From the previous issue
Speaking in a context of the continued domination of upper caste students in higher education, Periyar suggested that the public funds should not be spent on higher education. He came down heavily upon the examination system which tested only the power of one’s ability to learn by rote, an ability in which only the Brahmin priests excelled. The real test should be the capacity for rational thinking, physical strength, knowledge of the world around us and rational conduct. He called for the abolition of the system of examination to promote students from the lower to higher class and suggested making the attendance to the class and completion of the course as the only criterion for automatic promotion. In his view, a system of tests and examinations is necessary only for selecting candidates for jobs.
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S. V. Rajadurai
Progressive – Critical writer
Responding to Gandhi’s Wardha Plan for Education which envisaged teaching the child a vocation, preferably the one that was his caste occupation, while still in school, Periyar argued that this proposal which sought to promote what was coming to be known as the ‘handicrafts’ sector was somewhat anachronistic. For the world was changing fast and with machines being increasingly used in manufacture, transport and construction, he did not foresee any meaningful productive future for a child who was schooled in his caste occupation. The time is not far away that the manual scavenging would be replaced by machines and that there was already a mechanical invention that cleaned one’s bottom! Periyar noted that the Congress was interested in Wardha Plan because it desired to keep the entire labouring population in bondage to its dominance. If Non-Brahmin Shudras and Adi Dravidas were to acquire technical skills, they would grow into a consciousness of their own status as productive labourers and rebel against the conditions of existence which were, after all, unjust. To forestall such an eventuality, Periyar argued, Congress had decided to oppose all modern technological innovations and education and dismiss these away as imperialist in intent.
Periyar raged against such education system sought to be introduced in its new incarnation by C.Rajagopalachari’s Congress Government in the erstwhile Madras Presidency during 1953-54 educational year.. According to this system, the students in primary schools would attend the classes in the forenoon and in the afternoon they would go back to their homes to pursue the hereditary occupations of their parents. It was blatantly Varnadharmic and the public anger provoked thanks to Periyar’s relenteless campaign against it ensured not only the withdrawal of the scheme but the fall of C. Rajagoplachari’s government itself and the advent of K. Kamraj’s rule, which saw to the opening wide of the portals of all educational institutions to the under-class and Bahujan students.
He was totally averse to introducing tests of merit, efficiency, and qualification for admission to educational institutions, and thought that they were the cunning ruses of the crafty Brahmins to subvert the working of the Social Justice through affirmative action that benefited the Shudra and Adi-Dravida students. Commenting on the system of ‘Entrance Examinations’ for admission to High Schools and Colleges foolishly considered by the Tamil Nadu Government in 1972, Periyar thundered:
In the educational field the Government is doing a massive ‘Brahminism”…Even after inscribing the words “Eligible for College Course” in the Certificates issued for passing an examination, what is the reason behind the insistence that the students should be admitted only after passing the entrance examination with a prescribed percentage of marks and on that basis ensuring that the students have proper merit? Is it not Brahminism? Are they not the notions sprung up from the brain of the Brahmin? Is this not a proposal that would result in throwing the backward and depressed communities into a deep pit and bury them there? I , being the one who has been fighting for the last forty years against the so called ‘merit’ and ‘efficiency’ in appointments to Government services, will consider the insistence on the merit of the students is nothing but an insistence on ‘caste-merit’? … Is it not a fact that even some of those admitted on the basis of merit and efficiency also fail (in examinations)? ? I have had the experience of witnessing the ‘ merit’, efficiency’ and ‘standard’ in the society. My writings on these issues still exist. I was labouring and still labouring for the backward communities, depressed communities. I strongly believe in the communal representation from the posts of the ministers onwards. With regard to Education, it should not lead to the situation where one would consider the rule of Kamaraj was better than the present one.
Mercififully the DMK government at that time abandoned the ill-advised move suggested by the bureaucrats. It was also, yet another instance where Periyar valued the interests of the Bahujans more than the interests of the persons or party in power, however dear and respectful they were to him.
Periyar abhorred the education system that promotes learning by rote and the one that does not allow the students to develop the spirit of enquiry such as asking questions to the teachers; it is this kind education system that does not forge good ethic of public behavior and morality in the minds of the young with the result that when they become adults, “ the one who buys the ticket in a railway counter ahead of others is praised as a smart guy and the one who buys the ticket for the newly released cinema film is considered the most courageous person”. Periyar, was however, against using the students to be subjected to the outside influence such as that of the politicians. He considered the young people ‘easily inflammable’ like cotton and compared the politicians with ‘petrol’. Given the age-long backwardness in which the students from Bahujan castes were kept, they were expected to concentrate their entire attention only on their studies and not yield to any external temptations.
To sum up, to Periyar education did not mean mere bookish knowledge. Capacity for rational thinking, understanding the world around us, and the spirit of helping others should be the basic ingredients of true education. For such a kind of education, Periyar considered lessons on Rationalism from the primary school levels and upwards were essential. Only those with rationalist outlook must be appointed as teachers and rationalism should be included in the curriculam of education and prescribed as a subject for examination ; it should also be made a requirement for applying for jobs.
Periyar’s rationalism is however superbly ethical in its content and objective:
If one who is expected to make efforts to pass an examination, wants to get the pass by offering a prayer, if a person needing money wants to get it by offering a prayer, if someone desires to go to heaven gets to it by offering a prayer – are these things not simply avarice, an immense fraud and laziness that demands payment for no work done?
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