• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Thanthai Periyar

B. S. Raghavan

ALL the so-called ``secular'' parties got together recently at Chennai to celebrate the birth anniversary of E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, hailed as a social revolutionary and pre-eminent rationalist of Tamil Nadu. He is also called ``Thantha i Periyar'' (The Great Father), somewhat reminiscent of the hallelujahs for ``The Great Helmsman'' reverberating throughout China once upon a time.

There can be no doubt that Periyar was an original thinker, and was the first who, through his speeches and writings, and the media organ `Viduthalai', jolted the people out of their smug acceptance of superstitions and outdated beliefs. He, like the gre at poet, Subrahmanya Bharati, was unsparing in his caustic railings against castes, creeds and sects. The widespread adoption of a revised Tamil script shorn of its quirks owes much to his reformist spirit.

Where he went overboard was in forging for himself a vitriolic language and style, to the extent of dubbing all believers in God as downright idiots. (It is this particular vituperation that has been inscribed on the pedestal of his officially installed statue in Chennai).

He debunked in pungent language the Hindu pantheon, orthodox Hindu practices and social mores of the Hindus (taking special care not to take on other religions!). He was particularly bitter against brahminism, though not, as he himself used to clarify, a gainst brahmins as such. However, his raging rhetoric blurred the distinction, instigating his aggressive disciples to launch movements against the wearing of caste marks, the sacred thread and the mangal sutra.

Militant in his speeches and writings, Periyar was the personification of civilised and cultured behaviour face-to-face, and went out of his way to make his guests and visitors, including brahmins, feel welcome. He opposed Rajaji tooth-and-nail in politi cs, but his personal regard and affection for his life-long friend were such that when Rajaji died, Periyar, despite his own fragile health, was present, tears rolling down his cheeks, throughout the obsequies at the cremation ground.

It is not that Periar's preachings have had any better deal at the hands of his devotees than those of any other great public figure. Notwithstanding his virulent objection to the installation and garlanding of statues as one of the obnoxious manifestati ons of irrationality, his disciples, suffering from ``selective amnesia'' (a phrase made famous by Ms Jayalalitha who presided over the Periyar Vizha) garland with great fanfare the statues of all the Dravidian rationalist leaders wherever found.

Thanthai Periyar was also an angry old man who went hammer and tongs at what he reviled as the degeneracy of the Tamils. To the chagrin of the high priests of the Dravidian movement, he is on record describing the Tamils as kaattumiraandigal (barbarians) and Tamil language as kaattumiraandi baashai (barbarian language). One does not know what his reactions would be when he sees his ardent acolytes indulging in corruption and extortions right and left on an unprecedented scale and taking politics and pub lic life to the very limits of rottenness.