As Tamil superstar Rajnikanth refused to issue an apology for talking about the procession of 1971, when the image of Bhagwan Ram beaten with chappals surfaced, evidence has appeared that, there were more sinister designs to that event.
After the statement of Rajnikanth, who said it at the Golden Jubilee celebration of Tamil magazine Tughlak, appeared, the Periyarites have started asking for the evidence of the event, and accused him of ‘misleading’ people; it appeared that The Hindu reporter from Salem wrote after the event, “The tableaux included obscene pictures of the birth of Lord Muruga, penance of sages and Mohini Avatara, a 10-foot long image of Lord Rama was carried on a vehicle and dozens of people kept beating it with chappals”.
However, the event was not limited to this! As per an article written by M R Subramani in Swarajya, there was more sinister design to that event with 10 point agenda of the event organized by Periyar in 1971. The resolutions are as following:
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Scrap the Indian Penal Code section that punishes a person for hurting others religious feeling
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No security for God (temples) and religions (processions)
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There should be no attachment towards God, religion, caste, language and the nation
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Remove the Supreme Court
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Parpanars (a term used by Dravidian parties for Brahmins) should not be called Brahmins (The argument is calling them supports the Varna system.)
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Tamil Nadu people must boycott newspapers owned by Brahmins
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Hindu religion is not a religion
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We are not Hindus. In the coming census (1980), we (Tamil Nadu people) should say we are not Hindus
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Eradicate caste means we should taunt Parpans (Brahmins)
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”.
In a piece in Viduthala (Freedom), DK (Predecessor of DMK and AIADMK)’s official newspaper, 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.
The whole Dravidian movement is based on hatred against one community and one religion. In starting, it was radical enough ask for division of India and separate statehood for the states of South. The radical element has moderated but the Periyarites are still very violent and bigot people, who attacked the house of S Gurumurthy, the editor of the Tughlaq, for giving space to Rajnikanth, and being constantly vocal about Dravidian politics.