Pallar

The Pallar is a caste from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Pallar are mostly agriculturalists in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and most of them are still involved as agricultural labourers. They are spread across the Tamil diaspora demographic and densely populated in southern parts of Tamil Nadu.

The Pallar are distributed mostly in the districts of Thanjavur, Madurai and Ramanathapuram and, as of 2001, numbered around 2.2 million.

Origin and name

The name of the caste has previously been spelled as Pallan, however some caste members replaced the Tamil non-honorific terminal-"n" with an honorific "r", resulting in the name Pallar; a similar process was seen in the fellow Dalit Paraiyar (or Paraiyan) community.

The Pallar name may be derived from pallam, which means a pit or low-lying area. This aligns with their traditional occupation of cultivators of the low wetlands. However, there is literary evidence that suggests that pallars are farmers who produced large quantities of food grains.and they were traditional farmers.