Periyar E.V. Ramasamy must easily be one of the most controversial political personalities of 20th century India. a people’s man, he spent the last 50 years of his long life practically on the move, haranguing at street corners, frequently getting abused and having stones thrown at him. The Tamils are rightly proud of him because he was one of his kind. Periyar was a proud person, but never selfish. His love for the Tamil people and the underprivileged was unquestionable. He did not know how to mince words and often went overboard. He truly detested religion, God, caste, social discrimination, Brahmins, the ideas of Gandhi and the very idea of India.
Of the three major leaders who stoutly opposed Gandhi, two, Jinnah and Ambedkar, are well-known and their works are available in English. The third, Periyar, is familiar to non-Tamils only through a minuscule, translated portion of his enormous output and some adulatory accounts of his life by his admirers. There is not a single biography of him in either Tamil or English, which satisfactorily covers his extraordinary journey. Not that contemporary historians, especially non-Tamil ones, are complaining. As far I know, none of them has made any serious effort to a get a complete picture of Periyar.
The lacuna is cleverly being exploited by Periyarist intellectuals who, without any compunction, attribute to Periyar views which they think he would have been better off possessing. Periyar was stark black and white—the person you get today is a highly colourised and heavily touched-up version of his real self. There is no doubt that his real self itself had much to commend. He was, by a long chalk, the greatest social reformer of Tamil Nadu who kept asking uncomfortable questions. The problem was he almost always thought he had all the right answers himself and came down heavily on those who said they too had a few alternative answers.
THE GANDHI DEVOTEE
Bu hikaye Outlook dergisinin October 07, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Outlook dergisinin October 07, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
The Propaganda Files
A recent spate of Hindi films distorts facts and creates imaginary villains. Century-old propaganda cinema has always relied on this tactic
Will Hindutva Survive After 2024?
The idealogy of Hindutva faces a challenge in staying relevant
A Terrific Tragicomedy
Paul Murray's The Bee Sting is a tender and extravagant sketch of apocalypse
Trapped in a Template
In the upcoming election, more than the Congress, the future of the Gandhi family is at stake
IDEOLOGY
Public opinion will never be devoid of ideology: but we shall destroy ourselves without philosophical courage
The Many Kerala Stories
How Kerala responded to the propaganda film The Kerala Story
Movies and a Mirage
Previously portrayed as a peaceful paradise, post-1990s Kashmir in Bollywood has become politicised
Lights, Cinema, Politics
FOR eight months before the 1983 state elections in undivided Andhra Pradesh, a modified green Chevrolet van would travel non-stop, except for the occasional pit stops and food breaks, across the state.
Cut, Copy, Paste
Representation of Muslim characters in Indian cinema has been limited—they are either terrorists or glorified individuals who have no substance other than fixed ideas of patriotism
The Spectre of Eisenstein
Cinema’s real potency to harness the power of enchantment might want to militate against its use as a servile, conformist propaganda vehicle