On E.V. Ramaswamy Periyar and His Dalit Discourse

The time when Periyar uttered extreme diatribe against Hinduism, it was certainly radical and audacious. When his criticism of Brahminical dominance in Hinduism is justified, his suggestions to resist it through conversion, especially to Islam or Christianity, made his arguments rather weak. It sounded more like sentimental outbursts than an intellectual attack on the corrupt practices prevalent in Hinduism. This is where Ram Mohan Ray stands apart as a social reformer and a beacon of light for a society desperately looking for a leader to transform itself. The ills of a system or a society must
be challenged and changed from within and one must not try to escape from it as it is the tactics of a weak soul and the other orgainsed and deductive spiritual outfits are always in search of such weaklings.

That there is no one sect in Hinduism is its biggest strength because it is an inclusive religion giving spiritual sanctity to the faiths of the natives. All the indigenous tribal gods and goddesses as well as their indigenous spiritual philosophies became part of the so called Hindu discourse and pantheon which includes the divine figures like Kali, Shiva, Kamakhya, Bathou, Mashan, Chinnamasta, Tara, Durga and numerous other gods and goddesses who were originally the divine figures of the indigenous tribal and ethnic communities.
The Brahminical issue is the social and political aspect of Hindu society where the religion per se virtually has hardly anything to do. This malice and corruption has to be resisted through social and political movements where the philosophy of Hinduism has limited scopes to affect changes. Hence, to blame it on Hinduism for the corrupt Brahminical practices is rather naive and populist. Periyar had great contributions in forcing dramatic social reforms in the South, but he mostly remained a provincial protagonist, despite my highest regards for him, I must say, perhaps because some of his comments and desperate acts turned out be more melodramatic and copiously jibed with the amusingly clichéd conversion rhetoric.

But I must say Periyar has huge relevance in today's India primarily to reform the religious practices of Hinduism and liberate it from the monopolistic domination of the Brahmins. When the BJP govt. introduced courses on priesthood, most of the so called secular and left parties cried foul calling it safronisation of education but this opposition, especially by the left had actually revealed its ugliest high caste bias because the left had relaised that such a move would eventually snatch the established superiority of the Brahmins as the priestly caste because no state run course can be caste based and
anybody from any caste or gender might well have become institutionally recongnized priests thereby, eventually, they would have destroyed the supremacy claims of the Brahmins for ever as any body would have gained access to the sanctum sanctorum of all the places of worship as legitimate priests. The rabid casteist bias of the left is one of the root causes of the continued casteist discrepancies in Indian society, be it religion, education or politics.