DRAVIDIA – a History of The Other India

The Dravidian peoples, or Dravidians, are a linguistic and cultural group living in South Asia who predominantly speak any of the Dravidian languages (left). There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages and they form the majority of the population of South India.

Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken circa 2000BCE in the Indus Valley civilization based on Harappa and Mohenjo-daro; but “the origins of the Dravidians are a “very complex subject of research and debate” as WIKIPEDIA politely puts it. The rise of India’s ‘Hindutva’ movement has sharpened that debate.

In ancient times (e.g. before 2000 BCE) Dravidian speakers must have been widespread throughout the Indian subcontinent. With successive waves of Indo-European speaking Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were abandoned. The Indus Valley civilisation disappeared.

In this talk we looked at what is known of the Indus Valley civilisation and at the same time discussed the possible ancient homeland of the Dravidian people.