The Dishonesty of Some Tamil Intellectuals

One can write reams about Periyar’s ideas of social justice, but one is less than honest, in fact indecently dishonest, if one doesn’t highlight his brazen, despicable, Nazi racist views when it came to Brahmins. Today Tamil Nadu is the only place in the world where persons who openly spout racist views are entertained by the media.

What is tragic is that when it comes to Brahmins, almost all Tamil intellectuals choose either to keep quiet or to rationalize Periyar’s blatantly Nazi views. I am not talking here about the nut cases. I am talking about normal intellectuals who are otherwise starkly sane, rational, and with a keen sense of justice.

After all, what Periyar preached in Tamil Nadu is simply being extended on a National basis by the Hindutva fanatics. If the Tamil intellectuals do not recognize this, their fulminations against the Hindutva forces will continue to sound hollow. It is the same potato chips. Only the flavour is different.

It is stupid to preen oneself that the entire Tamil Nadu is united against the vandalism of the BJP cadres. The Tamil people, unlike the Tamil intellectuals, have a rough idea of what is fair and what is unfair. The reaction to the vandalism is just an expression of that. It has nothing to do with Periyarist ideology, especially his Nazi, racist ideology.

Recently there is a threat from a base, racist, Nazi, Periyarist fanatic. Such a barely veiled warning to Brahmins of murder and mayhem can be made only in Tamil Nadu. This is a direct legacy of Periyar. Kolathur Mani says that unless H Raja is not controlled Brahmins will not be able to live in peace in Tamil Nadu. I don’t think any of the Periyar supporting intellectuals has come out strongly against such a threat. It is this contemptible dishonesty I am talking about.

The Periyarist Intellectuals try to find an easy escape route by taking a stand that Periyar did not advocate extermination policies. Yes, he just stopped short of that though he kept giving chilling threats to Brahmins.

The reasons why Tamil Brahmins are alive today ( the Periyarists want Tamil Brahmins to be eternally grateful to him for this act of kindness) are due to the following reasons:

1. Periyar himself was not serious about implementing his intermittent threats.

2. The Tamil people knew better. They had no reason to annihilate the Brahmins.

3. Most importantly, power was never with Periyar. When the DMK came to power, Periyar and the DMK were daggers drawn and the DMK came to power with the support of Brahmins.

4. Tamil Nadu has never been a separate nation.

But the fact remains that Periyar’s fulminations against Brahmins (emphatically not Brahminism as the Periyarist liars want us to beleive) is just a milder version of Nazism, pure and simple. Like the Nazis, he too did not believe in democracy. When the Venmani massacres took place he said without mincing words that kings should return in order that people are kept under the heel. It is all very well to say that he wanted all Tamils minus the Brahmins to remain as one. Hitler too wanted all Germans to unite minus the Jews. His annexation of Sudetenland and Austria are cases in point.
We tend to forget that the extermination of Jews on a mass scale was decided only in the Wannsee conference in January 1942, when the Nazi power was at its zenith. For most part of its existence, Nazism too did not openly preach extermination of the Jews.

Periyarist Nazism too does not openly preach annihilation of Brahmins for the present, but there is such a thing as a single spark. If hate keeps the field dry a single spark can start a prairie fire.

There is another sinister similarity. There are a few Tamil Brahmins who keep waving the Periyarist flag, which is perfectly understandable. The Extermination camps too had many Jewish supervisors.