Arumuka Navalar

Who was Arumuka Navalar?

Arumuka Navalar was one of the early revivalists of native Hindu Tamil traditions in Sri Lanka and India. He and others like him were responsible for reviving and reforming native traditions that had come under a long period of dormancy and decline during the previous 400 years of colonial rule by various European powers. A student of the Christian missionary school system who assisted in the translation of the King James Bible into Tamil, he was influential in creating a period of intense religious transformation amongst Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, preventing large-scale conversions to Protestantism.

As part of his religious revivalism, he was one of the early adaptors of modern Tamil prose, introduced Western editing techniques, and built schools that taught secular and Hindu religious subjects. He was a defender of Saivism against Christian missionary activity and was one of the first natives to use the modern printing press to preserve the Tamil literary tradition. He published many polemical tracts in defense of Saivism, and also sought and published original palm leaf manuscripts.