Author: Chandrabhan Prasad
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 29, 2002
Southern Dalits consider Tamil Nadu
the home of the anti-Brahmin movement, where non-Brahmins dislodged the
upper caste from power and drove them out of the countryside. E Ramaswami
Nicker Periyar is considered the ideological architect of that "great"
game. But in the northern Dalits' consciousness, Periyar's stature is only
next to Dr Ambedkar. It was not for nothing that Ms Mayawatiji in her earlier
tenure had organised a grand "Periyar Mela" and in the process earned the
displeasure of her BJP partners. This time, she is said to have ordered
a huge statue of Periyar, which she has since clarified as being made for
Tamil Dalits.
What a comical exercise? Tamil Dalits
themselves don't install Periyar's statues but northern Dalits are going
gaga. The move can only gladden the heart of an intellectually-malnourished
Dalit, who has little or no fortune to know about the real character of
that social conman. Nor does he have any idea of the consequences of Periyar's
movement.
To begin with, certain facts need
be placed. Of every 100 Dalit workers in non-Brahmin Tamil Nadu, 63.17
are landless agricultural labourers, as against 38.76 in UP's Brahmin-land.
How do we explain this huge negative gap of 24.41 percentages points? Similarly,
of every 100 Dalit workers in Tamil Nadu, 19.40 are cultivators as against
43.41 in UP.
The non-Brahmin movement in the
south was organised in 1917 and five decades of sustained campaign catapulted
the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) to power in 1967. Since then, DMK and AIADMK,
both claiming a non-Brahmin legacy, have ruled Tamil Nadu. But every serious
inquiry into development strategies in Tamil Nadu has lamented the pathetic
response of successive governments to land reforms.
Socially, the Tamil society can
be termed the ugliest in the world. On May 21, in a tiny hamlet near Tiruchi,
two Dalits, Ramasamy and Murugesan, were tortured by red-hot iron rods
and made to eat each other's excreta. This form of atrocity is unheard
of in the Gangetic belt. In the Tamil countryside, Dalits can't even think
of entering temples. In several places, roadside tea shops maintain separate
tumblers for them. Barbers don't serve Dalits, either.
On the political front, the Tamil
Dalits fare the worst. Many reserved panchayat seats go uncontested. Even
elected Dalits have been murdered.
This is the social reality of Tamil
Nadu, where for the past 35 years, Dravidian parties are in power and Brahmins
are virtually absent from the countryside.
What about Periyar himself and his
character? Periyar, a Nicker, a prototype of Kshatriya, just a little above
Shudras, argued that Brahmins were Aryans by race and had invaded Tamil
society to dominate. Was that true? In 1918, the Madras Presidency conducted
a survey to find out the wealthiest citizens while preparing a voters'
list. It revealed that of the 53,647 listed in the urban areas, Brahmins
comprised only 20.38 per cent. And of the 2,73,036 wealthiest families
in the rural areas, Brahmins comprised only 15.27 percent. In other words,
over 80 per cent of Tamil wealth was in the hands of non-Brahmins. Then
why was Periyar lying? When Periyar allied with the Justice Party in the
1930s, it was headed by the king of Bobbili. Periyar was organising anti-Brahmin,
anti-God, anti-temple agitations in the Thajavar and Kaveri deltas, where
Brahmins constituted six per cent of the population and had great influence
over society.
But, in his native Erode, he continued
to be a prominent member of the local temple board of trustees. While he
advised Dalits to annihilate Brahmins, in his own interest, he remained
a close friend of C Rajagopalachari, a Brahmin, who would often act as
his defence counsel. Periyar's entire thesis was based on the Aryan conquest
of Dravidians. Brahmins were described as Aryans, Sanskrit was defined
as their language, Hinduism their religion and Ram as God. And all these
had to be destroyed. Dr Ambedkar, in his book Who Were Shudras, rejects
the Aryan race and conquest theory. Periyar had taken the Aryan route to
avoid any discourse on dominance and oppression within the Dravidian social
order. This trick worked, and Periyar, without targeting the Varna order
and Shudra oppressiveness, got Dalit support on his side.
Glorification of Dravidian civilisation
amounted to a glorification of Shudras and Tamil Dalits are now paying
the price.
Periyar was a great social scamster,
who plundered Dalit consciousness. He made a fix deposit of it for growth
of what I call social fascism. Old Dalits bore the Periyar burden. New
Dalits must dump that mind-robber.