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Periyar was born on 17th September 1879. His parents were deeply religious and they frequently arranged religious discourses to be given at a temple or in other Public places. While all the other members of the family listened to the discourses with great devotion even in his early teens Ramasami displayed a keen rationalistic tendency and ridiculed the pundits who gave the talks, by pointing out the contradictions in their statements and also their incredible exaggerations. Referring to this early experience of his, Periyar wrote later in one of his autobiographical articles: "It gave me extraordinary pleasure to fling at the pundits their own contradictions and Thus perplex Them. I believe that it was this experience which deprived me of faith in castes and communities, in religion, in "puranas", in "sastras" and in god.
The enormous privileges given to Brahmins by the Vedas were sacrosanct only as long as they went unchallenged. The challenge rose in Tamil country like a whirlwind, spearheaded by an iconoclast who questioned the Vedas and the gods as well.
The untouchables were denied education, participation in social and governmental activity, and contact with other castes, except when their services as scavengers, hide-flayers and cattle butchers were required. From questioning, Periyar moved to rebellion from the 1920s onwards. He once attempted to take a number of untouchables to a temple at Vaikom in Kerala, where they were not even allowed to enter the streets near the temple. This agitation was put down with a brutal hand by the Travancore police and Periyar was imprisoned. While in prison, he realised the futility of trying to reform the so called Hindu religion, or any religion for that matter, and decided that atheism, rationalism and free thinking were the only way forward. This meant, quite clearly, that religion would have to be consigned to the dustbin of history and that mankind would have to start afresh in a world where all men were really born equal, and lived in a genuine equality of opportunity. The rest of Periyar's life would be spent campaigning against Hinduism and attempting to reduce the privileges the Brahminical castes had given themselves. With this in mind, he set up the Dravida Kazhagam, the world's largest atheist organisation, as a mass movement to propagate decency, to pioneer legislative changes to benefit all casteless Hindus and to provide decent education to a people who had been denied the very right to study for centuries, so that they could work to achieve all that had been denied to their ancestors. Such a simple act as Periyar's beating of an idol of Ganesha with slippers in the 1940s caused as much controversy as Diderot's call in 8th century France, "Now let us strangle the last king with the intestines of the last priest." The implementation of his ideals soon involved him in politics. Two months after the Indian Constitution took effect on 26 January 1950, the 1947 general order prescribing reservations (affirmative action) in the Madras presidency was challenged by Brahmins and struck down by a full bench of the Madras High Court. Periyar organised a full-scale agitation against this judgment. The state government appealed to the Supreme Court, but the appeal was struck down. Faced with this massive judicial assault on the frail foundations of social justice, Periyar organised a boycott of all Union Ministers. As a result, in 1951 then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Home Minister S. V. Patel, and Law Minister Dr. B. R. Ambedkar brought about the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution to safeguard the rights of discriminated caste Indians, of whom there were millions.
Periyar noticed that the Manusmriti and other Hindu scriptures ranked woman below all castes and even below animals. Her father owned her after birth, her husband after marriage, and her sons after widowhood--if she was not burned alive by then. He advocated the unthinkable: widow remarriage, education for women, even abortion and sterilisation as a means of birth control. So far-reaching were his ideas that he suggested unisex dressing, common names for men and women, enlistment of women in the armed forces, even a dismantling of the institution of marriage, which put considerably more pressure on women than on men. The Dravida Kazhagam has put its considerable weight behind working for women's empowerment. It has, besides the first women's engineering college in the world at Vallam, a polytechnic for women at Thanjavur, a teachers' training college and a college of pharmacy at Tiruchirapalli, and an advanced computer center at Madras, accessed by the education departments of several universities. Also at Madras, but not exclusively for women, is a superb free coaching center for civil service aspirants. Part of the same family of institutions is "POWER", which provides assistance to housewives' industries to supplement their incomes, provides professional counseling to women having difficulties in their family lives, and helps divorced women to become fully self-supporting. Periyar devised a very simple, priestless marriage ceremony called the "self-respect marriage". This involves a simple pledge made by the bride and groom followed by an exchange of garlands before their families. Instead of a vast banquet, the guests raise a collection of money that is given the couple to help them establish themselves in life. Such simple, practical approaches were characteristic of Periyar. His view of rationalism was that it should extend to every facet of life, instead of being a mere tool for academic research. In the 26 years since Periyar passed away in 1973, the foundations he laid have become immensely strong, and the Dravida Kazhagam continues to grow. Periyar spent a life half anguished over the rituals that have come to occupy the bulk of our lives to the detriment of working for any advancement." A few thoughts from his writings: "He who believes in god is a fool, he who worships god is a barbarian, he who propagates god is a scoundrel”
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