பெரியார் இன்றும் என்றும்

by Periyar (Narrator)

Collection of Periyar's articles , essays and stage talks compiled in an elaborate manner. One stop destination to know about the ideologies of the founder of dravidian movement.

Genres: Politics

960 pages, Paperback

About the author

Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (E.V. Ramasamy), commonly known as Periyar (பெரியார்), also referred to as Thandhai Periyar, was an Indian social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam.

Periyar spent over fifty years giving speeches, propagating the realisation that everyone is an equal citizen and the differences on the basis of caste and creed were man-made to keep the innocent and ignorant as underdogs in the society. Although Periyar's speeches were targeted towards the illiterate and more mundane masses, scores of educated people were also swayed. Periyar viewed reasoning as a special tool. According to him, all were blessed with this tool, but very few used it. Thus Periyar used reasoning with respect to subjects of social interest in his presentations to his audiences. Communal differences in Tamil society were considered by many to be deep-rooted features until Periyar came to the scene.

The bedrock of E.V. Ramasamy’s principles and the movements that he started was rationalism. He thought that an insignificant minority in society was exploiting the majority and trying to keep it in a subordinate position forever. He wanted the exploited to sit up and think about their position, and use their reason to realise that they were being exploited by a handful of people. In a message to the Brahmin community, Periyar stated, "in the name of god, religion, and sastras you have duped us. We were the ruling people. Stop this life of cheating us from this year. Give room for rationalism and humanism". He added that "any opposition not based on rationalism, science, or experience will one day or another, reveal the fraud, selfishness, lies and conspiracies".

Periyar's philosophy of self-respect was based on his image of an ideal world and a universally accepted one. His philosophy preaches that human actions should be based on rational thinking. Further, the outcome of the natural instinct of human beings is to examine every object and every action and even nature with a spirit of inquiry, and to refuse to submit to anything irrational as equivalent to slavery. Thus, the philosophy of self-respect taught that human actions should be guided by reason, right and wrong should follow from rational thinking and conclusions drawn from reason should be respected under all circumstances. Freedom means respect to thoughts and actions considered right by human beings on the basis of reason. There is not much difference between freedom and self-respect.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am one among the lucky people to buy the first edition for Rs. 300/-. It is an enormous collection of various speeches and writings of Periyar. Spanning more than 50 years of his political and social life, the editors have done a tedious and great job in collecting, categorizing and compiling the works as a single book of gargantuan proportions (both in dimensions and concepts). I have read Homo Deus recently and many ideas of Periyar around 1930s echo what 21st century thinkers are having in their mind. There are some areas where we can find Periyar not so progressive or having a shallow knowledge. But he himself acknowledges that he is not saying anything as absolute truth or with any authority, but as his opinion and we have to think for our own. The political climate, cultural differences of not-so-distant past of ours is surprising and our school education has failed miserably to teach us all these.

[Vairakumar]

Nice