Continuing on the charade to make the most imbecile and gibberish remarks, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has unseemly invoked Hinduphobia in his recent speech. In an effort to please the Tamil Nadu voters by practicing vote bank politics, Rahul Gandhi has cited late Periyar E V Ramasamy, in his campaign for Theni Lok Sabha constituency. Periyar was known as a bigot who targeted Brahmins through his pretext of opposing caste hegemony.
Campaigning for the Congress candidate in Theni Lok Sabha constituency E V K S Elangovan, who happens to be the grandson of Periyar, Rahul Gandhi stated, “I will send the book with a note ‘read this to know about people of Tamil Nadu’. The person referred to here is PM Modi and the Congress heir also continued, “I will also send him a few books on (late Tamil Nadu chief minister) M Karunanidhi.”
This statement comes in light of the backdrop of DMK desperately trying to weasel their way out of the “anti-Hindu” image they have painted. DMK has been famous for its anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin bigotry in the garb of Dravidian ideology. This anti-Hindu stance is amply clear from the statements of late DMK President M. Karunanidhi who said, “Lord Rama is a drunkard“. The late president has also remarked that the term ‘Hindu’ means ‘thief’. He stated, “Who is a Hindu? You must ask Periyar EVR. A good man would say the word Hindu means a thief.” Continuing his legacy, the present party president, M.K. Stalin has further strengthened the party’s anti-Hindu stance. In a public gathering this year, he openly stated to uproot Sanatana Dharma. Moreover, he has organized the alliance parties together in an effort to defeat the Sanatana Dharma. A couple of years ago, Stalin had blatantly criticised the sacred Hindu marriage ceremony. He stated, “The smoke will assault the eyes of the couple and then they will cry a little. Not just their eyes, the guests will also tear up. It is a sad situation. He will call kinnarar, Dhevars, and 330 million Dhevars. He will call ishta avathars and some extra avathars to conduct the wedding. What is he saying? The couple won’t know. The people who have come won’t know and maybe if you take him aside, he will also say he doesn’t know. But if you think about the inner meaning – our whole body will shake. The mantras will be so disgusting.” From being involved in cutting the sacred thread (poonool) of brahmins to not participating in any Hindu rituals in public, such as, Ganesh chaturthi or Saraswathi Pooja; DMK has left no stone unturned in an effort to go against Hinduism.
In the midst of the elections, DMK is now desperately trying to wipe off their anti-Hindu ideologies by performing pseudo ceremonies to please the voters on the surface. In an attempt to remove the ‘atheist’ tag of the party, Kanimozhi, the DMK candidate from Thoothukudi constituency chose to launch her campaign from the temple town of Tiruchendur. Moreover, Stalin is making tall remarks in a public rally, saying he is not against Hinduism and further added that his wife goes to temples and he does not prevent her.
In such a tense atmosphere, wherein it is essential for the party to shed its “anti-Hindu” tag for the purpose of the elections at least, their key ally in the state, Congress makes a remark clubbing and appreciating Periyar and late DMK party president, M Karunanidhi together.
While aiming the remark at PM Modi, wherein Rahul Gandhi graciously offered to send the prime minister some books on Periyar, the Congress heir showed that he is obviously not aware that despite the fact that Tamil Nadu is being run by Dravidian parties since the last 50 years, the government has not published even one work of authoritative biography either in English or Tamil on Periyar, leave alone his collected works. We wonder what was it about his views that the government has tried to hide from the citizens. Nevertheless, there are a few collections of his works compiled by private individuals which are looked upon to delve deeper into the man who was known as “savior of the lower castes”.
Periyar was a social activist, who claimed that he wanted to ‘dissolve India of the tyrannies of Brahmanism, caste prevalence and women oppression’.
However, this is far from the truth. Periyar’s personal stance has not been to rectify the caste system or to abolish it; his vendetta has been against Brahmins as a community. He was not progressive or liberal, working towards the good of the people but instead wanted to remove the Brahmins altogether. Periyar keeps making it clear that Brahmins are irredeemable due to their virtue of being born a Brahmin. For instance, in an interview, it was asked, “Do you mean to say that Brahmins, by the very fact that they were born Brahmins, can never have honest intentions?” Periyar responded, “I do. They can never have honest intentions.”
Moreover, he had threatened the unity and integrity of the nation, along with making criminal threats towards the Brahmins. On one occasion he stated, “To destroy caste discrimination burn the pictures of Nehru and Gandhi and also the Constitution of India. If all these methods fail to give us results, then we should start beating and killing the Brahmins; we should start burning their houses.”
Further to these threats, he has expressed time and again his desire to practice an Adolf Hitler style of the regime and used the magazine which he edited to warn Brahmins in Tamil Nadu that they should learn from the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and opt for course correction. He has made statements such as, “The Brahmin is the root of caste. To eradicate caste, we must eradicate the Brahmin”.
This attitude of sheer hatred towards the Brahmins should not unnecessarily make the reader feel that Periyar supported the SCs, because he didn’t. He detested Dr. BR Ambedkar and even accused him of being bribed by the Brahmins during the framing of the constitution and not bothering about the problems of others. His accusations went totally haywire when he attributed the increasing prices of clothes to SC women wearing jackets. He also blamed the Pariah men for becoming literate as reasons for the rise in unemployment. Instead of condemning the mass burning of the SC agricultural workers and their families in 1968, during one of their strikes, Parhiyar stated, “The workers should be taught to live with what they receive as wages. Instead of teaching them that the Communists are trying to instigate the workers into riots and rebellions. Because of that 42 persons have lost their lives.”
Apart from his “so-called” take on the evils of the caste system, Periyar also strongly advocated “women equality”. However, our ideological leader forgot to practice what he preached. He never participated in any of the crucial women’s rights movement. According to him, Brahmin women are not to be allowed the same liberties and do not fit in his ideology on “women empowerment”. Throughout his life, he has referred to the women in a very degrading manner by making remarks like, Brahmin priests act as pimps for their wives in a few religious places. Moreover, in a piece in Viduthala, he makes a highly misogynist assertion, “Had the British continued for another ten years, more than half of the Brahmin women would have been ours and Tamils would have been their husbands and the dominating caste would have been destroyed [by] more than half. Only after Brahmin women had started chasing our boys did the Brahmin men become very angry with the British.”
He wanted the governments to pass a law stipulating that only inter-caste marriages will be recognized as legal. Moreover, he could not even let his own wife be spared of his tactics to assert dominance over the women. He made men tease and stalk her just so she stops going to the temple.
Periyar has always been a fascist, discriminating against the Brahmins, the SCs and the women. “In a way, I was doing things as I pleased as president, and I could not be consulting too many opinions. I believed myself to be right… As a president, I could only take the lead and it was for others to do the work,” he proudly proclaimed. All the individual has done is in life is to propagate inequality, focusing on stereotyping and prejudicing against certain communities and certain genders, in the name of “fighting against the caste system”. Had the times been difficult, or had he been given any national controlling power, Periyar’s views would have led to a fully fledged uprising, massacring thousands.
In light of these atrocities, which are well known to everybody, Rahul Gandhi chooses to mention the name of this anti-Hindu and anti-National person. Periyar has led several agitations that involved idol-breaking and burning of copies of our constitution and maps. In a situation wherein DMK is trying to shed its anti-Hindu image, the Rahul Gandhi has gone and praised Pariyar in Tamil Nadu itself. Such assertions will not go unnoticed. Rahul Gandhi in an effort to go against the opposition NDA has made a rod for his own back.