A false footnote and a fertile imagination
Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu spoke recently at an event organized to honour the Saint Poet and one of the Alvars of the Vaishnava order Andal quoting from a book ‘Indian Movements: Some Aspects of Dissent Protest and Reform”. He used a specific quote from this book to say Andal was herself a Devadasi who lived in Srirangam, and attributed it to author Subhash Malik of Indiana University. He used that particular quote to place Andal in Srirangam and to say she was a Devadasi. This he did at Rajapalayam a few kilometers away from Sri Villiputhur, considered Andal’s birth place where there is a temple dedicated to her probably for a 1000 years or more. Vairamuthu did not stop at that. His speech at Rajapalayam organized by Tamil daily Dinamani was followed up with his piece on Andal the next day. In a typical flowery Tamil Vairamuthu tried to show himself as praising Andal and being scholarly in quoting an American university research. He uses that single sentence in the so cal...