Periyar – Socrates of the Modern India
Periyar may not be the philosopher-king but deserves to be known as the Socrates of modern India who dared to question our premises of our democracy without elements of justice.
The pan-Indian legacy of EV Ramasamy (Periyar), the legendary social revolutionary and political thinker from Tamil Nadu has not been accorded due recognition by the national political parties and leaders for long though his life, struggle and ideas continue to throw up a debate in Indian politics. Periyar either inspires or irks depending on the social, political and ideological divide in the country. One can either admire or criticize him, but it is not easy to ignore him. However, it is relevant to observe that Periyar has not been recognised or acknowledged beyond the regional and geographical areas in particulars of Tamil Nadu and southern India at large. Is it due to the north-south political divide or the deliberations of the dominant political culture influenced by caste, class and religion in politics despite the vast and diverse cultural landscapes of India?
A partial response lies in Periyar’s non-party political orientation with stubborn antipathy towards electoral participation unlike Jayapraksash Narayan who had an evolved approach and mixed experiences. Also a near similar factor that differentiated the role, significance and recognition of BR Ambedkar as a pan Indian leader and separated Periyar as a social revolutionary from the Dravidian stock. Both Ambedkar and Periyar were intellectuals, social revolutionaries and political leaders with mass content who consciously chose their paths in political life defined by their social and political backgrounds. Ambedkar was both real and symbolic representation of the dialectics of Indian politics about the struggle for social justice. Ambedkar was real for the masses and symbolic for Indian National Congress both during the pre and post independent period. Ambedkar was deeply aware of this contradiction and made a conscious effort to intervene with the destiny of politics in India.
This is one of the basic reasons and circumstances that all political parties including the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) never miss an occasion to pay tributes in public and yet manage their chorus of politics controlled by their dominant caste and class combined with their strategies of co-opting Dalit leaders and running routine election campaigns. Kanshi Ram’s conception of Bahujan Samaj and Mayawati’s parleys with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh politics beginning with her seeking of support in 1995 and the ups and downs in ties until the breakdown of alliance in 2003 are not only contradictions but paradoxical ploys of electoral politics in India. BJP understands this paradox as much as the Congress managed the same in the last seven decades. The smarting of Ram Vilas Paswan and his Lok Janshakti party, without an interval even under circumstances of shift in ideology, leaders and parties, for over quarter of a century in power at the Centre and the induction of Ramdas Athawale into BJP in Maharashtra are different dimensions of the same reality of vote bank politics. In West Bengal, BJP has been wooing the Bengali Hindus through strategies such as Hindutva agenda, the legacy of Shyamaprasad Mukherjee and the lionising of Swami Vivekananda.
The appropriation of the image of Subhash Chandra Bose as a Hindu nationalist than as a national hero whose leadership and coordination of the Indian National Army (INA) consisted of men and women from different religions and regions of the country. While Periyar’s Vaikom temple entry movement drew attention of even leaders like Gandhi it is crucial to recall that there were parallels with Bose in his refusal to enter a Hindu temple in Singapore if his associates Abid Husain and Mohammed Zaman Kiani were not allowed to enter with him. Those who argue that Periyar’s demand for Dravidistan as a proof of his separatist politics and anti-national tendencies do not see the depth of his commitment and subsequent disillusionment with the Congress leadership on the question of caste discrimination, reservations, and imposition of Hindi language. Who decides on nation and how do we determine the boundaries for the scope of ideas in a multinational state and society like India? Periyar challenged the secular Congress led by the dominant upper castes and the Hindutva based BJP controlled by the same caste and class. The only difference is the gradual movement of the upper castes to the BJP by the late 1980s. The upper castes continue to be in power by moving from the secular Congress to the Hindutva BJP. It is now the turn of BJP to keep him out national reckoning because of the potent of his ideas and its impact upon the oppressed castes and marginalised people across the country. What is the difference?
Periyar was in fact critical of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) at different junctures but the party and its leadership ever since 1949 neither undermined nor responded to him in public because of the awareness of the deep-rooted social basis of the Dravidian movement beyond the party-political affiliations in Tamil society. A real paradox was that Periyar also became a symbolic force and messiah to the Dravidian parties including the DMK like Ambedkar for the national parties and other regional parties in the rest of India. The gradual decay of the Dravidian parties since the 1980s and the rock-bottom traits of the DMK during 2004-2014 were evident with erosion of ideological basis, enormous corruption charges and uncertainty of leadership transition. The party went back to embrace Periyar’s legacy and his ideas as the circumstances demanded with the forced entry of BJP in Tamil Nadu politics after the demise of Jayalalitha and the existential crisis began to torment the ideologically bankrupt Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK). This is how DMK and Stalin as the party president upturned the circumstances and steered out of the crises of survival.
There is an influential view within the Congress and outside that the Sanatana Dharma controversy flagged off by a debutant to politics from DMK are among the factors that contributed to the defeat of Congress in the assembly elections of Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan in November. They are unwilling to see their own of mirror of soft Hindutva and feudal politics within the Congress as well as its refusal to acknowledge and accommodate other parties in the north without realizing that the parties in the south like the DMK continue to overestimate the Congress credentials. The demand and the release of caste data in several states are likely to intensify the debate on social justice.
Periyar as a thinker and social revolutionary of national reckoning is not afar because of his influential analysis of the dominant role and impact of caste, class and religion upon the politics in India. Periyar may not be the philosopher-king but deserves to be known as the Socrates of modern India who dared to question our premises of our democracy without elements of justice.
Prof. Ramu Manivannan is a scholar-academic-social activist in areas of education, human rights and sustainable development through an initiative “Multiversity.” He is currently the Visiting Scholar and Professor at the Global South Institute, Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA.