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Periyar

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Periyar
File:Periyar1973.jpg
Thanthi Periyar
BornSeptember 17, 1879
Erode, Tamil Nadu, India
DiedDecember 24, 1973
Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation(s)Trader, Social Worker
Spouse(s)Nagammal, Maniammai
"Periyar" redirects here. For other uses, see Periyar (disambiguation).

Periyar E. V. Ramaswamy (Tamil: பெரியார்) (September 17, 1879 – December 24, 1973),also known as Ramaswami, EVR, Thanthai Periyar, or Periyar, was an Indian social reformer, who founded the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam.[1][2][3]

Biography

EVR's given name was Ramaswami. He was from a prominent Kannada Naicker caste, a community that descended from the Nayak rulers of Tamil Nadu. Hence he is called E. V. Ramaswami Naicker. "Periyar" means 'respected one' or an 'elder' in Tamil.

EVR was an atheist, noted for his antitheistic statement, "He who created god was a fool, he who spreads his name is a scoundrel, and he who worships him is a barbarian." His atheistic attacks and blasphemous acts, however, were directed at Hinduism alone. In 1956, he took a procession of Rama's picture garlanded with slippers near Dharmapuri and destroyed the portrait in public, drawing widespread protests from Indians whose religious sentiments were hurt. EVR's most popular writing is The Ramayana: A True Reading (1959), on the Ramayana, a Hindu epic.[4]

File:P34ee3R.jpg
MGR paying respects to Periyar's mortal remains

Though he was born in an affluent Kannada origin Naidu family, he started a movement claiming to "fight untouchability" which he used as a podium to tout intensely racist anti-Brahmanism and anti-Hindu prejudices,specifically targeting Brahmins, the rituals of Hinduism, and pseudoscientific views concerning the Aryan Invasion Theory and the caste system.

His Early Life

Periyar was the son of a merchant Venkata, who was a devout Hindu of the Vaishnavite school of thought. His mother was Chinna Thayammal alais Muthammal; he had one elder brother named Krishnaswamy and two sisters named Kannamma and Ponnuthoy. Periyar studied for 5 years and joined his father's trade at the age of 12. He used to listen to Tamil Vaishnavite gurus who gave discourses in his house enjoying his father's hospitality. Periyar was married to Nagammal a girl of just 13 in 1898. He became the father of a female child which soon died and he had no more children. After being reprimanded by his father, Periyar left his house for Kasi.[5]

Pilgrimage to Kaasi

He went on a pilgrimage to Varanasi to worship in the famous Siva temple Kashi Vishwanath in 1904. He wanted to enter a Free-lunch place but finding that it was meant only for Brahmins he disguised himself as a one. But it was discovered that he was not a Brahmin and he was removed from the place.Later he learnt that the Free-lunch place was built with the donation of a Dravidian merchant.[6] He saw the discrimination against non brahmins. He had pictured Kasi as a place where all Hindus would be treated equally. This humililation was the turning point in Periyar's life and after that made a deep wound in the heart of Periyar and it inflamed intense hatred towards the caste system and Hindu religion itself[7] On returning to Erode - his father delegated all his trade rights to this second son and renamed his major commercial concern under the title: "E.V. Ramasamy Mandi"

Rationalism

Ramaswami was a believer till the age of 28 and managed (dharmakartha) a temple. He became an atheist and followed western philosopher Nietzsche and claimed that God is dead. His anti-Brahmin rhetoric was carefully camouflaged in atheism. This won him considerable following in Tamil Nadu. He portrayed the Brahmins as villains of the society. Soon political parties saw an advantage in his rhetoric and began imitating him. Except a few, the majority of the people who listened to him did not give up religion or idol worship. Even today, his followers clandestinely offer prayers in Hindu temples and to swamis.

Ramaswami's rationalism was focussed on deriding the ritualistic practices by the priests, who were all Brahmins, in Sanskrit. His rhetoric always steered clear of Christians and Muslims.

Affiliation with the Indian National Congress

Initially, he joined the Congress Party in their political activism against British occupation. His critics dispute his contributions to the Congress party and say that his role was magnified as part of Dravidian nationalist propaganda.[8].[9], His views on Aryan Invasion Theory prompted him to change his political position and support the British occupation of South Asia, feeling that the invasionist scenario pseudoscience touted by the British (who viewed themselves as "Aryans" and so justified in their occupation of South Asia) was a valid reason.[10].Mohandas Gandhi did not like his views as he wanted to bring in reforms gradually and spoke of inclusion, not exclusion and hate; Periyar bolted away from the freedom movement.

Self-Respect Movement: 1925-39

Periyar and his followers campaigned constantly to influence and pressurise the government to take measures to remove social inequality even while other nationalist leaders focussed on the struggle for political independence.

Anti-Hindi

Hindi imposition in Tamil Nadu started in 1937 when the Congress Government of the Madras Presidency under (Rajaji) made Hindi a compulsory subject in schools. Tamils opposed Hindi imposition immediately and the Justice Party under Sir A. D. Panneerselvam and Periyar organized anti-Hindi imposition protests in 1938 and were arrested and jailed by the Rajaji government. More than 1200 people, including women and children, were imprisoned in 1938, of which two, Thalamuthu and Natarasan, lost their lives. In 1939 the Rajaji government quit and it was withdrawn in 1940 by the British governor.

Justice Party: 1939-1944

Justice Party was a rich man's party and had no grassroots support or leadership. Before World War II, the Justice Party ruled Madras Province for a short period. People voted Congress Party into power soon after the War. It was then the Justice Party began looking for someone popular with the masses, Ramaswami was an obvious choice. And the popular slogan social was "social justice",as a euphemism for anti-Brahmin rhetoric. He targeted Rajaji, the Congress leader and a Brahmin.

Dravidar Kazhagam and propaganda

To give a local flavor, Ramaswami changed the name of the Justice Party to Dravidar Kazhagam (Party of the Dravidians). He pitched himself against the so-called "Aryans", who were the Brahmins again. He avoided parliamentary democracy and started his campaigns on his own. His followers who wanted politics split with him after his marriage to a very young woman and started the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, popularly known as the DMK. The DMK was first led by C.N. Annadurai and after him by M. Karunanidhi. [11] EVR and his dramatic anti-Brahman protests put new life into the party.The Dravidian Federation, and launched a Tamil "cultural offensive," including theatrical productions of a "reinterpreted" Ramayana-a version transposing hero and villain, in which the Sri Lankan demon king Ravana becomes a heroic "Dravidian of 'excellent character,' " and the Aryan prince Rama a conniving, "despicable character" . This and later political uses of drama capitalized on the strong literary focus among Tamils. Despite such attempts at mass propaganda, however, the party's membership continued to be drawn from the elite.[12]

The logical culmination of Periyar's anti-Hindi, anti-north Dravidian non-Brahmanism was reached when the Justice Party became secessionist in nature, demanding an independent Dravidshan for the Dravidians. Thus, caste-region interaction in Tamil Nadu strengthened an exclusionary regional nationalism. Further, it also sought to delegitimize Brahmans not only from society but also from their regional identity. However, this exclusion did not last long. Once the regional claims were realized through formation of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) State and non-Brahman claims were translated into an extensive policy of reservations, Brahmans were incorporated as members into the Tamil society. Brahmans are accommodated as ideologues and legitimizers of the regional legacy of the Dravidian movement.[1]

Anti-Hindi Movement

Hindi imposition in Tamil Nadu started in 1937 when the Congress Government of the Madras Presidency under Rajaji introduced Hindi in the school curriculum. Tamils opposed Hindi immediately and the Justice Party under Sir A. D. Panneerselvam and Periyar organized anti-Hindi protests in 1938 and were arrested and jailed by the Rajaji government. More than 1200 people, including women and children, were imprisoned in 1938, of which two, Thalamuthu and Natarasan, lost their lives. In 1939 the Rajaji government quit due to the decision of the Indian National Congress to protest India's participation in World War 2. The teaching of Hindi was withdrawn in 1940 by the British governor.

EVR and Kula Kalvi Thittam/Hereditary Education Policy

Rajaji introduced a new education policy based on family vocation which its opponents dubbed Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy). As per this policy schools will work in the morning and students had to compulsorily learn the family vocation in the afternoon. A Carpenter’s son would learn Carpentry, a priest's son chanting hymns and a barber’s son hair cutting and shaving after school in the afternoon.[13] EVR felt that the scheme was a clever device against Dalits and Other Backward Classes as their first generation was getting educated only then.[14] EVR demanded its withdrawal and launched protests against the Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy) which he felt was caste-based and was aimed at maintaining caste hegemony. Rajaji quit in 1954 and Kamaraj scrapped it after becoming chief minister.[15][16]

EVR's ideas on Modern Tamil Alphabet

He instituted Tamil alphabet reforms and his reasons are as follows:[17]

In writings and publications of 70 or 80 years ago, the vowel 'ee' (i:), indicated today as ' ¼ ', was a cursive and looped representation of the short form, ' ¬ ' (i). In stone inscriptions of 400 or 500 years ago, many Tamil letters are found in other shapes. The older and the more divine a language and its letters are said to be, they, in truth, need reform.

Just as some compound characters have separate signs to indicate their length as in ' æè ' , ' îæ ' (ka: , ke:), why should not other compound characters like ' æ¨ ' , ' æ© ' , ' Æ ' , ' Ô ' (ki, ki:,ku, ku:) (indicated integrally as of now), also have separate signs? This indeed requires consideration.

Changing the shape of letters, creating new symbols and adding new letters and similarly, dropping those that are redundant, are quite essential.The glory and excellence of a language and its script depend on how easily they can be understood or learnt and on nothing else.

Periyar and anti-Brahmanism

Periyar's self-respect movement was founded on a principle of intense anti-Brahmanist racism, while nominally claiming to be a movement espousing "rationalism" and "athieism".Tamil Brahmins (Iyers and Iyengars) were frequently held responsible by followers of Periyar for direct or indirect oppression of lower-caste people on the canard of "Brahmin oppression" and resulted in innumerable hate attacks on Brahmins and which among other reasons started a wave of forced mass-migration of the Brahmin population.[18]. Periyar is alleged to have called for "Brahmin killing"s and burning down Brahmin homes. Later, in regards to a DK member's attempt to assassinate Rajagopalachari, he "expressed his abhorrence of violence as a means of settling political differences".[19]The canard of "Brahmin oppression" rationalized conspiracy theories and pointed to Brahmins as enemies against whom the radical movements pitted themselves.[18] The legacy of the anti-Brahmanism of the self-respect movement was taken over by the later Dravidan parties. Growing anti-Brahmanism in Chennai provided a rationale for polarization of the lower castes in the DMK movement.[20] Eventually, the virulent anti-Brahmanism subsided somewhat with the replacement of the DMK party by the AIADMK[21].EVR's followers have broken temple icons, cut sacred threads and tufts from Brahmin priests, and have often portrayed Brahmins in the most derogatory manner in their meetings and magazines (see http://www.viduthalai.com and http://www.unmaionline.com - both in Tamil language).

Periyar and pseudohistory

Main articles: Aryan Invasion Theory (history and controversies) and Self-respect movement

Over the course of the 19th century, British scholars such as Max Mueller propagated falsified invasionist scenarios of Indo-Aryan Migration in India as part of a systematic and well-organized propaganda campaign to create sectarian divisions on the basis of racial perceptions contrasting the so-called upper-caste Aryans and lower-caste Dravidians. It also provided the british (who saw themselves as pure-blooded anglo-Saxon Aryans), a justification for their colonization of South Asia (since "Brahmins did it too").In colonial India this propagandistic reconstruction of an epoch lying almost three to four thousand years in the past changed created a volume of pseudohistorical literature, causing the brainwashed masses in the South into an "internalized past" through an act of "semioticization the Aryan migration"[22]. Periyar and his followers exploited this body of literature to advance the notion of a "Pure Dravidian Race", superior in every way to the "despicable" Aryan Brahmins, philosophies that historian Michael Bergunder compares to the ideas of Herrenvolk in Nazi Germany[22]

A major aspect of this ideology was the claim that the "Aryan" Brahmins started the Indian Caste System immediately following the "Aryan Invasion" as a tool to exploit and oppress the "Dravidians", a debunked and largely pseudohistorical claim that was used by Periyarites to justify their villification of Brahmins, which frequently devloved into anti-Hinduism in general.[22]. Such propaganda swiftly became the bastion of Dravidian nationalist ideology, and was absorbed into numerous sectarian and communal movements. However, it was only the Self-Respect Movement started Periyar that provided a popular catalyst for a Tamil nationalism that ostensibly had a "secular" foundation. In the 1930s and ’40s there thus developed a Dravidian mass movement, which had among its declared goals the abolition of "Brahmanical oppression" through the caste system and religion and the revival of Dravidian culture and society.The pseudohistory of a "venerable flourishing Dravidian civilization" (centuries prior to actual advanced Tamil civilizations such as the Chola Empire and during a period when mainstream archaeology conforms the total absence of any society in South India more advanced than the Stone Age), unjustly "destroyed by the Aryan Brahmins", played a significant role in the Dravidian propaganda of this period. This act of turning the Orientalist and invasionist scenario of the Aryan Migration became a leitmotif of the argument that formed part of Periyar's anti-Brahmanism[22]. A reflection of Periyar's pseudohistorical propaganda was in his declaration:

We do not need to explain how the Aryans entered and settled in the Dravidian country (tira¯vit»a na¯» t»u), and subjugated and oppressed the Dravidians. Nor do we need to explain how before the Aryans entered the Dravidian country, the Dravidian country had a civilization and arts of the highest rank …

[22]

Such claims rendered the Self-respect movement to swiftly degenerate into mass-hysteria, with Tamil poets such as Bharati Dasan, who became the mouthpiece of the Periyarites. He wrote poems that were similar in tone and polemic to anti-Semitic propaganda films in Nazi Germany (such as Der Ewige Jude) that were contemporary to that period. To him, Brahmins were "common Mlechachas" who came as common beggars to plunder the Dravidian land. A sample of his incendiary and racislist poetry goes:

In order through false promises, through strife, // to rule fraudulently, they fraudulently, they (Brahmins) came at»i.

[22]

Legacy

  • He declared Indian independence as a day of slavery and declared it as a day of mourning. He fought for the separation of Tamil areas of India and Sri Lanka and for the human rights of the oppressed Tamil diaspora. He backed colonial rule and attempted to forge an alliance with both Ambedkar and Jinnah.
  • EVR's comment on Tamil as a "language of barbarians" haunted him later in life. He was a strong proponent of embracing English as the global language and dropping Tamil from academics. To this day, his followers choose to ignore discussions on this topic.
  • Early in his political life, EVR had derided Tirukkural and an anachronism and a tool for Aryan aggrandisement. At a later point, he embraced it as the true guide and insisted it was a common guide for all religions. When prominent Muslims spoke out and commented that a man-made work, Tirukkural can never equal God-given verses (Qur'an), EVR and his rationalist thought observed silence.
  • In recent years, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahman movements such as neo-Buddhism have adopted Periyarite rhetoric into their propaganda. Other Anti-Brahman, anti-Hindu and anti-Semitic groups such as Dalitstan and Dalit Voice have combined Periyarite rhetoric with Afrocentric pseudohistory to portray Dalits as "Black-descended" and pitted against the "White" Brahmins

Periyar - The Movie

Sathyaraj and Khushboo starred in a movie on E.V. Ramaswamy in a government-sponsored movie.

Notable followers

References

  1. ^ Thomas Pantham, Vrajendra Raj Mehta, Vrajendra Raj Mehta, (2006). Political Ideas in Modern India: thematic explorations. Sage Publications. ISBN 0761934200.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ N.D. Arora/S.S. Awasthy. Political Theory and Political Thought. ISBN 8124111642.
  3. ^ Shankar Raghuraman, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (2004). A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand. Sage Publications. ISBN 0761932372.
  4. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Ramayana-reading-E-Ramaswami-Naicker/dp/B0006E12N4/sr=1-1/qid=1167891710/ref=sr_1_1/002-7042148-2641612?ie=UTF8&s=books
  5. ^ http://www.periyar.org/html/ap_bios_eng1.asp
  6. ^ http://www.periyar.org/html/ap_bios_eng1.asp
  7. ^ http://snphilosophers2005.tripod.com/louis.pdf
  8. ^ http://pib.nic.in/feature/feyr98/fe0798/PIBF0707981.html
  9. ^ http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2006/12/dravidiana-perversity-of-periyarana.html
  10. ^ http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19990331/iex31073p.html
  11. ^ http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/Periyar.pdf
  12. ^ Sara Dickey,"The politics of adulation in South India", Journal of Asian Studies Vol 52 No 2 (1993) pages 340-372
  13. ^ http://sify.com/news/politics/fullstory.php?id=13569138
  14. ^ http://www.tamilnation.org/hundredtamils/periyar.htm
  15. ^ http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/Periyar.pdf
  16. ^ http://www.periyar.org/html/dk_movement_eng.asp
  17. ^ http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/revolutionary.htm#9
  18. ^ a b Lloyd I. Rudolph Urban Life and Populist Radicalism: Dravidian Politics in Madras The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (May, 1961), pp. 283-297
  19. ^ Lloyd I. Rudolph and Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: political development in India P78,University of Chicago Press 1969, ISBN 0226731375
  20. ^ Singh, Yogendra,Modernization of Indian Tradition: (A Systemic Study of Social Change),Oriental Press 1974 page 167
  21. ^ C. J. Fuller,The Renewal of the Priesthood: Modernity and Traditionalism in a South Indian Temple P117, Princeton University Press 2003 ISBN 0691116571
  22. ^ a b c d e f Bergunder M, Contested Past: Anti-Brahmanical and Hindu nationalist reconstructions of Indian prehistory,Historiographia Linguistica, Volume 31, Number 1, 2004, pp. 59-104(46)

Bibliography

  • Diehl, Anita. E. V. Ramaswami - Periyar: A study of the influence of a personality in contemporary South India. ISBN 91-24-27645-6.
  • Richman, Paula. "E.V. Ramasami's Reading of the Ramayana" in Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia.
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