There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all. He who invented god is a fool. He who propagates god is a scoundrel. He who worships god is a barbarian. – Periyar
E. V. Ramasamy, known as “Thantai Periyar” or ‘Periyar’, was a great social revolutionary, anti-caste crusader, human-rights activist, atheist, and rationalist. He worked to create an egalitarian and casteless society where the equality of status of all the people would be ensured. Periyar was born on 17 September 1879 in a merchant family in Erode, Tamil Nadu. He gave up formal schooling at the age of 10 to help his family business. As a teenager, he visited many places considered ‘holy’ by the Hindus.
He reached Kaasi (Varanasi), where he was not permitted to enter the temples and he could not get meals easily at choultries which were exclusively for Brahmins forbidding other Hindu castes. Visiting these places and observing the Brahmanic oppression and exploitation raised many questions in his mind about religion, caste, untouchability, and the social structure.
Periyar took to active public life by becoming the Chairman of Erode Municipality. He joined the Congress Party in 1919-20 and participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement. He emerged as an important non-brahmin leader in Congress and became the head of the Madras Presidency Congress Committee in 1922.
He got disillusioned with the Congress Party on grounds of Brahminical discrimination and opposition to his resolutions on caste and untouchability and his demand for communal representation in government jobs and education for the Non-Brahmins, by Gandhi and Congress. He started the “Self-Respect Movement” in 1925 to act against the evils of caste hierarchy and its custodians. He started the Tamil Newspaper, ‘Kudi Arasu’ (People’s Government) in 1925 and an English Daily ‘Revolt’ in 1928.
He formally left the Congress in 1927 after his meeting with Gandhi at Bangalore for an interview, the interview that revealed Gandhi’s unwavering faith in Varna system.
Periyar opposed the social authority of the Brahminic order and called for the destruction of the caste order and patriarchy, and to build a society based on self-respect, common justice, and comradeship. For Congress leaders ‘Swaraj’ was a birthright; but for the anti-caste leaders like Ambedkar and Periyar, ‘Self-respect’ was the birthright. They did not believe that a mere transfer of power, or the political democracy based on ‘one man-one vote’ would ensure the liberty, fraternity, and equality of citizens in India unless the social democracy based on ‘one man- one value’ is rendered tangible. For Periyar, every aspect of Indian life was informed and guided by the code of Manu and Varnashrama which fed on Vedas, Smritis, Shastras, and Puranas. He predicted that unless social and communal justice is attained and human rights assured to the neglected, marginalized, and weaker sections of society, the Nation cannot enjoy the fruit of political independence. With the movements against untouchability and caste oppression, he participated in trade union movements. On October 4, 1931, Kudi Arasu carried an editorial introducing the Communist Manifesto and serialised its Tamil version, and later published many articles about Marx,
Communism, Socialism, and Soviet Union. In 1932, Periyar spent about three months in the Soviet Union and considered Socialism as an ideal society. He wrote, “In the socialist country, there is no God, no religion or no belief in shastras. No human being is considered high or low… no superior worker or inferior worker. All are equal. The salaries and comforts of life are equal; only the jobs are different. If he gets a higher job, he knows it means higher responsibility. So, production increases… There each person’s hours of work and quantum of work are fixed. Like our workers, they do not run away at the end of the fixed time. There is absolutely no cheating or robbery.” He said, “We must have communism and socialism adapted to this country’s social needs”.
Periyar criticized Brahminical patriarchy and marriage as a Brahminical system of values that negated female self-hood. He said: “Just as how Brahminism condemns a very large portion of the working population to shudra-hood so it has condemned women to the servitude of marriage…To the extent that a woman lives up to the norms of a chaste and ideal wife to that extent, she accepts and revels in her slavery”. He noted that the desire to have children has assumed such immense significance in Hindu society and said: “After it had become the norm for people to want children to safeguard property, Brahmins who had invented fictions of heaven and hell to keep the poor from stealing from the wealthy and to secure some of that wealth for themselves now sought to argue that…man must have a (male) child who would keep alive his name after death and perform his yearly obsequies”. He was impressed by the freedom of women in the USSR and wrote, “In Russia since an individual has no right to private property, there is no need to have a child to inherit property. There is no compulsion for parents to bring up their children. The government takes up the responsibility.” Periyar attached great importance to women’s education, which he thought was crucial in making them realize their self-worth. Today when Hindtva fascist forces use NEP for communalising education and making it available for only upper-class and upper-caste, it is worth revisiting Periyar’s views on Education. To Periyar, the capacity for reasoning, understanding the world around us, and acquiring skills should be true components of genuine education, not the knowledge imparted and its reproduction through written examinations. For Periyar, the goal of education was to develop rational thinking against a blind belief in the wisdom of ancestors, shastras, etc., supplanted by conscious and voluntary decisions on the basis of one’s own reasoning.
Periyar interpreted the Tamil word ‘Kalvi’ (education) as meaning teaching the character of the world and the nature of humankind. Periyar suggested only those with a rationalist outlook must be appointed as teachers and rationalism should be included in the curriculum of education and prescribed as a subject for examination; it should also be made a requirement for applying for jobs. One of the changes he suggested was the removal of lessons on devotion to god, religion, and the king since these were impediments to gaining knowledge rather aimed to create a slavish mentality. Post 1947, he pleaded for a complete reorganization of the education system and the provision of vocational education to all. The vocational education he was advocating was contrary to Gandhi’s Wardha Plan, which suggested teaching the child a vocation, preferably the one that was his caste occupation. Periyar noted that Congress was interested in the Wardha Plan because it was based on the Varna system and it desired to keep the entire labouring population in bondage to its dominance.
In 1952 C. Rajagopalachari’s Congress government in the Madras Presidency introduced an education policy that the students in primary schools would attend classes in the forenoon, and in the afternoon they would go back to their homes to pursue the hereditary occupations of their parents. Periyar’s relentless campaign against this policy ensured not only the withdrawal of the scheme but also the fall of C. Rajagoplachari’s government itself. Periyar called for the abolition of the system of examination for admission to educational institutions saying they were Brahminical tricks to counter proportionate representation which benefited the shudra and adi-dravida students.
Periyar died on 24th December, 1973. Periyar believed that the state and religion were in an unholy nexus that prevented the liberties of the masses. To achieve freedom this nexus of state and religion had to be destroyed and a socialist society had to be created.
