Periyar-12dec2006 SANDHYA JAIN ARTICLE 1047 WORDS

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From: Rajeev
Date: Dec 14, 2006 1:11 PM
Subject: Periyar-12dec2006 SANDHYA JAIN ARTICLE 1047 WORDS
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14th dec 2006

sandhya's article.

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From: Sandhya J

Pioneer-12December2006

Periyar and Sri Rama

 

Sandhya Jain

 

Fourteen years after the removal of the offending Babri structure at his sacred birthplace, Sri Rama returned on 6 December 2006 to face his greatest modern iconoclast, the late EV Ramasamy Naicker. EVR or Periyar, as he was popularly called, was the most avid native votary of the colonial myth of the Aryan Invasion of north India and its supposed expulsion of the 'original' Dravidian inhabitants to the south.

 

            Tutored well by Invasion theorists, Periyar projected Hindu dharma as an Aryan imposition from the north, concentrating his bile especially upon Sri Rama, moral exemplar of Hindu dharma. Interpreting the Ramayana as a text depicting Dravidian subordination, he projected Ravana as more ethical than Sri Rama, Sitaji and Sugriva. Besides vigorously propagating his retelling of the Ramayana, Periyar openly indulged in vandalism and iconoclasm of the images of Sri Rama, Sitaji and other Hindu deities. He is reputed to have claimed that the Dravidian movement would attain ultimate victory the day Sri Ranganatha (Mahavishnu) at Srirangam and Chidambaranatha (Shiva) at Chidambaram were blown apart and their temples razed to the ground with canons.

Instigated thus by colonial officials and their missionary cohorts, Tamil society came to accept an invented Dravidian identity and to create a chillingly anti-Hindu polity, which even assumed anti-India separatist overtones. Fortunately, Periyar's Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) movement split as a section of his followers could not digest his marriage to an exceedingly young girl, and though MG Ramachandran later wisely closed the separatist chapter, the corrosive legacy of Tamil particularism is yet to be fully undone.

I believe the current violence in Tamil Nadu, triggered by righteous Hindu anger against an EVR statue furtively placed in front of the Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam, symbolizes Hindu society's growing confidence in tackling offences by its successive colonial oppressors. Indeed, I view the decision to illegally install the statue in the dead of  night on 21 November as a last ditch attempt to force new generation Tamils to retain the movement's atheistic (read anti-Hindu) orientation. This is because in recent times it has become apparent that Tamil youth are wearying of the political culture of atheism and seek anchorage in Hindu dharma and civilization, symbolized in open visits to temples and reverence for Hindu deities.

The placing of EVR's statue in front of a renowned temple, doubly sacred for its proximity to the footprints of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, was not just a deliberate provocation, but a desperate reiteration of the old missionary Hindu-baiting agenda. It bears noting that though the decision to install EVR's statue was taken in 1973 when the DMK was in power, it could not be implemented due to sustained Hindu resistance. In the 1990s, a law forbade putting up statues without government permission; hence the Karunanidhi regime is complicit in the statue's illegal installation as it failed to remove it despite a Hindu outcry. Indeed, the regime facilitated inauguration of a bronze EVR statue at the same site on 10 December, after violence followed damage to the stone sculpture by outraged Hindus on 6 December. This wholesale availability of Periyar statues is suspicious and suggests a deep anti-Hindu conspiracy.

The State Government has been slow to contain organized violence by DK cadres. Hindu devotees complain of attacks on the Sankara Matham at Salem, Sri Raghavendra Swami Matham at Erode, the famous Ayodhya Mandapam at West Mambalam, Chennai and several other temples and mathams. Brahmin priests have been assaulted with dangerous weapons, their top-knots and holy threads cut off, and the murtis of Hindu deities desecrated and beaten with slippers. No political party or leader, either at Central or State level, has condemned this motivated attack upon Hindu dharma and its sacred institutions.

 

It is pertinent that when police arrested four Hindu Makkal Katchi (HMK) followers for damaging EVR's statue, they found that the principal accused was an OBC (like Periyar himself), while the other three were Scheduled Castes. Shocked, Chief Minister Karunanidhi stated in the Legislative Assembly that those who tarnished the statue did not know that EVR had fought for them, an open hint to large sections of Hindu society to embrace Periyar's divisive and hate-filled agenda. This strengthens my personal conviction that this supposedly intra-Hindu conflict is a carefully contrived stratagem to fragment the growing consolidation of Hindu society. It is bound to fail because atheism has no appeal for society as a whole; it can be imposed as state policy (like Soviet Communism), but its reign cannot exceed the span of two generations; this is what is happening in Tamil Nadu today.

 

To my mind, it is no coincidence that the Tamil Nadu provocation follows the desecration of statues of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in some states, causing violence by his followers in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. On the surface, the violence has a visibly caste hue, yet it is pertinent that Dr. Ambedkar's appeal is not confined to Scheduled Castes and he is widely revered by upper castes as the erudite author of the Indian constitution. Indeed, upper castes have no political or social scores to settle by disrespecting the Dalit icon; nor is iconoclasm a Hindu characteristic.

Few commentators realize that in an era in which the Indian political template is expanding to encompass more and more groups in an electorally winning combination, the polarization of upper caste vs. scheduled caste is political suicide. Hence there has to be a deeper conspiracy behind the dishonouring of Ambedkar statues; the objective is more than the destabilization of Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav.

I suspect a link with Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati's avowed ambition to be India's first Dalit Prime Minister, and her refusal to quit the Hindu fold until this goal is achieved. Ms. Mayawati's Dalit constituency is under great pressure from the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA, which wants to whittle away the constitutional privileges of Hindu Scheduled Castes and grant parity to converts to Islam and Christianity. At a time when the BSP leader is striving to appeal to all Hindu castes and varnas, a pernicious plot has been unleashed to alienate Dalits from the larger Hindu society through disrespect to Dr. Ambedkar. The needle of suspicion points to those with the resources and the freedom to execute such vicious designs with tacit State support.

EOM