R rated! The man who went for the Jugular!

"The man who went for the Jugular"

A kid in my family is reading Periyar as part of her subjects.

I was her sparring partner for some class work as the learning these days are in e mode.

The more we discussed, the more we debated, I gained an insight into the mind of the man who was called not just a reformer but a Radical reformer.

Before I go onto share my insight, I wld like to entertain you with a story about Chanakya.

As the story goes, Chanakya stepped on a thorny plant accidentally and some thorns pricked his feet.

Angered by the pain, with a superior intellect that goes for the jugular (of any problems), he poured some sugar water on the plant.

When a passerby noticed this act, he couldn't comprehend it and asked Chanakya, 'Oh the great intellect, you could have simply yanked the plant out and thrown it away in a second. Why take the pain of getting sugar, mixing with water and then pouring out the sugar water on the plant?"

Chanakya the wise man replied, "You see, If I yank it out and the full roots don't come out, the plant will regrow in no time. The sugar water, on the other hand, will attract an army of ants and they will devour the plant to its roots leisurely. This way I ensure that the plant is killed once and for all by my delegates!"

No wonder he was hailed as a radical thinker and political strategist!

Periyar also went for the Jugular, of Brahminical hegemony, by declaring that God is an illusion and believers are savages!

Sanskrit, DevaBasha, exclusivity of it to Brahmins, kept them relevant and important as THE channel to divine help.

So, if one wants to break that hold, why fight them all?; just fight the gods out of our rationale and there won't be any need for the agency of Brahmins in the life of lesser mortals!

This is where I believe Periyar towers over other rationalists of the modern world in the sense that he was not just fighting only the gods!

So what if we lose access to DevaBasha? 

Radical he was, he was able to foresee the significance of the role a language plays in the lives of people who use it for their livelihoods. So he went a step further and brought reforms into the language (Tamil) too to make it better than or equal to Sanskrit but in an equitable and honourable way. Just sample this: KanyaDhan in Sanskrit doesn't have an equivalent word in Tamil. A rough translation wld be 'giving away the girl in the name of marriage' - so patriarchal ain't it?

Periyar's suggestion was to call it 'Vaazhkai Thunai' in Tamil; it means life partner!

Almost fifty years after his death, we still keep reforming Tamil to bring in equity and honour to ALL who speak it and live by it. The latest one being today's (06.05.2021) announcement by the new Dravidian party that took over TN governance; it replaced a slew of portfolio names into more equitable / honourable ones. Sample this:  Fisheries Ministry (மீன் வளத்துறை) has been renamed as Fisheries and Fishermen Welfare department (மீன்வளம் - மீனவர் நலத்துறை) :-)