EV Ramasamy (EVR), popularly known as ‘Periyar’, was the only other rationalist who could command a following like Gautama Buddha. But unlike the Buddha, the unpolished EVR often proved offensive and personal to a section.
There is plenty to pick and choose from his 80-year public career to paint him either as hateful or high-minded. His methods were so crude that in 1957 then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru considered ‘primitive’ and ‘most barbarous’ his act of burning the Constitution to show that it had not done enough to eradicate caste. Nehru suggested that Periyar be banished. Earlier, in 1953 he had smashed Ganesh idols and in 1971 in Salem his followers beat the images of Lord Ram with chappals in a procession led by Periyar, causing the then DMK government much discomfort.
Reposing his faith in science, invention and technology, Periyar worked tirelessly to create a clinically egalitarian society that would reach the acme of human potential. Taking on caste, he threw the baby with the bath water singling out Hinduism and the Brahmin as the malaise. “Till the stones of the temple, the temple and its gods exist, our lowliness and degradation will be permanent,” he posited. Despite this, he considered conversion ‘a very disgraceful thing’ but plumped for Islam and Christianity, sympathetic to their apparent egalitarianism. He would have equally been disgusted with any form of radicalism today for he began his speeches thus:
“He who created God is a fool
He who propagates God is a scoundrel
He who worships God is a barbarian.”
Critics make out Periyar to be less than what he is while his followers consider him infallible and worship him. EVR was no avatar. If he was seized by paroxysms of the moment, he also equally braved insults, revulsion and even violence to take his lofty message to a people yet unprepared for him. It was, to put it mildly, a hugely thankless task.
While his atheism failed to take off, the revolution he sowed – equality, education, equalizing reservations – has borne rich fruits enabling upward mobility for millions of men and women. Periyar dismissed meritocracy as a fraud. He was positive that Adi Dravida leaders like MC Rajah and R Veeraiyan were as qualified as CP Ramasamy Iyer and reservations will help them reach such high positions as the Brahmins. Time has mostly vindicated him. But he would have also agreed that endless reservations were counter-productive and some have gamed the system. It is no surprise that profanity notwithstanding, he commanded followers, who much like the kamikaze, were willing to give their life for their leader.
His followers in the DMK turned public speaking to an art and a profession. Periyar spoke in a simple colloquial and engaging manner reaching the last man. He spawned a new breed of leaders from very modest backgrounds.
He was convinced that power and honesty cannot go hand in hand. His successors have largely proved him right. Similarly, “Can mice expect freedom from cats?” he wondered advising women not to expect men to give their rights. On the Kural couplet that a woman could summon rain if she worshipped her husband and not gods, he wondered if Thiruvalluvar would have penned so if he were a woman. The pending Women's Reservation Bill, 2008 reserving a third for women in the Lok Sabha and legislatures speaks volumes on the unity of men to deny women their due.
Periyar believed that the British and his work ‘have reduced the hegemony of Aryan culture.’ It has to some extent. Tamil Nadu, is largely free of caste masquerading as family name. Also, since his agitation in the 1950s no eatery gawkily sports ‘Brahmin Coffee and Meals Hotel’ as its attribute or name. The cooks he used for his conferences were ‘polluting’ and his defiance opened doors for many lower castes in these professions and even in priestly duties in non-Brahmin life cycle events. However, elections and weddings show the vibrancy of caste. Let us be clear: most Tamils are not opposed to caste per se. They would all like to be ‘high caste’ to avoid the remnant indignities of being ‘low caste’. Yet the profusion of the lower classes in the professions, services and education and many top notch at that is heartening. The inability of the Dravidian revolution to equally touch all the subaltern is clear with the Dalits and the Vanniyars. Equally clear is the power of economic mobility to confer social acceptability over a period on castes that hovered on the periphery.
A pragmatic Periyar judged all things for their egalitarianism and utilitarianism. Unlike his disciples, he had little patience for Tamil history, literature or nationalists. Revealing Tamil’s inadequacies, he saw redemption in English, making the somewhat hilarious recommendation to converse in English even with one’s domestic help.
Ironically, Periyar’s arrival in the 1920s would catapult the confined Tamil revivalist struggle to exponential levels. Saiva Siddanthists had pitched for Tamil worship and Maraimalai Adigal’s pure Tamil movement had begun the purge of Sanskrit loan words. This consciousness would see Shankaranthi become Pongal and later Thamizhar Thirunaal (Tamils’ Festival) with publisher Namasivayam Mudalia beginning the practice of celebrating Pongal as Thamizhar Thirunaal using the occasion to thank his writers.
In 1946, Ma. Po. Sivagnanam’s Tamilarasu Kazhagam popularized the day as Tamil self-determination day with support from Kamaraj and others but not EVR or Anna. Hoisted at their own petard of a single south Indian entity or Dravida Nadu, the Dravidar Kazhagam would instead celebrate it as Dravidar Thirunaal. Anna’s DMK marked Pongal from 1950 and later Thamizhar Thirunaal.
But then Periyar did not have to mark a day as Thamizhar Thirunaal. Every day of his public career was spent for the Tamil Humanity.
R Kannan is the senior political officer with the UN in Darfur, in Sudan. He is also the biographer of Anna.