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EVR’s Contempt For Congress, Mahatma Gandhi And Babasaheb Ambedkar

Kaushik Ramasamy

Every year on September 17, the Congress party heaps praises on E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (known as Periyar by his followers) on the occassion of his birth anniversary.

This year too they’ve followed suit exalting him as “one of the strongest proponents against discrimination”.

Earlier, the Congress had glorified him as a ‘beacon of rationalism and self-respect’.

In 2020, Senior Congress leaders like Shashi Tharoor even took a cheap jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi sharing a picture of Naicker that said “Celebrate the beard that stood for social justice”.

Rahul Gandhi himself had venerated the rabid anti-Hindu bigot saying “no amount of hate can ever deface a giant.”

However, the irony is that the Congress, in its attempt to placate the DMK for a few seats, now finds itself adoring the very same man who had called for its annhilation including that of Mahatma Gandhi.

Unlike the Congress party whose leaders are now idolizing the vile iconoclastic demagogue, E.V. Ramasamy was not kind to them.

There has not been a single leader who has criticized Gandhi as rabidly and unjustly as EVR did. He had even called for the ‘annihilation of Gandhi’ and ‘annihilation of Congress’ along with the ‘annihilation of Brahmins’.

EVR in 1927 had said “My friend Rama­nathan and I told the Mahatma (when we met him) that three tasks had to be completed for India attaining ­independence and self-respect. The first would be the destruction of the Congress party, the second the destruction of Hindu religion and the third the destruction of the domination of Brahmins. The third would automatically happen when the first two tasks were completed. Gandhi’s response was not to our satisfaction.”

EVR was someone who opposed the very idea of India and was dead against Mahatma Gandhi. He had called for a Dravidistan along the lines of Pakistan and also tried to collude with Muhammad Ali Jinnah for the same. However, Jinnah saw him as a threat to his own plans and showed EVR the finger.

In 1957, he had called for the burning of pictures of Mahatma Gandhi. He said

We were cheated by Gandhi. Our land (the Tamil land) has been ­enslaved to the Northerners and Brahmins by Gandhi. It is because of Gandhi that people lost all great qualities they had…(and) it is now impossible to live without being ­immoral, dishonest, deceitful and traitorous

This is what he had to say about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. In a speech made in December 1973, he said

These are our five principles—annihilation of God, annihilation of religion, annihilation of Gandhi, annihilation of Congress and annihilation of Brahmins…Before we could annihilate Gandhi, the Brahmins did the task for us”

Though he expressed his condolences when Mahatma Gandhi died, he resorted to calling Gandhi names again.

In a rally held on 4-11-1973, Periyar said

Watch out for the people who are saying ‘Jai congress’&’Jai Gandhi’ they are implicitly accepting they are bastard sons of paarpans (brahmins). They are accepting that they are lowborn.

He had even called for burning Mahatma Gandhi’s photos and razing down of his statues.

EVR’s hatred for the Scheduled Caste community is well known. He had remarked that the prices of cloth had increased because Dalit women started wearing jackets. When 44 Dalit labourers were burnt alive by Zamindars in the horrific Keezhvenmani massacre, EVR refused to condemn the incident and instead justified the crime saying, “Labourers should simply accept the wages offered to them by the land-owners instead of demanding more than what they deserve”. This was because the perpetrator of the crime who had instigated the zamindars to torch the huts was Gopalakrishna Naidu, a person of EVR’s caste.

His hatred for Dalits even spilled onto Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. In 1968 while addressing on the occasion of Pongal, EVR accused Ambedkar of accepting “bribe from Brahmins in the form of reservation for his people (SC)”.

He even spearheaded a movement to burn the Indian Constitution, drafted under the auspices of Dr. Ambedkar. On the Constitution Day of 1957, EVR along with his comrades burnt the Constitution, a document which alleged ‘rationalists’, ‘secularists’ and other self-proclaimed champions of democracy swear by today.

So, whenever the Congress and its leaders venerate this rabid demagogue as a ‘beacon of self-respect’, they’re losing the last ounce of self-respect that remains in them.

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