Kshathriya Census Campaign by Nadars:

Nadar, the once very low and impure - but not untouchable caste of toddy-tappers met with some socio-economic success in the early nineteenth century when Nadar 'middlemen and money-lenders began to acquire wealth.

The law courts set up by the colonial British regime did not remain immune for long to the missionary and colonial propaganda about castes.

In their Anglo-saxon legal desire to enforce a centralized and uniform law in the whole country, they began interfering with many customary practices of castes and communities.

Not only were the sâstras misinterpreted but their indisputed subordination to customary practices and social conventions was forgotten, and a new idea of Hindu social life was reconstructed which stultified many progressive and equitable tendencies inherent in them.

CENSUS CAMPAIGN BY URAVINMURAIS

1871 The first imperial census by British Raj in Indian subcontinent, was a landmark and it generated heated disputes over official caste definitions and social status. British raj officials used the census to downgrade Nadars in social status. This generated a census campaign by the Nadar uravinmurais and with petitions to the courts to grant Nadars the right to enter temples from which they were excluded by virtue of their low, Shanar status.

1888, To counter association with polluting work of making liquor as this relegates the cocopalm- climbing Nadars to the lower end of the social ladder in the census., their uravinmurai association presented evidence to the authorities that many of their caste fellows had left the polluting work of palm liquor production and become merchants, and that by history they had been a community belonging to regional lords and as well upper end of the community owing to their ancestral royal sovereignity or Kshathiriya status. The community welfare associations behaved like a collective enterprise with social welfare objectives.

Kshatriya Nadar Movement.

1891: When Nadar merchants began to acquire wealth. they started to claim high Kshatriya status - 24,000 of them returned themselves as Kshatriyas in the 1891 census - and they began to get Sanskritised, adopting, for instance, the sacred thread of the twice-born. Nadar uravinmurais vigorously lobbied the authorities to change what the census said about them and encouraged thousands of Nadars to offer a different occupational description to the census takers. The sub caste members were promoted to use the Nadar title jati to designate its elite and take up merchant Nadars leaders of the whole caste and also increase Nadar numbers in the census, thus their official visibility.

1899-1921 In the Nadars social history creation of identity and social status is due to Nadar Civil society uravinmurai groups and cotton merchants welfare association countered the census descriptions by organizing self-help and microfinance associations. The associations mounted legal, administrative and political challenges to the names, occupations and histories that the census imposed on them , Nadar Civil Society federations were successful in promoting the unity of the caste groups and They have incited the various sub-castes within the Nadars to adopt the same name in the Census and to break the barriers of endogamy. Nadar Mahajana Sangam promoted `caste fusion', as `the unit of endogamy expanded' and called upon the Nadars to return their castes as Kshatriya in the census.

1901 Census: A vigorous phamphlet campaign was oragnised by local Nadar associations in various villages to promote the adoption of Kshatriya Nadar by community fellow members.

Before 1921 census Nadars, their caste welfare associations presented evidence to the authorities that many of their caste fellows had left the polluting work of palm liquor production, developed clean habits by personal renunciation of liquor intake and become merchants.