This area comprises the southern end of the peninsula of India and the island of Sri Lanka. Except near the southernmost point the peninsula is bounded by coastal plains, quite wide along the east. Inland are hilly and mountainous uplands. The western edge of these uplands align with the Western Ghats, which formally end at the northwest corner of Tamil Nadu where they are met by the Eastern Ghats. The latter less coherent chain crosses the north central bound of Tamil Nadu, but various ranges of hills extend the uplands closer to the eastern coast. There are numerous rivers flowing from the high center to either of the two coasts, a pattern contrasted by Sri Lanka where the rivers flow radially from the central mountains. The most interesting regional feature is Adam's Bridge: the chain of islands and islets all but connecting Tamil Nadu and northwest Sri Lanka. This almost blocks the Palk Strait that provides navigation between Sri Lanka and the mainland.
The great majority in Tamil Nadu speak Tamil, although more than one in ten speak Malayalam. An even greater preponderance of Kerala, to its west, speak Malayalam. English is learned by a small minority but is of great importance in linking southern Indians to other national elites. It is learned by nearly one in ten in Sri Lanka, a country divided between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamils of the island's northeast. (Tamil is probably the majority language of the area focused on here, but just barely.)
The majority on the mainland are Hindu, but substantial Moslem and Christian minorities exist, especially in Kerala. On Sri Lanka the majority are Theravada Buddhists, with Hindu, Syrian Christian and Moslem minorities.
On the Coramandel Coast in the northeast corner of Tamil Nadu is the area's greatest city, Chennai, better known to English speakers as Madras. The Malabar coast's great city is Kochi(2), sitting at the tip of a peninsula between the Lakshadweep Sea and an inlet. Near the end of that coast is Kerala's capital, Thiruvananthapuram (formerly called Trivandrum). Madurai sits on the Vaigai River, on the eastern edge of Tamil Nadu's highlands and Koyampattur (formerly spelled Coimbatore) sits in the northwest of that state not far north of the Noyil River, part of the Kaveri's system. Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, is on the southwest coast of the island.
People arrived in southern India within a relatively short time of leaving Africa. Speakers of the ancestral form of Tamil were present throughout the area more than two thousand years ago. In the first millenium BCE the Hindu religion reached the south, syncretically absorbing indiginous religions. This area participated in the old religion's evolution(3) and the nibbana (extingusihing)(4) of its chief rival, Buddhism.(5) It is probably at this point that migrants from the north, speaking Indo-Arya(6) fled to Sri Lanka, giving rise over time to the Sinhalese Theravada community that now predominates there. In Kerala about a thousand years ago Malayalam emerged as distinct from Tamil under the transforming influence of Sanskrit, while to its east Medieval Tamil continued for another 500 years.(7) Christianity probably first arrived in the mid-first millenium with the arrival of Thomas Cana's group from the Persian Church, the true--as opposed to legendary--origin of the Syrian Christians. Moslems arrived in the eighth and ninth century, probably converting Arabs already settled along the Malabar Coast.
northeast
east
south
west
northwest
between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka
Economic success of Kerala and Sen's theories.
Global warming and the threat to the Maldives.
The expulsion of indiginous people from the B.I.O.T. and their replacement by the U.S. military and nuclear weapons.
Sinhalese mono-lingual legislation
The myth of St. Thomas
India
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its possessions
Asia
The Tamil Diaspora
Castes in India
(1) Also officially known as Bharata, the land of the tribe of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.
(2) Sometimes called Cochin in English
(3) Strict Vedic traditions were initially in opposition to Shaivism and Vaishnism but are now integral to Hinduism.
(4) This nibbana was not--for centuries--as total along the two coasts of this area as it was in the rest of the subcontinent.
(5) Jainism also spread south, only to decline and disappear there by early in the last millenium.
(6) Two distinct Indo-European groups called themselves Aryans; those of India are distinguished as "Indo-Aryans."
(7) Formal written Tamil is little changed from 13th century Medieval Tamil.