier briefly visited again in 1548, when he was paraded through Tuticorin by the Paravars. There is a shrine to him, in a cave, which is still venerated today as the place they believe to have been his principal residence during his time among them. Vikirama Aditha Pandya was rewarded by the Portuguese for his actions of 1532, when as part of the arrangement for protection he had offered to manage the pearl diving on behalf of the Portuguese. He became known as Senhor dos Senhores ("first among notables") Dom João da Cruz (but see Note 1) and was recognised as headman and official intermediary by the Portuguese from 1543 until 1553. (1543 was the year that the Portuguese first settled in Tuticorin, and the point from which that port began to expand until it eventually became the hub of the pearl fishery). Another writer has said that " by the beginning of the eighteenth century the Tamil Paravas had emerged as one of south India's most highly organised specialist caste groups", This was certainly the outcome following Pope Clement XIV's dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1773, which resulted in a dearth of Catholic misisonaries and priests in the area, enabling the jati thalavan and his fellow caste notables to assume the role of solemniser for rituals such as marriage. Paravar Christianity, with its own identity based on a mixture of Christian Catholic religious belief and Hindu caste culture, remains a defining part of the Paravar life today, the early work of missionaries and in the 1540s having been reinforced by others who succeeded them and by the jati thalavan, the latter also being known as the "little king". There are also evidences to show that the Portuguese used some Paravars in their maritime exploitations overseas.

A report written in 1622 stated that the fisheries had been moribund for many years due to the poverty of the Paravars; it is uncertain as to what period this refers or the cause of the poverty. Xavier had recorded that the oyster beds seemed to have an uneven cyclical pattern, with a few good years of production alternating with a rather longer period of poor production. Similarly, around 1490 Ahmad ibn Mājid wrote that the fisheries "flourish in some years, but appear dead in others." One contemporary explanation for these changes was that the beds became covered by the shifting sea sands. A study of the period 1666–1916 showed that while the good harvests did tend to alternate between the Indian and the Sri Lankan sides of the Gulf, the latter side was more than twice as productive. During the period of Catholic repression the Dutch East India Company also expelled all Catholic priests and outlawed Catholic baptisms and other rituals. Indeed, there are no surviving records to suggest that there was any evangelism at all, although they did build Tuticorin's first Protestant church in 1750. During their period of control the Dutch also established a cloth factory in Tuticorin and this was a much appreciated venture — at some point the Paravars had also become traders in cloth.

The British took over control in 1796, However, until 1813 the Company did not officially allow Christian missionaries to operate in the areas under its control, bowing only then due to pressure from religious organisations in Britain. The company was suspicious of any potential political undertones spread by the missionaries and was eager to keep trade running smoothly by operating a policy of non interventionist conservatism in matters religious and cultural. Bayly has examined why it was that some among the low ranking Paravars were able to rise to work in occupations that were both more prestigious and more financially rewarding than had been the case before the conversion to Christianity, She points out that the Paravars held much the same rank as the Mukkavars, who were also a maritime caste of the area and were converted but did not demonstrate the same subsequent socio economic mobility. (It has, however, been argued that the Mukkavars were "a sub class of the Parava[r] community" and formed the largest group of those converted to Christianity during Xavier's time). Robinson has said Far more prosperous than the Mukkuvar, their access to wealth, and then to education, after conversion ensured that they could attempt to spread out, urbanize, acquire new skills and enter different professions. All these aided in the process of upward social mobility." When the Jesuit missionaries returned in the 1830s, following the revival of their Society, they were shocked at the lapse in formal religious observance and in general Christian morality, as well as the opulent lifestyle being led by the Paravar elite which contrasted with the dilapidated state of the churches. Around that time some of the Paravar elite, along with some other groups such as Nadar traders, were making significant amounts of money from a surge in export demand for processed cotton, using their existing wealth from the pearl fisheries as a means to expand their interests into this booming sector. By 1845 Tuticorin was the location of the main cotton export activities in southern India and by the end of the century it was the fifth largest port in the entire of India. In 1841, the Jesuits' attempt to re assert their authority over the elite by supporting the aspirations of a rising group of lesser Paravars who had also managed to gain from the Cotton trade and boom and had hopes of validating their success with an appropriate rank in the hierarchy. These people were traders, often spending long periods of time away from home in such places as Goa and Sri Lanka. Even lower down the ranks, the rise in ship and cargo movements, the continued development of Tuticorin harbour and town, and similar consequences of the boom (including the requirement for food by those who had moved away from working directly in fishing or on the land) was providing increasingly profitable work. The Paravar elite continued their traditional role, organising this labour as they had done for the pearl fisheries. They also absorbed into their ranks those members of the caste who had profited from independent trading, this being achieved by requiring the newcomers to pay a fee and swear allegiance to the jati thalivan. However, there were people who had been cast aside from the elite as a consequence of falling out with the jati, and others who wanted recognition more quickly than the system allowed. These disaffected people were the target of the Jesuit actions, which consisted primarily of providing them with status symbols such as the offer of additional Te Deums and bells at marriage ceremonies. The end result of this attempt to foment a new hierarchy, however, was a riot and a successful move by the jati to replace the Jesuits with Goan Padroados as ministers to his people and officiators at the church of Our Lady of Snows. The Jesuits continued trying to split the caste for a further thirty years but rarely had more than temporary successes: the ranks of the disaffected were swollen by new arrivals but also diminished by those who left as a consequence of having obtained satisfaction from the elite. The Jesuits had gone so far as to establish an alternative cathedral, the Sacred Heart, in the hope of drawing worshippers from Our Lady of Snows. That, too, failed in its purpose. There were also several instances where the disputes — often relating to rights in regard to religious buildings and their precincts — were taken through the court system, and also more occasions when riots between the factions occurred. The death of the jati thalavan in 1889 without a male heir gave rise to a power vacuum and so presented a new opportunity for the Jesuits. Combined with this was another boom in maritime trading, this time involving the plantations of Ceylon, which served to swell the ranks of those aspiring for recognition as members of the elite. The Jesuits employed various measures intended to drive a wedge between the two groups and to limit the subservience displayed towards the jati and other senior caste members which, the Jesuits believed, infringed on the true worship of God because offerings of money and goods were made to those people as part of Paravan church rituals. They went so far as to attempt to install an alternative jati and the battle for control continued for several years. The Jesuits were not helped in their aim by the British government, who in 1891 renegotiated the arrangements for sharing the fishery catches with the new, non Jesuit appointed jati thalavan. This deal, in which it was agreed that the jati should receive the output of one boat for that of every thirty which went to the government, once again confirmed the support of the ruling power for the caste hierarchy. Although they regarded the Nadar Christians as their equal in the past. The Nadars had been enthusiastic in their conversion to Christianity but did so much later than the Paravars, with surges of conversion — both to Catholicism and Protestantism — taking place in 1802–1803, the 1840s and the late 1870s/early 1880s. Dyron Daughrity has said that the conversions were "largely because of the increase in social status that could be effected" but adds thatblockquote|there are occasions when the Christian community would become out cast. The issues were complex. If the new converts could convince the entire caste to convert, the social status of the group could actually increase. Individuals who converted were often forced to abandon their community and move in order to find Christian support. The often difficult situations regarding conversion and caste exist to this day." As the caste hierarchy disintegrated, becoming a range of groups each seeking to assert their position, the role of the jati thalavan became more and more impossible and was eventually abandoned, the last occupant of the post having been installed in 1926. The introduction of new technologies in the post World War II era such as such as nylon fishing nets, refrigeration and motorisation made fishing more lucrative as an occupation in its own right which removed the economic differences between those who laboured and those who either traded or lived off the organisation of labour. With this difference gone, the distinction between the Paravar elite and the majority of the community lost its basis and became obsolete, and the hierarchy within the community disappeared.

In 1947, the fisheries became a monopoly of the new independent Indian government. In 2009 the government of Tamil Nadu issued an order designating Christian Paravars within its jurisdiction as being of the Most Backward Classes (MBC), a designation regarding their socio economic status which entitles them to various assistance measures, primarily in the form of positive discrimination, if they should require it. These designations are flexible and subject to change at various times, according to determined need.

Historically, the Paravars were involved in sea related activities such as pearl diving, fishing, navigation, boatbuilding and the making of salt. The voyager and explorer William Dampier had described seeing them in 1699.

During the cotton boom in the mid 19th century, some of the Paravars took to the textile trade. Starting in the 1860's, some of the entrepreneurs and merchants among the Paravars started setting up businesses in Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka). Many flourished in businesses in Sri Lanka that the Paravas (known as Bharathas in Sri Lanka) are widely recognised as a merchant community in Sri Lanka, known for their business acumen and also for their charity. The Bharatha businessmen donated large parcels of land to various Catholic religious societies to build schools and places of worship in Sri Lanka. Some Bharathas in Sri Lanka also made a mark in business, politics, sports, etc. Bharatha merchant icons like M. P Gomez, J. L. Carwallio & F. X Pereira started Sri Lanka's first departmental stores. F. X. Pereira's son, I. X. Pereira, was elected to the legislative council of ceylon, and later became Minister of Labour, Industry and Commerce in the government. During World War II, he was appointed to the War Council, by the British. A postal stamp was issued by the Sri Lankan government in his honour, in 1988. Former English cricketer Dimitri Mascarenhas was born to Bharatha parents in London, England. He holds the record for most runs in an over in a One Day International for England, with 30, scored off Yuvraj Singh of India on 5 September 2007.

The Paravars were probably a primarily endogamous society until the arrival of the Portuguese, marrying only within their own caste and so keeping the tribal ties strong. Subsequently, they became exogamous and from this came the use of names based on Portuguese origin. Family names such as Fernando, Costa, da Cruz and Roche are a direct consequence of these marriages, and familiar names, such as Susai (a Tamil translation of Joseph), reflect both the marriages and the general Portuguese influence. There are four family names of non Christian origin still in common use, these being Kalingarayan, Villavarayan, Poobalarayan and Rayan. These names are thought possibly to have their origin in arayan, which was used by Tamil fishing groups as a caste title. Arayan is claimed by some modern descendants of the Paravars to be itself derived from rayya (rajah, king) and "MOTHA" is the surname of all jatithalavas who ruled and it is also followed till now.