S.V. Rajadurai
Progressive – Critical writer
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From the previous issue
Periyar’s criticism of religion, particularly, Hinduism proceeded from his understanding of caste as a system and ideology. He was always inclined to consider Hinduism, rather than Islam or Christianity, as embodying in itself and in its various practices an entire way of being that directed its adherents to think and act in particular ways. Thus, whether they were concerned with particular problems, arising out of the contingent, or worried about problems of a more universal nature, such as to do with faith and knowledge, Hindus were clearly influenced by their religion. It determined what they ate, how they dressed, whom they married, their choice of a profession, their relationships with each other, their behaviour in public places, their political choices, their modes of worship, in short, a religious sensibility was manifest in the Hindu’s each and every actions. Religion was fundamental to the very organization of caste society and had to be viewed not merely in terms of beliefs, faith and the succour it offered to the believer, but in terms of its material quotidian existence.
Periyar’s ideas on brahminical patriarchy drew its sustenance from his original and robust rejection of the conventional ideal of chastity. Linking up the pressure on women to remain chaste with social imperatives which held she must prove fertile and reproduce, Periyar enunciated a theory of motherhood in caste society. He did not confuse biological difference with gender roles nor did he imagine that because men’s bodies were different from women’s bodies, men and women were different in their attributes and temperament. While conceding that the woman, biologically ‘endowed’ with the uterus, is burdened with child bearing, a necessary natural evil that might one day be overcome with ‘ test tube babies’, Periyar argued that ‘child rearing’ could be taken up by the men as well. By making parenthood rather than motherhood the decisive factor in the nurture and care of human life, Periyar liberated the female body and thus granted the female person a will and subjectivity. He also lambasted at the conventional modes of fetishisation of female body and urged the women not to internalize the notions of beauty and become mere ‘pegs’ on which one hangs jewellery. Implicit in his rejection of marriage was his rejection of what he perceived as a Brahminical system of values which negated female self-hood on the one hand and obfuscated and confused the Non-Brahmins on the other: “ just as how Brahminism condemns a very large portion of the working population to Shudra-hood so it has condemned women to the servitude of marriage…To the extent that a woman lives up to the norms of a chaste and ideal wife to that extent she accepts and revels in her slavery.”
Periyar’s narrative of history of women’s subordination possessed a further dimension in that he placed the logic of reproduction in the context of Hindu caste society, presided over by a Brahmin priest. He noted that the desire to have children for the inheritance of one’s name and wealth would not have assumed such immense significance in Hindu society, if it had not been for the religious and cultural reasons that were advanced in justification of this desire:
After it had become the norm for people to want children to safeguard property, Brahmins who had invented fictions of heaven and hell to keep the poor from stealing from the wealthy and to secure some of that wealth for themselves now sought to argue that…man must have a (male) child who would keep alive his name after death and perform his yearly obsequies.
While addressing the economic inequalities obtaining in the society, Periyar argued that the abolition of social inequalities was a primary principle of socialism, without which economic equality could only be ineffective. He maintained that social inequalities derived from one’s birth would remain active under any economic system as a deterrent to any radical change in society and would even reproduce the economic disparities that were abolished. Pointing out that it was under the caste system that several people became wealthy and acquired a superior status, he insisted that even implementation of Communist doctrines in full force could not bring about any reform in a hierarchically organized caste society and that therefore the first and fundamental task of a Socialist in this country was to abolish the caste system. In his perception, workers, capitalists, farmers and landlords, etc., represented different layers in the hierarchy established by Varnashrama. Periyar explained that as the men and women in Hindu society were perennially suffering many inequalities based on birth they had failed to notice the levels in occupational life. Genuine equality can be achieved by simultaneously doing away with the inequalities by birth as well as by occupation.
As an absolute negation of the triple oppression or divide Periyar saw in society –the Brahmin-Paraiah, Man-Woman, Rich-Poor – he and his Self-Respecters desired to found a community of rational, fraternal, freedom-loving women and men, equal and coeval with each other in every imaginable way was propelled forward by their conviction to the principle of what they habitually termed Samadharma. This ideal of Samadharma may however be best understood as an idea-in process; one that was never entirely grounded, either on the basis of a simple contradiction, such as, for instance, between Brahmins and Non-Brahmins, or in antagonisms between rich and poor, capitalist and worker, or landlord and the peasant. This does, not, however, mean the application of this principle in practice was vague and ineffectual. Periyar and his followers at different times and contexts identified the ideal of samadharma with a set of clearly defined material attributes which they held ought to characterize the good society. Thus the achievement of communal representation in the services and educational institutions, the evolution of common and shared right to access – to public and sacral spaces, to property, employment, ensuring the legal status to the self-respect marriage, making it possible to appoint Temple priests irrespective of the caste or creed (subject to the condition that the person so chosen is learned in Agamic rules and rituals) – came to be acknowledged as valuable and material correlates of the principles of samadharma. But Periyar insisted that his mission would be complete only with the total annihilation of caste, religion and god!
Periyar’s view on education, then, is anchored on Self-respect Samadhrama as a basic variable in the model of human society that education had to deal with. Samadharma, is the connecting theme in all his works. For Periyar, education is not worthy of its name if it does not help reflect a critical perspective on social injustice based on the triple oppression. His life and mission assumed a gigantic pedagogical role in arousing the sense of self-respect in countless women and men in Tamil country, through his tireless writings, addresses in public meetings, engaging in polemics with opponents and campaigns he launched to bring into fruit the demands of the Self-Respect movement. For Periyar, “All castes should progress in education, in intelligence and in culture and achieve parity with each other… All castes should attain an equal share of government posts …All castes should come together and attain a common level of culture, a common educational status, should experience a common morality” But he was not accepting the educational model in vogue then. He did not segregate the education imparted in schools and colleges from the spirit and tenor of the anti-caste, anti-gender and anti-religious campaigns of his movement.
To be continued…
