Madrasi

• Madrassi

Madrasi (plural Madrasis)

1. (dated) A native or resident of Chennai in India.
   • 1896, G. Paramaswaran Pillai, Representative Men of Southern India, Introduction, p. vii,

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

2. (by extension) A native of South India; a person of South Indian extraction (exonym; often considered offensive).
   • 1916, Annie Besant, India a Nation: A Plea for Indian Self-Government, London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, Chapter 2, p. 40

     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.

   • 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days, Chapter 2,

     ‘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. […] ’

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

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

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

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

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

     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.

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

     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.

• (native of Chennai): Chennaiite

Madrasi (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to the city of Chennai in India, formerly known as Madras.

• Damaris, aramids, madaris, masarid, samarid