Iyers are an ethnoreligious community of Tamil-speaking Hindu Brahmins. Most Iyers are followers of the Advaita philosophy propounded by Adi Shankara and adhere to the Smarta tradition. This is in contrast to the Iyengar community, who are adherents of Sri Vaishnavism. The Iyers and the Iyengars are together referred to as Tamil Brahmins. The majority of Iyers reside in Tamil Nadu, India.
Robert Caldwell was a British missionary and linguist.
Niyogi Brahmin is a Telugu Brahmin subcaste native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, but are spread throughout South India and Maharashtra. The traditional occupations of the Niyogi Brahmins are settled cultivation and priesthood. But majority of them took up various secular vocations including military activities and patwaris. They were associated with administration, economics, literature, music composing, politics, scholarly, scientific, engineering, defense and warfare careers.
The Justice Party, officially the South Indian Liberal Federation, was a political party in the Madras Presidency of British India. It was established on 20 November 1916 in Victoria Public Hall in Madras by Dr C. Natesa Mudaliar and co-founded by T. M. Nair, P. Theagaraya Chetty and Alamelu Mangai Thayarammal as a result of a series of non-Brahmin conferences and meetings in the presidency. Communal division between Brahmins and non-Brahmins began in the presidency during the late-19th and early-20th century, mainly due to caste prejudices and disproportionate Brahminical representation in government jobs. The Justice Party's foundation marked the culmination of several efforts to establish an organisation to represent the non-Brahmins in Madras and is seen as the start of the Dravidian Movement.
Seshadri Srinivasa Iyengar CIE, also seen as Sreenivasa Iyengar and Srinivasa Ayyangar, was an Indian lawyer, freedom-fighter and politician from the Indian National Congress. Iyengar was the Advocate-General of Madras Presidency from 1916 to 1920. He also served as a member of the bar council from 1912 to 1920, the law member of Madras Presidency from 1916 to 1920 and as the president of the madras province Swarajya Party faction of the Indian National Congress from 1923 to 1930. Srinivasa Iyengar was the son-in-law of renowned lawyer and first Indian Advocate-general of Madras, Sir Vembaukum Bhashyam Aiyangar. Iyengar's followers called him Lion of the South.
The Balija are a Telugu-speaking mercantile community primarily living in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and in smaller numbers in Telangana and Kerala.
Raja Sir Panaganti RamarayaningarKCIE, also known as the Raja of Panagal, was a zamindar of Kalahasti, a Justice Party leader and the First Minister of Madras Presidency from 11 July 1921 to 3 December 1926.
Vadama, meaning "Northerners", are a sub-sect of the Iyer community of Tamil Brahmins. While some believe that their name is an indication of the fact that they were the most recent Brahmin migrants to the Tamil country others interpret the usage of the term "Vadama" as a reference to their strict adherence to the Sanskrit language and Vedic rituals which are of northerly origin.
Vembaukum RamiengarCSI, also rendered Vembakkam and Rama Iengar, was an Indian civil servant, administrator, and statesman who served Sir Visakham Thirunal Rama Varma V, Maharaja of Travancore and his successor Sir Mulam Thirunal Rama Varma VI, as Diwan of Travancore from 1880 to 1887 after a lengthy career in governance in the Madras Presidency, culminating in his membership of the Madras Legislative Council from 1867 to 1879. He was a trustee of Pachaiyappa's Charities, and a member of the powerful and accomplished Vembaukum clan of Vadakalai Iyengar Brahmins originating in Vembakkam, which also produced or encompassed such contemporaries as lawyers V. Sadagopacharlu and V. Rajagopalacharlu, and Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar; Mysore Dewan C. V. Rungacharlu; and Madras Deputy Superintendent of Police V. Raghavachariar.
Ashtasahasram is a sub-sect of the Iyer community of Tamil Brahmins from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Chettipunyam Veeravalli Rungacharlu, also spelt Rangacharlu, was an Indian civil servant and administrator who served as the 14th Dewan of Mysore from 1881 to 1883.
Tamil Nadu is one of the most literate states in India. The state's literacy rate is 80.33% in 2011, which is above the national average. A survey conducted by the Industry body Assocham ranks Tamil Nadu top among Indian states with about 100% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in primary and upper primary education.
Vembaukum Sadagopacharlu was an Indian lawyer, jurist, banker, and statesman, who was the first native Indian member of the Madras Legislative Council, serving from 1861 to until his 1863 death, and one of the first Indians to achieve wealth and renown in the courts of British India, doing both alongside his brother, religious reformer and minor polymath V. Rajagopalacharlu, in the judicial system of the Madras Presidency, in which they were leading Vakils, he himself being the first Indian to become one. He belonged to the influential Vembaukum family.
Christopher John Fuller is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has studied and written extensively about the people of India, particularly with regard to subjects such as Hinduism, the caste system, and the relationship between globalisation and the middle-classes.
The Dravidian movement in British India started with the formation of the Justice Party on 20 November 1916 in Victoria Public Hall in Madras by C. Natesa Mudaliar along with T. M. Nair and P. Theagaraya Chetty as a result of a series of non-Brahmin conferences and meetings in the presidency. Communal division between Brahmins and non-Brahmins began in the presidency during the late-19th and early-20th century, mainly due to caste prejudices and disproportionate Brahmins representation in government jobs. The Justice Party's foundation marked the culmination of several efforts to establish an organisation to represent the non-Brahmins in Madras Presidency.
David Anthony Washbrook was a British historian and author who studied modern India with a specific focus on the socio-political and economic conditions of South India between the 18th and 20th centuries. He was the director of the Centre for Indian Studies and a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford and later a research professor and fellow of South Asian history at Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Mylapore clique or oligarchy was a small coterie, amounting to a "handful" of politically moderate, elite Brahmins, many of them noted lawyers, administrators, academics or educators, or industrialists, in the Madras Presidency, who 'wielded almost exclusive influence and patronage in the service and government appointments', 'controlled the flow of resources out of the institutions of the capital' and 'dominated the professional and political life of [the presidency].' Informal and exclusive, it was historically controlled by two extended families, the Vembaukum Iyengars, and the Calamur Viravalli-Chetpet Iyers, and took its name from the luxurious Madras City neighborhood in which many leading members kept mansions. The clique coalesced and began its dominance in the 1880s and 1890s under the headship of Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer, with R. Raghunatha Rao as a tertiary leader; while some argue that it reached its zenith between 1910 and 1920, others highlight its remarkable successes in ministry and magistracy continuing in the 1920s and 1930s, with Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer as leader.
Chetpet Ramaswamy Pattabhirama Iyer, surname alternately spelt Aiyar, originally surnamed Dikshitar, was an Indian lawyer and jurist, noted for having led the Tanjore Bar and served as the Tanjore public prosecutor, before relocating to the city of Madras, whereupon he ultimately became a Vakil of the High Court of Madras, central member of the Mylapore clique, and a leader of the Madras bar, along with M. O. Parthasarathy Iyengar, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer, P. R. Sundaram Iyer, Sir V. C. Desikachariar, and Sir C. Sankaran Nair, immediately behind Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer, from 1891.
Calamur Viravalli Sundara Sastri was a leading Vakil of the High Court of Madras, second in the Calamur line to bear the style Viravalli, and of a family line occupying a prominent position and status within the Madras Presidency; a "giant" of Madras jurisprudence, with a "very large" practice on the Original Side, which he shared with his partner and adoptive brother, Sir P. Ananda Charlu. Sundara Sastri published a Revised Set of the Rules of Practice for Original side litigation, which became de rigueur, and was noted as an orator with 'perfect' diction. He authored the Sundararāmāyaṇa.
The Calamur Viravalli family, inclusive of closely intermarried "merged" lines was one of the two preeminent Brahmin dynasties in the Madras Presidency who dominated the Mylapore clique, alongside the Vembaukum family. They were originally Vadama Iyers from Kalambur and nearby hamlets in North Arcot, who traced their ancestry to Appayya Dikshita, and before that, Deshastha movements from the North. They were traditionally by hereditary profession renowned Sanskritists, as with Anantharama, father of patriarch C. V. Runganada Sastri, Anantharama's father, and Anantharama's father's father, but rapidly adapted to the practice and administration of law and English-style governance, with many Calamurs coming to rank among India's most celebrated lawyers, jurists, administrators, and statesmen.
