It was all started by a TELEGU speaking Naidu 'Periyar'(Who was on British payroll and a stooge).His only hatred was against TAMIL speaking Brahmins,but at the same time was very friendly towards his own TELEGU speaking Brahmins(one of his close friend was a telegu Brahmin).Even the current generation Brahmin haters of Tamilnadu like Karunanidi,Vaiko(self proclaimed messiah of Tamil) are of Telegu orgin..
After the 1857 war, the British took it out on Muslim Noblemen and Hindu Brahmins.
The genesis laid in AIT. It was Bishop Robert Caldwell, an evangelist and a linguist who aggressively popularized the idea of an Aryan invasion of India.
In Caldwell’s analysis, the Aryans sent their agents, the sly Brahmins who through their faith now known as Hinduism enslaved the Dravidian people who were given the title of ‘Shudra.’ The main aim of Caldwell in projecting the Aryan-Dravidian divide was to make way for mass conversions because many in South India were led to believe that Hinduism is a racist cult dominated by the Aryan Brahmins.
This resulted in the Punjab's believing they are Superior and became loyal to the British, the bulk of India feeling inferior and the South was labelled as Dravidians thus creating a artificial divide that served British Agenda.
This belief was turned into a combative political ideology by Periyar. He saw all of South India as a separate nation from rest of what he called the ‘Aryanstan.’ To the bulk of his Tamil and other South Indian admirers, he presented Hinduism as a racist, Aryan-Brahminical cult as per Caldwell’s diktat.
Periyar then demanded a separate nation, comprising Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada-speaking regions—roughly corresponding to the then Madras Presidency but failed to get British approval.Fortunately, his mangled views were only accepted in present-day Tamil Nadu, while other South Indian regions—Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Karnataka rejected them.
Even to this day, a LOT of Tamilians believe in the foolish Periyar ideology. British propaganda was a powerful tool.
Ironically the Brahmins were just 2.5 % of the total population of Tamil Nadu. A true minority.
Bishop Robert Caldwell.