From: mvishnu@morse.uwaterloo.ca (m vishnu)
Subject: EVR part 10 (final) (long)
Originator: mvishnu@morse.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 15:42:02 GMT



More on EVR from the PhD thesis of Charles Ryerson, "Regionalism and
Religion, The Tamil Renaissance and Popular Hinduism".


Rajagopalachari again became Chief Minister of the state in 1952.
Congress had won those elections, but its vote was far below
expectations and Communists had made major inroads on Congress strength.
One of Rajaji's major concern was education and in 1953 he devised a 
plan whereby children would attend school for three hours a day, spending
the other half of the day learning the "traditional occupation" of their
parents.  The goal was to utilize classroom space more efficiently
and also to link learning to labour in a Gandhian basic education manner.
EVR promptly dubbed the plan as Kula-kalvi thittam (Caste Based Education),
and a massive campaign was waged against it.  When the dust had settled,
Rajaji had been forced into retirement, replaced by K. Kamaraj who had been
the President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee.

Kamaraj, as has been mentioned, was of the "low" toddy-tapping Nadar
caste which was one of the most upwardly mobile in all of India.
It was noted that earlier that many elite members of this caste
had joined the Justice Party but Kamaraj, from a poor family and 
virtually uneducated, had been involved in the Congress from the time
of 1919 Amritsar Massacre, when he was only sixteen years old.  His
dedication to the movement and to Gandhi was so great that he never
married, saying he needed all his energies for the freedom struggle.
Always, however, his roots remained deep in Tamil soil.  He represented
that side of Tamil Nadu awackening symbolized by Thiru Vee Kaa,
embodying Tamil regionalism and All India nationalism.  Unlike
Kaliyaansundarnar (?), however, he was no educated intellectual but
a pragmatist with an intuitve sense of politics.

...

Statues of EVR were erected in several places in the state.  They
had the same inscription:

"He who created God is a fool, he who propagates God is a scoundrel,
and he who worships God is a barbarian"

For an American, seeing Periyar with his flowing white beard and
piercing eyes, John Brown--minus the Bible--comes to mind.  The international
person he most compared to in Tamil Nadu, however, is a more obscure
Americal, Robert Green Ingersoll.  One can buy copies of this nineteenth
century Americal positivist's works in Tamil or English, in almost any bookstore
in Tamil Nadu.  This is due to his being popularized by DK although
Periyar denied any direct influence.  'My disciples read Ingersoll to
me, but my ideas are my own'  The foloowing is a representative quotation
from Ingersoll:

"This in my judgement is real religion.  To do all the good you can is to
be a saint in the highest and nobliest sense... To relieve suffering,
to put the star of hope in the midnights of despair, this is true
holiness.  This is the religion of science... Being satisfied that the
supernatural does not exist, man should turn his entire attention to the
affairs of this world, to the facts of nature...  Man will be civilized
when passions are dominated by the intellect, when reason
occupies the throne.  We are growing grander and nobler...There is
no darkness but ignorance" (Robert G Ingersoll, 'The Liberty of Man'
London: Watt 1941 pp 51 and 75-6)

(The End)

Meenan Vishnu 


From: jawahar@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Jawahar-HP India)
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 05:16:50 GMT
Subject: NEWS from Deccan Herald Dt 18/8/92 , Tuesday
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO