Everything about Periyar Ramasami totally explained
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy(External Link
) (
September 17,
1879 –
December 24,
1973), also known as
Ramaswami,
EVR,
Thanthai Periyar, or
Periyar, was an
Indian
social reformer and politician, who founded the
Self-Respect Movement and
Dravidar Kazhagam.
Biography
Periyar was born as
Erode Venkata Naicker Ramaswamy in
Erode in
Madras Presidency. . He was from a prominent
Kannada Balija Naicker caste, a community that descended from the Nayak chiefs of the
Vijayanagar Empire. Hence he's called E. V. Ramaswami Naicker. "Periyar" means 'respected one' or an 'elder' in
Tamil.Hence he's sometimes called E. V. Ramaswami Naicker. "Ramaswami" was his given name and "Periyar" means 'respected one' or an 'elder' in
Tamil.He is referred as Periyar and a University was named after him by the Tamil Nadu Government.Periyar could speak three Dravidian languages: Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Though Kannada was his mother tongue, he mostly used Tamil.
EVR was an atheist, noted for his antitheistic statement, "He who created god was a fool, he who spreads his name is a scoundrel, and he who worships him is a barbarian." In 1956, he took a procession of
Rama's picture garlanded with slippers near
Dharmapuri and destroyed the portrait in public, drawing widespread protests from Indians whose religious sentiments were hurt. EVR's most popular writing is
The Ramayana: A True Reading (1959), on the
Ramayana, a Hindu epic.
Early life
Periyar was the son of a merchant Venkata, who was a devout Hindu of the
Vaishnavite school of thought. His mother was Chinna Thayammal alais Muthammal; he'd one elder brother named Krishnaswamy and two sisters named Kannamma and Ponnuthoy. Periyar studied for 5 years and joined his father's trade at the age of 12. He used to listen to Tamil
Vaishnavite gurus who gave discourses in his house enjoying his father's hospitality. Periyar was married to Nagammal a girl of just 13 in
1898. He became the father of a female child which soon died and he'd no more children. After being reprimanded by his father, Periyar left his house for
Kasi.
Pilgrimage to Kashi
He went on a pilgrimage to
Varanasi (Kashi) to worship in the famous
Siva temple
Kashi Vishwanath in
1904. He wanted to enter a free-lunch place but finding that it was meant only for Brahmins he disguised himself as a one. But it was discovered that he wasn't a
Brahmin and he was removed from the place.Later he learnt that the Free-lunch place was built with the donation of a Dravidian merchant.
He saw the discrimination against non-brahmins. He had pictured
Kasi as a place where all Hindus would be treated equally. This humiliation was the turning point in Periyar's life and it inflamed intense hatred towards the caste system and Hindu religion itself. Ramaswamy was a believer till his visit in Kashi, after which his views changed and he became an rationalist.
On returning to Erode - his father delegated all his trade rights to this second son and renamed his major commercial concern under the title: "E.V. Ramasamy Mandi"
Timeline of Ramaswamy's political struggle and ideology
Ramasami as a Freedom Fighter and Congress Party member 1919 - 1925
Periyar Ramaswamy joined the
Indian National Congress in 1919 after quiting his business and resigning public posts including the chairmanship of Erode Municipality he held and wholeheartedly undertook the constructive programme - spreading the use of Khadi, picketing toddy shops, boycotting the shops selling foreign cloth and eradication of untouchability. He courted imprisonment for picketing toddy shops in Erode in 1921. When his wife as well as his sister joined the agitation, it gained momentum, and the administration was forced to come to a compromise.He was arrested during the
Non-Cooperation movement and the Temperance Movement and was jailed .He was elected the President of the Madras Presidency (Tamil Nadu) Congress Committee in the 1922 Tirupur session and after his attempts for supporting reservation in government jobs and education was defeated in the Congress party .He quit the party in 1925.
.
Vaikom struggle - 1924-1925
Periyar Ramaswamy was involved in securing rights to entry into temples and access to temple roads for people of all castes in
Vaikom in
Kerala, which was part of the princely state of
Travancore during 1924. Periyar was the President of the
Madras Presidency (Tamil Nadu and
Andhra Pradesh) Congress Committee at that time led the agitation after many other leaders had been arrested. Periyar agreed and came to Vaikom in April 1924 and he was arrested but he was unrelenting and refused to leave to Vaikom and the satyagraha gained strength and
Mahatma Gandhi, on an invitation from Rajaji, went to Vaikom and began talks with the Queen of Travancore where it was agreed that the police pickets would be removed and that the State police would do nothing to prevent the lower castes using the roads. Periyar refused to participate in the negotiations but he'd to agree, reluctantly, to Gandhi's idea that the demand for all Hindus entering the temple be put off at least for the time being He played a role along with other great statesmen and national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, C. Rajagopalachari, and Acharya
Vinoba Bhave.
Madras Presidency(Tamil Nadu) Congress passed a resolution umanimously praising Periyar's significant contribution to the Vaikom Satyagarha and hailing him as
Vaikom Veerar(Vaikom Hero) in
1925 in the Kanchipuram Session .
Gurukulam
At
Cheranmaadhevi near
Tirunelveli in Southern Tamil Nadu, they started a National training school as an alternative to those run under the control of the British Government. That school, known as Gurukulam, was funded by the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and by other non-Brahmin philanthropists. It was managed by V.V.S.Iyer, a Brahmin. Under his management, they showed discrimination between the Brahmin and Non-Brahmin students Brahmin boys were treated in a better way than the others with regard to food, shelter and the curriculum. Along with his companions Periyar stoutly opposed the discriminatory practice and put an end to it.
Self-Respect Movement: 1925-39
Periyar and his followers campaigned constantly to influence and pressurise the government to take measures to remove social inequality even while other nationalist leaders focussed on the struggle for political independence.
Anti-Hindi Movement from 1937
The anti-Hindi movement in
Tamil Nadu started in
1937 when the Congress Government of the Madras Presidency under
Rajaji introduced
Hindi in the school curriculum.
Tamils opposed
Hindi immediately and the Justice Party under Sir A. D. Panneerselvam and Periyar organized anti-Hindi protests in 1938 and were arrested and jailed by the
Rajaji government.
More than 1200 people, including women and children, were imprisoned in
1938, of which two,
Thalamuthu and
Natarasan, lost their lives. In
1939 the Rajaji government quit due to the decision of the Indian National Congress to protest India's participation in
World War II. The teaching of Hindi was withdrawn in
1940 by the British governor.
Justice Party: 1939-1944
Before
World War II, the
Justice Party ruled Madras Province for a long period from 1920 to 1937 with many leaders
List of Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu. Periyar was elected President when he was in jail for opposing Hindi in 1939
Ramaswami changed the name of the Justice Party to Dravidar Kazhagam (Party of the Dravidians) from a political party to a social movement. He avoided parliamentary democracy and started his campaigns on his own. His followers who wanted politics split with him after his marriage to a very young woman and started the
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, popularly known as the DMK. The DMK was first led by C.N. Annadurai and after him by M. Karunanidhi.
EVR and his dramatic anti-Brahman protests put new life into the party.The Dravidian Federation, and launched a Tamil "cultural offensive," including theatrical productions of a "reinterpreted"
Ramayana-a version transposing hero and villain, in which the
Sri Lankan demon king
Ravana becomes a heroic "
Dravidian of 'excellent character,' "
and the Aryan prince Rama a conniving, "despicable character" . This and later political uses of drama capitalized on the strong literary focus among Tamils. Despite such attempts at mass propaganda, however, the party's membership continued to be drawn from the elite.
EVR and Kula Kalvi Thittam/Hereditary Education Policy
Rajaji introduced a new education policy based on family vocation which its opponents dubbed
Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy). As per this policy schools will work in the morning and students had to compulsorily learn the family vocation in the afternoon. A
Carpenter’s son would learn
Carpentry, a
priest's son chanting
hymns and a
barber’s son hair cutting and shaving after school in the afternoon. EVR felt that the scheme was a clever device against Dalits and Other Backward Classes as their first generation was getting educated only then. EVR demanded its withdrawal and launched protests against the
Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy) which he felt was caste-based and was aimed at maintaining caste hegemony. Rajaji quit in 1954 and
Kamaraj scrapped it after becoming chief minister.
EVR's ideas on Modern Tamil Alphabet
He instituted
Tamil alphabet reforms and his reasons are as follows:
In writings and publications of 70 or 80 years ago, the vowel 'ee' (i:), indicated today as ' ¼ ', was a cursive and looped representation of the short form, ' ¬ ' (i). In stone inscriptions of 400 or 500 years ago, many Tamil letters are found in other shapes. The older and the more divine a language and its letters are said to be, they, in truth, need reform.
Just as some compound characters have separate signs to indicate their length as in ' æè ', ' îæ ' (ka:, ke:), why shouldn't other compound characters like ' æ¨ ', ' æ© ', ' Æ ', ' Ô ' (ki, ki:,ku, ku:) (indicated integrally as of now), also have separate signs? This indeed requires consideration.
Changing the shape of letters, creating new symbols and adding new letters and similarly, dropping those that are redundant, are quite essential.The glory and excellence of a language and its script depend on how easily they can be understood or learnt and on nothing else.
Periyar and Brahmins
In
1920 when the
Justice Party came to power Brahmins occupied about 70% of the high level posts in government and after reservation was introduced by the
Justice Party reversed this trend and allowed non-brahmins to raise in the government in
Madras Presidency.Periyar through in the Congress then supported the Justice Party and later joined opposed the domination of Brahmins who constituted only 3% of the Population over Government jobs,judicary and the Madras University.Now Hindu profession had evolved around caste system, particular castes did only particular professions and it was
Varna based where the
Brahmin was the highest in the order and learned the
Vedas, the
Kshatriya ruled the country,
Vaishya trading, the
Shudra did farming and artisan work, and the
Dalit or
Dalit did manual labor and was the lowest in the order ..Ramasami's self-respect movement espoused
rationalism and
atheism, and although Ramasami had Brahmin colleagues, the movement had currents of
anti-Brahminism.
Periyar - The Movie
Sathyaraj and
Khushboo starred in a government-sponsored movie on E.V. Ramaswami. This movie was directed by
Gnanashekaran. It was released in 2007.
Notable followers
Further Information
Get more info on 'Periyar Ramasami'.
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