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NTR Jr movie row is about 2 ideas of Murugan—mascot of Hindutva mythos vs Tamil-only icon

Two nationalisms are shouting past each other. One would dissolve Murugan into a pan-Indian Hindutva spectacle, while the other would make him an icon to be guarded against the North.

The first poster for an upcoming Telugu film, with film dynast NT Rama Rao Jr playing the war-god Murugan, was recently embroiled in controversy. The actor’s post on social media was accompanied by the text, “Born in the North, forged in the heartland, worshipped in the South”.

Tamil pride groups, such as the NTK, spearheaded a backlash insisting that the god is Tamil, and Tamil alone, sparking an online war with NTR Jr’s fans. Each side is arguing over where the god “comes” from, as if a cultural, religious, and political phenomenon extending over 2,000 years could have a single point of origin.

The divine warrior-god is known by many names in many lands. Both sides forget that Tamils and Telugus have a shared medieval history of devotion to Murugan—and a parallel modern history of revering film stars. Yet, over the course of the 20th century, these impulses—divided by regional, caste, and media interests—have produced distinct, warring cultures of citizen-devotees. One focused inward, on hardline Tamil exceptionalism. The other looked outward, on the scions of film dynasties, bringing them Bollywood and Hollywood trends. Neither remembers who they once were.

From warrior-god to Brahma’s teacher

First, the all-important question: Where was the god “born”? In an earlier edition of Thinking Medieval, I examined one strand of this process: the evolution of a spear-wielding warrior god called Mahasena. He was worshipped by the Kushans, a Central Asian people who conquered portions of North India and traded with the Romans in the early centuries CE. In his academic monograph The Rise of Mahasena (2011), art historian Richard Mann argued—based on an analysis of texts, coins, and sculptures—that Mahasena came to be linked with an older north Indian divinity called Skanda. The latter was eventually identified as the son of the great god Shiva and his consort Parvati, herself the daughter of the personified Himalayas.

The other strand: Around the same time (possibly earlier), Tamil poems of the Sangam period describe a warrior-god of the hills—Murugan or Ceyon, the Red One. He was a god of the hunt and of war, the slayer of a demon, worshipped with frenzied dancing and the blood of a ram offered under a tree. There is none of the rich mythological texture of the Sanskrit Skanda Purana, no six-headed infant, no daughter of the mountain king, no Himalaya. In The Many Faces of Murukan (1978), religious historian Fred Clothey uses a comparative study of the Sri Lankan hill-god Gale-Deviya of Kataragama to argue that Murugan may have been a god of great antiquity. He was likely worshipped by megalith-builders in the late centuries BCE, if not much earlier.

Nuancing this conclusion, other Sangam poems indicate an awareness of North India. Some texts mention Brahmins and shrines to minor gods; archaeology also suggests that India’s coasts were fairly well-connected in the late centuries BCE–early centuries CE. No god or culture is ever hermetically sealed. Even in fairly early poems, Murugan is associated with roosters, with which Skanda-Mahasena was linked in the north. The possibility of an early fusion (or........

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