Swarajya argues Skanda-Murugan unity, calls Dravidian view spurious

Swarajya magazine has published a detailed essay arguing that the Hindu deity Skanda, also known as Murugan, Karttikeya, and Kumara, is a single unbroken tradition from the Rigveda through Tamil Sangam poetry, and that a half-century-long academic campaign to separate a Dravidian Murugan from a Sanskritic Skanda has no evidentiary basis. The article states that Tamil devotion to Murugan carried Vedic ritual and village shamanic practice side-by-side from its earliest attested form, and the two traditions were never rivals.

The Swarajya piece describes the Dravidianist argument, which it says has governed Tamil scholarship and public life for 50 years, as claiming Murugan began as Seyon, a red quasi-god of the Tamil hill country worshipped through possession-dance, with no six faces, no Krittikas, and no Vedic parentage, while Skanda is a northern war god fused onto Seyon later. Some versions of the argument make Murugan a deified chieftain or ancestor of ancient Tamils.

To refute this, Swarajya cites 1970s Soviet Indologist Berta Volchok, who identified Skanda among Harappan seal symbols, and argues the earliest textual and archaeological evidence shows continuous worship of the same deity across four millennia. The article does not cite any response from proponents of the Dravidianist view.