Where Periyaar Failed

Today we hail him as a great reformer, we portray him as a very successful man. Almost no Tamil puts his caste name after his name, women in Tamilnadu are going to work, that was once considered taboo, Brahmins do not eat meals aloof from other communities, they now behave like they are one among us (whereas in Pakistan mullahs advise the young not to have meals with Christians and Hindus). These are all seen as kind of victory for the Dravidian movement which was started by Periyaar. But there are lot of failures too. He avoided lot of subjects too.

Did not attack Islam and Christianity as much

Though Periyaar maintained that all who worshiped God are idiots and savages, he did not irk the ire of Muslims and Christians that much. They did not say a supportive word for his work because if they said it means they have denounced their religion, but they did not protest as they would protest against Modi today.

Periyaar fell into the convenience of jsut attacking his own religion Hinduism. Strategically that’s good, because in only large bodies of people you will find people of varied opinion, and to attack it means you can create divisions and split it, you will get internal support. But morally that’s weak.

There are lot of Muslim women who hate the restrictions of their religion. There are lot of Christians who say Jesus simply did not exist. We have no proof that Muhammad exists and Jesus if he did exist escaped crucifixion death.

Periyaar could have attacked it, but yes at that time our investigative powers were not that much and we did not have the tools to debate about Christianity and Islam, but the base is wrong, both promote God, Satan and other supernatural powers which is utter bullshit.

Religion and caste still exists

Religion and caste still exist. We haven’t listened to our reformer, turned our religious houses to museums like Soviet Union did. We still believe God and other supernatural powers exist and by praying to them and making offerings and sacrifices our lives will be better.

Still caste system exists in Tamilnadu. Being a Chennai guy, when I travel out of Chennai (not even 20Km awaay) I do see people speaking high about their caste and low about other castes. Believe it or not Tamil Christians and Muslims have injected caste into their respective religions. These religions were created to make all Humanity a single equal entity, but our people have bent these religion to their convenience.

Sidha hasn’t become scientific yet

Periyaar did not go along with Sidha and other Indian medicine. The reason is simple, there was no proper scientific or statistical study on it. I know that jeeragam helps me to digest food, and its true, but none has said there is a statistical and scientific evidence for it. We just went by word of mouth, which is wrong. On the contrary we have alopathy where things are peer reviewed, scrutinized etc.

The government of Tamilnadu has set up a Sidha research center, but I think its still under par with other international research.

Sivathanu Pillai’s (Bhramos Director) dad could cure cancer at last stages, a doctor called Parvathi (who’s potrait hangs in Sidha institute I hope) of my family could cure paralysis, a miracle by alopathy standard, yet all is lost after their death. Omitting Sidha was a protest by this man to make it scientific and a public knowledge, and still we are loosing a lot f knowledge and we don’t know whether we will rediscover it.

Women still marry

Periyaar was against marriage, though he himself got married twice. The second one was pure technical, to save his trust. But the truth is marriage makes women a slave. A slave who serves her husband, and becomes a child bearing machine.

Not all civilizations are like us where women are considered inferior, there is a region in China where women don’t marry. They stand equal to men. But this type of societal change, Periyaar was unable to bring about.

A nation that still recognizes religion

Though you goto court and say that God guided you to commit a crime, the court won’t believe it. It’s because court tries to be scientific as possible. But as a state, though our law’s don’t recognize religion, our nation is secular and religious.

Millions are spent on religious activity. Even our ISRO scientists pray god before rocket launch. Chinese scientist don’t pray to God, but they put more number of satellites than any other nation. They have far superior human space program, and a excellent program for a space station.

A nation and it law should be aloof of religion and caste, but ours recognizes religion even though there are no God’s and Satan’s around. Periyaar tried to change this, but how can one thinker win over 30 crore idiots?

Thankfully no Drividastan

Like Jinnah divided India by creating Pakistan, Periyaar demanded Dravidastan. A separate Dravidian nation. I am very happy it did not happen.

Imagine that we were a separate nation and thugs like Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalaitha ruled. When under the Indian union these people loot us like hell, imagine what they would have done if they were the most constitutionally superior power in Tamilnadu. We would have been like an worst off like some African nations, riddled with corruption and poverty and even civil war.

No Scientific Tamil yet

Rather than we singing Tamil hymns and puranaas, and talking about beauty and antiquity of Tamil civilization, Periyaar rightly realized that you need to have Scientific literature translated into Tamil. He was very right that one could understand concepts better in the language of his native rather than a foreign language.

But we Tamils wanted quick money and have sacrificed our language to English. Any technical person in Tamilnadu is now forced to learn English to keep up with technology, whereas Chinese or Japanese technician can manage with their own language.

This inferiority complex in Tamils, accepting Sanskrit as God’s language and letting Aryan culture in, accepting the English to rule us, accepting English to dominate our land rather than Tamil is still there, possibly it will end the era of Tamil among humanity as a whole.