Speaker: Comrade Tamilmani (PALA, Vellore)
(An expanded transcript of the speech delivered at the seminar during the "Tamil Makkal Isai Vizha" (Tamil People's Music Festival) organized by the People's Art and Literary Association on August 22, 2026, in Thanjavur)
1. Introduction: Is this the era of 'Reels' or the era of speaking historical truth?
Greetings to everyone!
In recent times when 'Cupids' (Manmadhans) roam around as 'Honorables', I must ensure my greeting does not become a 'sensual greeting' (Manmadha Vanakkam); hence, I first offer you the egalitarian greeting of the working class!
You are all seated after quenching your hunger during the afternoon break. But for us, having had no Tamil Makkal Isai Vizha for the past 18 years, there is a massive historical hunger!
It was Mr. Modi who starved us like this. Because Modi implemented anti-people policies—such as attacks against minorities through the demolition of the Babri Masjid, CAA–NRC–NPR schemes, and demonetization—we had to take to the streets and lead struggles against them. Thus, we could not conduct this Tamil Makkal Isai Vizha for a period of 12 years.
Following that, because our strong family head suddenly stumbled, a few brothers drifted away from us to set up separate households. As the responsibility of protecting our family fell upon us, we could not hold the Tamil Makkal Isai Vizha for another six years. I hope that at least the children of those departed brothers will rejoin this family in the future!
In the research symposium and seminar held since this morning, comrades and scholars have spoken brilliantly about the antiquity of the Keeladi civilization, the historical frauds written from the North, the plots to shatter our (tamil) national identity, the rotting Vedic (un)civilization, and how the South is the true direction of Indian history.
In today's modern digital world, we find it difficult even to read four paragraphs, making this an era of single-paragraph 'memes'! It is also an era of 'Reels', where people don't even have time to read a meme and instead swipe past after watching a 30-second video!
Do you know how 30-second Reels and 15-second Shorts numb the thinking nerves of the human brain? Today, from cooking to politics, we watch everything in 15 seconds and move on. This capitalist technology renders us incapable of critical thought. However, we must not deceive ourselves in the name of "change." That is why, even in this afternoon hour, we need to speak for hours. A 3,000-year history cannot be made understandable in 30 seconds; understanding history requires patience!
Greater than the hunger that gnaws at the stomach is the hunger for history. And we have an 18-year-old historical hunger! To satisfy that hunger, let us now relish and feast upon the truth of the Keeladi civilization under Marxist guidance!
2. From the Formation of the Earth to the Origin of Humans: The Historical Background
If we want to understand Keeladi correctly, we must begin with the origin of the world itself.
4.5 Billion Years: The planet Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
4.2 Billion Years: The first living organism appeared on Earth.
230 Million Years: Dinosaurs, which we saw in the movie 'Jurassic Park', lived. Researchers state that after an asteroid collided with Earth, dinosaurs became completely extinct.
200 Million Years: The Earth, which was a single landmass, began splitting into continents. That was the era when the Indian landmass, which was attached to Africa and Madagascar, broke away. Since continents split long before the appearance of the human species, the claim that humans travelled along with the splitting continents is historically unacceptable.
Only after this did microorganisms, reptiles, and birds emerge on Earth, until finally, 3 million years ago, the early human species appeared.
But what stories do religious texts spin? Supposedly, Brahma first created the mind, then arrogance and the three gunas (qualities), and only then created humans and animals! Overriding the simple truth that the 'mind' is a function of the human brain and can only exist after humans appear, the Manusmriti preaches such absurdities. They try to obscure biology and evolutionary theory to transform mythological lies into history!
3. Human Migration and the Flourishing of Early Civilizations
The history of humanity is the history of its migration intertwined with labor!
Homo Erectus (2 Million Years Ago): Early humans, who originated in Africa, migrated across various parts of the world in search of food using large stones for hunting.
- Humans didn't just arrive yesterday! 1.5 million years ago, at Attirampakkam in Tiruvallur district, our early ancestors chipped stones to craft weapons!
- In Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, Homo Erectus humans lived 1 million years ago using stone tools.
- When the world was frozen in an ice age, human footprints were left in India, specifically on our soil in this Tamil land! However, due to severe natural disasters, this Homo Erectus species eventually perished completely.
Homo Sapiens (300,000 Years Ago): Modern humans also originated in Africa. Due to severe droughts and famines there, they migrated in various directions across the globe.
- Those who moved toward the Nile River created the Egyptian civilization and built the Pyramids around 3100 BCE.
- Those who moved toward the Euphrates–Tigris region created the Mesopotamian civilization (3500–4000 BCE) and constructed palaces.
- Those who reached the Indus region created the Indus Valley urban civilization (3000–1900 BCE). Archaeological excavations show that there were no spiritual symbols, temples, or palaces in the Indus Valley.
- Some moved toward the Steppe grasslands of Central Asia. These were the people who called themselves Aryans and later entered India (c. 1900 BCE).
- Those who migrated eastward (China) and southward into the Indian peninsula created the Vaigai Keeladi urban civilization!
This journey of the human species to establish an urban civilized life spanned approximately 65,000 years.
How would this human journey have been?
65,000 years ago, when humans began walking, they didn't have 'Bata' slippers or 'Adidas' shoes on their feet! There were no guiding tar roads or dirt paths. There were no bikes, cars, buses, trains, or airplanes to travel on! There were no highway motels or 'A2B' restaurants to rest and eat along the way; no water bottles to quench their thirst.
It was labor performed barefoot, with thorns and stones cutting into their soles! Countless people perished without water, food, or from animal attacks. Those who survived reached the next destination. The beginning of labor starts with walking. Had humans not performed the labor of walking, they would have perished right where they originated.
Even today, we walk. Why? To reduce unnecessary body fat and sugar! This is also a form of labor. But it is not the labor that creates a civilization.
In those days, people died for lack of food; today, people are dying from an excess of it! Those who died then left behind history. Those who die today disappear without a trace of history.
4. The Steppe Grasslands and the Ganges Plain: A History of Rowdyism
While the people across the Tamil land—from the Euphrates–Tigris in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus Valley, and Vaigai Keeladi, to the Porunai riverbank at Sivagalai, Adichanallur, Pattanamardhur on the Thoothukudi coast, Mayiladumparai in Krishnagiri, and Kodumanal in Erode—excelled in agriculture, handicrafts, and maritime trade, a nomadic group of cattle herders from the Steppe grasslands entered India through the Khyber–Bolan passes (c. 1900 BCE).
The inhabitants of the Indus Valley and other regions were skilled people engaged in intricate work such as agriculture, pottery, weaving, and bead-making. It was easy for a rough group of rowdies, accustomed to fighting wild beasts and living as nomads, to subjugate these gentle, working people through brute force!
The Aryan entry into India was just like a armed gang of rowdies entering a peaceful village to threaten and subjugate farming, house-building locals!
Having entered India, they defeated the people living between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers through force and trickery, bringing them under their control and calling it 'Aryavarta'. It was here that they wrote and accumulated Vedas and Shastras. Rather than saying they "wrote and accumulated," it would be more accurate to say they sang and spouted them out.
They produced nothing; they plundered the production of those who labored. They codified this under the name of Varna Dharma as law in the name of Manu. The people living in the South enjoyed a rich urban civilization. The Aryans could not easily cross the Vindhya mountains to enter.
Therefore, when they moved south, they used every trick in the book—wine, women, gambling, and deceit—enticing kings like modern-day resort-politics (Koovathur) and subjugating our people through royal power and spiritual falsehoods. Even today, we remain subjugated!
What do Marxist scholars say about this?
Rahul Sankrityayan: "The Rig Vedic period was a rural pastoral society."
Irfan Habib: "There was no production during the Vedic period. Their basic occupation was merely pastoralism."
D.D. Kosambi: "Indian history is not the history of kings; it is the history of the means of production and production relations. The Aryans, who lived as nomads, were destroyers of cities and destroyers of civilization. They created no tools of production."
V.P. Alekseyev (Russian Researcher): "The founders of Indian civilization were not Aryans!"
It is tragic that even a Russian scholar knew this history while we remained ignorant of it! But today, Keeladi has put an end to that tragedy!
They spin stories about a Saraswati River today... they are actually referring to the Ghaggar-Hakra river. 'Saras' means waterbody; 'vati' means possessing. Saraswati means 'possessing abundant water'. Like the tributaries of the Indus—Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej—it too was a tributary. Today, that river does not exist.
Many rivers flowed across India. Due to climate change, many were buried. Even recently, near Tirupattur, tons of sand were excavated from elevated land. What were once riverbeds are now agricultural fields.
They link that river to the Indus Valley Civilization and spin stories claiming the history of the Indus Valley is the history of the Vedas, their history, and that it constitutes Indian history. The Aryans entered India around 1900 BCE, at the very time the Indus Valley Civilization was coming to an end. It is chronologically untenable for newcomers to claim an already declining civilization as their own.
History is linked to production. What history can a pastoral society have when it engages in no production?
5. Labor, Tools of Production, and Surplus Production (A Marxist View)
"The development of productive forces elevates society to the next stage — that is, the stage of civilization," said Friedrich Engels. That is precisely what happened in Keeladi!
Man's first labor was walking and hunting for food!
• Stones thrown for self-defense later became sharp weapons.
• They attached stones to the ends of sticks and animal bones, turning them into spears. Tools of production were born!
• When hunting yielded nothing, they consumed naturally growing grains. Later, they sowed those seeds and practiced agriculture. Wooden plows were born to boost agriculture.
Iron and Surplus Production:
The discovery of iron multiplied agricultural production manifold. Where one bag of paddy was harvested, ten bags were now produced! Nine bags of surplus paddy were obtained!
Here is where Marxism's Das Kapital speaks:
In Egypt and Mesopotamia: The landlords and kings who snatched those nine bags of surplus built pyramids and palaces to boast of their glory!
In the Indus Valley and Keeladi: There were no surplus-snatching kings or oppressive structures! They shared the surplus among themselves and built exquisitely planned urban settlements. Outside of work hours, they enjoyed leisure time.
The bricks they used remain intact, undecomposed, and unaltered even today—2,600 years later. The drainage channels they built stand intact to this day.
When the British tried to lay railway tracks through the Indus Valley in 1924, archaeological findings revealed that the excavated bricks were of such high quality that they were used for new construction.
In today's capitalist production society driven solely by profit, a brick shatters at a single tap during construction. The drains built by corrupt bureaucracies in municipalities and village panchayats crumble within days.
The lesson Keeladi teaches is simple: because there was no craze for accumulating private property, there was no corruption. Hence, structures of timeless quality were created.
It was during that leisure time that dance, song, arts, and games were born! The dice and terracotta toys found at Keeladi indicate that people spent their leisure time joyfully.
Where is Today's Surplus?
Today, the right we fought for—8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure or recreation—is being stripped away as figures like Modi alter labor laws to favor capitalists!
Today, everything is daily wage, contract work, and fixed-term employment! How can a worker earning a pittance generate surplus? Where then is the room for dance and song? Today, because there is no surplus, families face friction and turmoil (akkappor) at home just trying to cover education, marriage, and medical expenses for their children!
Even during the little leisure time we currently get, capitalism prevents us from thinking by feeding us liquor, cannabis, cinema, vulgar and meaningless 'Reels', and TV serials that harass women! To top it off, under the guise of rituals, customs, and spirituality, the priesthood plunders whatever tiny surplus we have left!
6. Language is the Collective Asset of Labor!
Around 3,000 years ago, the most significant achievement created by humanity was language!
"Labor creates language; it structures and organizes society," said George Thomson.
Language was not created by Sage Agastya sitting at a river estuary, nor was it given by God! Language was born in the field of labor!
When lifting a heavy log, the sound a human involuntarily produces gives birth to language. An individual cannot create a language; language arises out of the effort to exchange information with one another during labor. Put simply, collective labor created language! Therefore, the Tamil language is the collective manifestation of human labor! Keeladi demonstrates this. Yes, Tamil is the expression of the labor of the people of Keeladi!
But what story does mythology spin?
"According to Hindu mythology, during the wedding of Lord Shiva, the northern direction sank and the southern direction rose. To balance the world, Shiva sent Agastya to the South. Spiritual texts claim that Shiva taught Tamil to Agastya and sent him."
Here, they ignore the labor behind language creation. Though this is a myth, a hidden truth lies within it. Even back then, Tamils stood in an elevated position. Perhaps Shiva sent Agastya precisely to bring down the elevated Tamils!
Now consider this: the reason the Indus Valley script and the Keeladi Tamil-Brahmi script share similarities is that the development of production tools and the collective labor of the people were identical in both places!
How did the Tamil who was literate 3,000 years ago become illiterate later?
Back then, they claimed that education meant only the Vedas. Even before written scripts existed, they decreed that non-Brahmins should not chant the Vedas even by memory. As a result, the literate Keeladis were buried underground, and Brahminical dominance swept across Tamil Nadu. Consequently, we were rendered illiterate over the last 2,000 years!
It was only when the white man arrived—even if to serve his own administrative needs—that education was opened to us, allowing some of our people to study. When we point this out, people immediately ask, "Didn't Thiruvalluvar read? Didn't Kamban read? Didn't Kalamegam read?" Yes, they did! There is no denying that. Thiruvalluvar is an exception—he belongs to the Sangam era. But after the Kalabhra rule (c. 400 CE), only those who fooled the people in the name of devotion were allowed to read! They emerged as Nayanmars and Alvars.
The Europeans, who discovered scripts and acquired education long after us, spearheaded the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, we, who once excelled in various fields, witnessed merely a 'spiritual revolution'! This spiritual revolution destroyed our scientific revolution.
Why couldn't we formulate Archimedes' principle, Boyle's law, or Ohm's law? Why couldn't the people who discovered iron and mixed carbon to create alloy steel (Sivagalai, Adichanallur, Keeladi, Ellapatti, Mayiladumparai) design a Periodic Table? Why did a Mendeleev have to come all the way from Russia for that?
Why couldn't we synthesize and state that iron melts into liquid at 1538°C, or map out the formation of Pearlite, Ferrite, Cementite, Austenite, and Ledeburite to design an 'Iron-Carbon Phase Diagram'?
The reason: education was denied to us! The Sanatanist-subservient kings who ruled Tamil Nadu paved the way for Aryan Brahmins to thrive. Standing right in front of us as evidence of this is the Thanjavur Big Temple! And many others like it.
In those days, the Tamils of Mayiladumparai, Sivagalai, and Keeladi built workshops and furnaces (aalaigal). But later kings constructed temples (aalayangal) for Brahmins to flourish!
It is no exaggeration to say that a town with an excess of temples and hospitals is a town filled with mental and physical patients. In a single line, it means a town inhabited by unhealthy people! Tamil Nadu leads in this regard today—with our own Vellore taking top spot.
Only those who perform physical labor can innovate new technology. The initial labor of taking the first step has today evolved into modern technology, scaling skyward all the way to robotics.
To create something new, labor alone is insufficient; education is also required. If you strip away education, people will merely repeat the same tasks like an ox at an oil-press without ever innovating. Aryan Sanatana was—and is—the hurdle blocking education for working people and hindering new scientific discoveries.
"Rather than mysterious spirituality, human relations and practical scientific discoveries are what drive sustained social progress" — the Chinese are proving this to the world today.
7. Conclusion: Keeladi — A Great Historical Weapon in the Hands of Communists!
Comrades!
Continuous human labor created tools. Those tools simplified labor and multiplied production. Increased production created a surplus. But today, capitalists have seized those tools of production and that surplus to exploit the labor of the people.
However, what does Keeladi teach us?
• There was no ruling class in Keeladi exerting dominance over the people! There were no landlords or kings plundering labor and surplus.
• There was no spirituality, god, or temple used to justify exploitation with claims like "This is just our fate"!
Are humans different from one another?
As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, modern science firmly confirms that the origin of early humans and modern humans happened in the same place: Africa. All people living across different parts of the world through various waves of migration originally came from Africa.
People who lived in a specific region over long periods developed their own production, food, language, and culture, eventually evolving into distinct groups of people.
Even within a distinct group speaking the same language—or different languages—the Aryans classified and divided them into varnas and castes: Pallar, Paraiyar, Gounder, Vanniyar, Pillai, Kallar, Maravar, Nadar, Udayar, and hundreds of other castes.
Therefore, among the people living across various nations and speaking various languages, is there any real meaning in boasting "I am an Indian", "I am a European", "I am a Pakistani", or "I am a Marathi", "I am a Bengali", "I am a Telugu", "I am a Malayali", "I am a Kannadiga", "I am a Tamil"—or flexing ego over being an "Iyer", "Iyengar", "Gounder", or "Vellalar"?
When genetic studies confirm that we all originated from Africa, do we still need these divisions among us? The archaeological evidence from Keeladi shows that we do not.
Not a single trace of caste was found among the people of Keeladi. It is no exaggeration to say that the people of Keeladi lived an egalitarian, collective life free of birth-based inequalities and untouchability!
Today, Keeladi is a powerful historical weapon in the hands of Communists!
"History written solely on the basis of mythologies and inscriptions has come to an end. Henceforth, history must be rewritten based on genetics, archaeology, and linguistics," says Tony Joseph.
Earlier, Rahul Sankrityayan wrote "From Volga to Ganga", from now on, let us rewrite Indian history starting from Tamil Nadu—as "From Keeladi to Ganga" or "From Keeladi to Volga!"
"Uphold Keeladi!" — Professor Marappan, based on the excavations of archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishna, has made it clear why we must uphold it. Today, Keeladi is the starting point of Indian history!
"Drive away Vedic Civilization!" — As comrades Oviya and Pozhilan stated, Sanatana Vedic civilization is incompatible with the working people and national rights. Let us drive it away! Vedic civilization is an uncivilized civilization. It is correct to call it Vedic (un)civilization. Abandoning Vedic (un)civilization from our daily life practices—from birth and death rituals to marriages—and creating our own way of life is the first step toward driving it out. When Sanatanists attempt to impose Vedic uncivilization upon us using state power under the banner of "One Nation, One Language, One Culture," Vedic (un)civilization will be driven away only when we overthrow the very authority behind it. Keeladi is a great weapon in our hands to defeat Sanatanists and drive away Vedic (un)civilization.
"The South is the Directional Course of Indian Civilization!" — As Comrade Kalappiran highlighted, 5,000-year-old Mayiladumparai and Adichanallur instruct us to rewrite Indian history from the South!
Let me conclude with one final thought. Labor — labor alone creates history. We must never allow a lazy, work-averse group singing bhajans to ride on the backs of the laboring masses who create history!
The battle cry of this Tamil Makkal Isai Vizha, initiated by the People's Art and Literary Association, has today become the language of the people. This festival is unfolding as a grand success.
Comrades, I now step down to make way for the evening's music and dance cultural performances.
Thank you!
-Tamilmani
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