[gumby]

No question that it was a British colonist (lawyer) who stated the divergence, and no question the British routinely followed a longstanding practice of "divide and conquer".

Nevertheless I have never believed that this was a malign British effort. I know many people do believe this. But plenty of linguistic and genetic studies (by people not British and not Indian) have shown reasons to believe this theory.

I actually find these results (the ancient roots and long continuity of Dravidian languages) very cool. It appears to be a much tighter link than other old-lineage languages (e.g. Egyptian/Coptic and some Chinese languages).