Frontline ·
Arts, culture, entertainment and media
Periyar’s anti-caste politics, in his own words
A complex picture of Periyar emerges from this collection of speeches: a thinker who confronted political apathy towards caste abolition, while his model of self-respect raises questions about the roots of Dalit oppression.
Caste and the Crisis of Dignity: Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Speaks at Caste Association Meetings and Caste Abolition Conferences is for the curious reader, of whichever political persuasion, who is interested in discovering what Periyar actually spoke about. The book requires patient reading through speeches delivered over nearly five decades (from the 1920s until his death in 1973), which might at first seem like sweeping, and at times contradictory, generalisations. They reward close reading, though—not least because of Periyar’s continuing relevance in present-day Tamil Nadu and, indeed, in anti-caste struggles across India. This well-represented collection, edited and with an introduction by V.M.S. Subagunarajan and translated by R. Vijaya Sankar, makes that reading possible in English.
One of the most resolute and defining aspects of Periyar’s speeches in this collection is his remark that no person is above or below another. That he made such a claim in caste conferences during a time when non-Brahmin castes were organising themselves to gain benefits and reservations, even as they continued to press their demands for higher varna status, was considered radical. Subagunarajan provides useful context in the Introduction. After the first census of India classified castes and sub-castes administratively, a new agenda arose in non-Brahmin caste conferences: social mobility now meant state entitlements and internal power-sharing. Periyar vehemently opposed non-Brahmins’ claims for higher status. But he drew upon their demands for state benefits to assert for non-Brahmin consensus on the basis of caste domination, strategies for the upliftment of individual non-Brahmin castes, and, ultimately, the abolition of caste.
An important question arises early in the book: were Dalits among the non-Brahmin castes that organised such conferences? In one of his first speeches in 1926 at a Nadar conference, Periyar lamented: “What has happened to those communities who do not have either an association or people who work for them? What is the state of the Sakkiliyars, Parayars and Pallars, who have been toilers traditionally and who do not have associations of their own? Though these communities have seen many reforms through the (British) government’s policies over a period, what benefits have they gained?”
Caste and the Crisis of Dignity: Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Speaks at Caste Association Meetings and Caste Abolition Conferences
The book does record Periyar’s speeches at Dalit conferences over the years, some of which, it notes, were organised by Dalit leaders who invited him. While speaking to or of Dalits, Periyar himself saw the difficulties in the strategies he proposed. He encouraged Dalits to identify as non-Brahmins rather than by any other name that would mark them as “the oppressed”, including their individual jati names. Brahminical Hinduism, according to Periyar, was both the reason and the reasoning behind caste exploitation. The aim was to secure the state benefits that other non-Brahmin castes were already working towards. Similarly, he opposed separate facilities such as wells and schools for Dalits, which he believed would make their degradation permanent.
Nevertheless, Periyar conceded the point when a participant at a conference asked whether such separate facilities were better than no access at all. Stating that the position of Dalits had always remained at the bottom despite the contributions made for them, Periyar cited the example of the Thanjavur raja who spent large sums on building schools and choultries for Parayars especially in districts notorious for slave trade where they continued to be enslaved more than any other community.
The collection is rich with Periyar’s reflections on the interests of non-Brahmins, not particularly Dalits alone. In speeches to Dalits, he urged them to give up Hinduism. He spoke of the ills of Gandhian nationalism, which he saw as a project for Rama Rajya, which identified Dalits as Hindus only to protect caste. Against the Congress’ promise of addressing caste issues after Independence, Periyar argued that he and his movement would rather be called “anti-national” than accept their fate under a post-Independence caste-Hindu rule. However, his allegiances shifted over the years. At first, he looked to British government avenues to address caste, such as by instituting reservations. Then he supported the Congress leader K. Kamaraj’s chief ministership in Tamil Nadu, and later the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (or the DMK, the faction that split from Periyar’s own Dravidar Kazhagam) under M. Karunanidhi for its welfare measures.
Periyar believed these efforts served the interests of Dalits. His movement demanded proportional representation from the Simon Commission at a time when nationalist factions had unanimously rejected it. Similarly, he wrote to B.R. Ambedkar, urging him not to give in to Gandhi’s pressures against separate electorates for Dalits under the Poona Pact. He also actively organised temple entry movements even as he asked Dalits to reject Hinduism. He cited the continued violence against Dalits who had converted from Hinduism. Later, arguing against Ambedkar’s adoption of Buddhism, he called upon Dalits to instead reject Hinduism “from within”, since they would invariably be classified as Hindus. And as the book claims, Periyar’s speeches represented his most consistent efforts to raise consciousness against caste oppression.
In his Introduction, Subagunarajan calls this an “aspirational non-Brahmin consciousness”, which, in my reading, constituted efforts that may not have changed Dalits’ immediate material conditions. That Periyar identified both Dalits and Sudras along similar lines of oppression, and thus failed to fully recognise the unique and debilitating oppression faced by Dalits, including at the hands of Sudras, has been suggested by critics of backward caste oppression against Dalits, such as Rupa Viswanath, in the context of Tamil Nadu. The fact of backward class dominance in India in general has been well-established starting from the sociological studies of M.N. Srinivas and by others who have built on such findings. It is, moreover, clear in caste scholarship that the division between Dalits and non-Dalits is more empirically significant than that between Brahmins and non-Brahmins. (Rupa Viswanath and Nathaniel Roberts have written about this, and several anthropological and historical studies focussing on Dalits have suggested this. See, for instance, Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany’s works.)
Other castes have made claims to, and secured, higher caste status at different points in time; Dalits have remained in the lowest rung throughout. The entire caste system, in fact, is built on the collective exploitation of Dalits. Under colonial rule, this exploitation was given religious sanction through alliances between elite Indians and colonial rulers at the same time that Hinduism itself was emerging as an organised public religion.
Subagunarajan seems to falter in not adequately identifying fault lines and engaging with current research on caste, particularly on agrarian and labour relations. He charts much of the history of Periyar’s lifetime without citing sources or reflecting on his own methodology. One wonders if a book that may primarily be for a popular audience can, nevertheless, omit details that are essential for a rigorous engagement with its contents, given the implications of Periyar’s work for his legacy that the collection itself highlights. For example, writing about the East India Company’s land revenue system, Subagunarajan describes both Dalit and Backward Classes as landless labourers who were disenfranchised under the system which transferred occupancy and cultivation rights to landlords. Without a source, it is impossible to understand the basis of his claim, which runs counter to well-established data showing that Dalits have overwhelmingly constituted, and continue to constitute, the landless labour force.
Nevertheless, what the book calls for is an understanding of the context in which Periyar worked and his reflections on his own work. It provides detailed endnotes, and each speech opens with a short note about the organiser of the conference and the political mood that Periyar was responding to. The speeches themselves reveal the political developments he was negotiating. Chiefly, Periyar responded to Gandhi’s and other nationalist leaders’ efforts to maintain a “Hindu” understanding of caste that only reinforced caste oppression. For him, challenging these figures was the unquestionable first step in any strategy towards abolishing caste, and the significant part of his work was in exposing the above link.
Periyar identified labour as fundamental to caste, and the rich as having amassed wealth by forcibly taking over land. He said: “It was fixed thousands of years ago that you should be given food sufficient enough only to keep you alive. It is to prevent you from demanding more that you have been categorised as untouchable castes such as Parayar and Pallar… Sudras and lower castes…. [Upper castes and capitalists] offer you that least morsel of food because of their selfish concern that they would not have anyone to work for them if you die of starvation.”
Periyar’s efforts to bring Sudras and Dalits together faced challenges that self-respect, as a model and a strategy, could not meet on its own. In some of his speeches, he told Dalits that once they acquired self-respect, “a great revolution will take place even without your knowledge.” By contrast, his very rationale behind organising caste conferences and addressing Dalits was that the numerous castes in the country had irreconcilable differences, and that Dalits must work towards their own individual castes’ betterment “until caste, religious and class inequalities [could be] abolished legally”.
Here, I have provided only a glimpse of the urgency and introspection with which Periyar spoke of abolishing caste. In bringing out interesting details about the negotiations he made and the setbacks he faced, the collection raises broader questions for anyone interested in caste to think about: how are the structural and material conditions of Dalits linked to the religiously sanctioned systems that perpetuate caste? And what lessons can Periyar’s work offer to those who wish to build on the self-respect model—or depart from it—to address Dalit material inequality?