Madrasi

plural Madrasis · alternative Madrassi

1. datedA native or resident of Chennai in India.

   Runga Charlu was subjected to grave accusations in Mysore as he had the misfortune to be a Madrasi.

   1896, G. Paramaswaran Pillai, Representative Men of Southern India, Introduction, p. vii

   Synonyms: Chennaiite

2. broadlyA native of South India; a person of South Indian extraction (exonym; often considered offensive).

   Moses Nagamootoo explores the creation of a landscape and a heritage in Guyana by the Madrassi in his novel Hendree’s Cure […]

   2010 May 20, “Post-independence literature”, in Stabroek News

   5 more examples

   When the hardships of a Madrassi are complained of, we are told that a Panjabi is well off: that the taxation “on an average” is only so-and-so, Northern India being more lightly taxed than Southern.

   1916, Annie Besant, chapter 2, in India a Nation: A Plea for Indian Self-Government, London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, page 40

   ‘Oh, hell! I’d snivel psalms to oblige the padre, but I can’t stick the way these damned native Christians come shoving into our church. A pack of Madrassi servants and Karen school-teachers. […]’

   1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 2”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC

   The midwife, an old, thin, inscrutable Madrassi, came to the hall and sat on her haunches in a corner, smoking, silent, her eyes bright.

   1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part One, Chapter 6

   Coming from a South Indian Tamil family that had settled in the western India, “Madrasi” was my family’s nickname in the neighbourhood and so was mine at school. The name in itself was obnoxious, not to mention the stereotyping it brought along with it. For North Indians, anyone from the South was a Madrasi, irrespective of where they came from.

   2012 July 26, Xavier Bennet, “Discrimination is everywhere”, in The Times of India

   Hindi cinema has been guilty of stereotyping the “Madrasi” since the days of Mehmood. […] The “Madrasi” usage probably stems from the days of the British Raj when the Madras Province covered Tamil Nadu, parts of Kerala (excluding Travancore) and Andhra Pradesh and even Karnataka (excluding Mysore) and thus anyone from the South was automatically presumed to be from the Madras Presidency…a Madrasi.

   2014 May 21, Sudhish Kamath, “The Mythical Madrasi”, in The Hindu

3. board gamesA fairy chess rule where a piece that is attacked by a piece of the same type is paralyzed, rendering it unable to move.

alternative Madrassi

1. not comparableOf or relating to the city of Chennai in India, formerly known as Madras.