A petition has been filed in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court to remove the portion in Tamil Nadu school textbooks which had mentioned that E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (known as ‘Periyar’ by his followers) had got a title from UNESCO as ‘Socrates of Southeast Asia’, something that never happened.
The Court has now ordered directed the committees in charge of preparing textbooks for schools and colleges to review and take action within 12 weeks.
The petition filed by an advocate Muhammad Razvi, stated that in the Class 9 textbooks published by Tamil Nadu government and a few college textbooks, it is mentioned that Periyar was awarded the title of Socrates of Southeast Asia by UNESCO which is completely false, adding that everyone knows that India does not come in the list of Southeast Asian countries.
It stated that this award was given to Periyar by former Chief Minister Karunanidhi in 1970 and went on to state that misinformation was deliberately spread among school and college students for political gain in the name of history during the DMK regime under Karunanidhi.
“The Government of Tamil Nadu should intervene and remove the historical error in the textbook to ensure that students are not misled. Therefore, it should be ordered to remove the misinformation about Periyar in the ninth standard textbook and the higher education textbook.”, the petition stated.
The petition also added that in Tamil Nadu, the Dravidar Kazhagam and its affiliates in continue to spread anti-Hindu sentiments and speak indecently of Hindu deities.
“They are working to create separatism, caste and religious conflicts in the country and to harm the national interest. Failure to take action against them will have a major impact on the country and the unity that exists in the country.”, the petition said.
The petition came up for hearing before the bench of Justices MM Sundaresh and S Anandi. Advocate K. Neelamekam argued on behalf of the petitioner. The judges then considered the petitioner’s petition and directed the committees in-charge of preparing the textbooks to take appropriate action within 12 weeks.
The controversy
The issue was first brought to light by a person named Jagannath Srinivasan who back in May 2019 wrote in his Facebook post that ‘Periyar’ being awarded the title of ‘Socrates of Southeast Asia’ by the UNESCO was a sham. He had reported the false information mentioned in E.V. Ramasamy Naicker’s Wikipedia page following which the information was removed from the free online encyclopedia. This had irked the Dravida Kazhagam and its president K. Veeramani who in an issue of Viduthalai spewed venom against Jagannath Srinivasan by making casteist and bigoted remarks.
Later, Mr. Prabhakaran, the son of Dalit activist and BJP leader TADA Periyasami filed an RTI with the Tamil Nadu Information Commission asking if the fact about ‘Periyar’ getting the title from ‘UNESCO’ mentioned in the Tamil Nadu textbook was true. The Commission had replied that a private organization with a similar name had given the title. The fact is that the award was sponsored by Tamil Nadu UNESCO Mandram (no way related to the United Nations), and awarded by late former DMK leader M. Karunanidhi in the presence of Dravida Kazhagam President K. Veeramani.
The issue gained the deserved traction after Maridhas, an independent YouTuber exposed in a video about the sham. He had stated that he received an email from the UNESCO office in Delhi that confirmed that no such award/title was given to E.V. Ramasamy Naicker.
For more than 40 years, this lie has been peddled with several articles and research papers on EVR written based on this lie. None in the media or those belonging to the ‘intellectual’ circle who speak of facts has ever opened their mouths about this blatant lie peddled.
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