A man, an ideology: The importance of EV Ramasamy Periyar

The universal condemnation of BJP leader H Raja’s remarks underlines the enduring iconic status of E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadu and beyond. Why is an iconoclast, rationalist social reformer who died 45 years ago still so dear to so many people?

Written by Arun Janardhanan | Updated: March 8, 2018 1:09 am

Periyar is seen as an icon of OBC political assertion. Any attempt to deride him will be seen as an attempt to undermine the gains made by OBCs even beyond Tamil Nadu. (Illustration: Shaym)

To those looking for “Hindu” symbols of religiosity, Tamil Nadu would appear to be deeply religious: people wear vibhuti or kumkum on foreheads, deities and temples are everywhere from street corners to government offices, vehicles are decorated with colourful gods and offerings, even the lives of the minority communities are splattered with the colours of religious ritual. Why is an iconoclast, rationalist social reformer who died 45 years ago so dear to the people of such a state?

E V Ramasamy ‘Periyar’

Born in 1879, Periyar is remembered for the Self Respect Movement to redeem the identity and self-respect of Tamils. He envisaged a Dravida homeland of Dravida Nadu, and launched a political party, Dravidar Kazhagam (DK).

Periyar started his political career as a Congress worker in his hometown Erode. He quarrelled with Gandhi over the question of separate dining for Brahmin and non-Brahmin students at Gurukkulam, a Congress-sponsored school owned by nationalist leader V V S Iyer in Cheranmahadevi near Tirunelveli. At the request of parents, Iyer had provided separate dining for Brahmin students, which Periyar opposed. Gandhi proposed a compromise, arguing that while it may not be a sin for a person not to dine with another, he would rather respect their scruples. After failing to bend the Congress to his view, Periyar resigned from the party in 1925, and associated himself with the Justice Party and the Self Respect Movement, which opposed the dominance of Brahmins in social life, especially the bureaucracy. The Justice Party had a decade earlier advocated reservation for non-Brahmins in the bureaucracy and, after coming to power in the Madras Presidency, issued an order to implement it.

Periyar’s fame spread beyond the Tamil region during the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924, a mass movement to demand that lower caste persons be given the right to use a public path in front of the famous Vaikom temple. Periyar took part in the agitation with his wife, and was arrested twice. He would later be referred to as Vaikom Veerar (Hero of Vaikom).

During the 1920s and 30s, Periyar combined social and political reform, and challenged the conservatism of the Congress and the mainstream national movement in the Tamil region. He reconstructed the Tamil identity as an egalitarian ideal that was originally unpolluted by the caste system, and counterposed it against the Indian identity championed by the Congress. He argued that caste was imported to the Tamil region by Aryan Brahmins, who spoke Sanskrit and came from Northern India. In the 1930s, when the Congress ministry imposed Hindi, he drew a parallel with the Aryanisation process, and claimed it was an attack on Tamil identity and self-respect. Under him, the Dravidian Movement became a struggle against caste and an assertion of Tamil national identity.

In the 1940s, Periyar launched Dravidar Kazhagam, which espoused an independent Dravida Nadu comprising Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada speakers. The Dravidian linguistic family was the foundation on which he based his idea of a Dravida national identity. These ideas had a seminal influence on the shaping of the political identity and culture of the Tamil speaking areas of Madras Presidency, and continue to resonate in present-day Tamil Nadu.

Periyar died in 1973 at the age of 94.

His work and his legacy

For the average Tamil, Periyar today is an ideology. He stands for a politics that foregrounded social equality, self-respect, and linguistic pride. As a social reformer, he focused on social, cultural and gender inequalities, and his reform agenda questioned matters of faith, gender and tradition. He asked people to be rational in their life choices. He argued that women needed to be independent, not mere child-bearers, and insisted that they be allowed a equal share in employment. The Self Respect Movement he led promoted weddings without rituals, and sanctioned property as well as divorce rights for women. He appealed to people to give up the caste suffix in their names, and to not mention caste. He instituted inter-dining with food cooked by Dalits in public conferences in the 1930s.

Over the years, Periyar has transcended the political divide as well as the faultlines of religion and caste, and come to be revered as Thanthai Periyar, the father figure of modern Tamil Nadu.

C N Annadurai, who was Periyar’s dearest pupil at one time, broke with him, split the DK, and formed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in 1949. Anna, a man of the masses, recognised the value of electoral democracy and accepted that Tamil separatism had no future. He used the new medium of cinema to spread the ideals of the Dravidian Movement and established himself as the successor to Periyar. In 1967, the DMK won office in Tamil Nadu. Since then, Tamil Nadu has been ruled by parties who trace their origin to the Dravidian Movement and swear by its ideals. They may have diluted Periyar’s ideals in office, but both the DMK and the AIADMK proudly claim to be inheritors of Periyar’s social and political vision.

If Periyar was an iconoclast, Anna was a moderate reformist. On the pedestal of one of Periyar’s many statues in Tamil Nadu is the inscription: “There is no god, and no god at all. He who created god was a fool, he who propagates god is a scoundrel and he who worships god is a barbarian.” His successors moderated this radicalism — R Kannan recounts in Anna: The Life and Times of C N Annadurai, that Anna, who under the influence of his atheist mentor once broke Ganesha figures, would later say, “I would neither break the Ganesha idol nor the coconut (the offering).”

During the Emergency, a petition against “offensive” inscriptions on the pedestals of Periyar’s statues came before the Madras High Court. The court dismissed the petition, saying Periyar believed in what he said, and there was nothing wrong in having his words as inscriptions on his statues. In a judgment passed in another case on June 2012, retired Madras High Court Justice K Chandru said: “The installation of the Periyar statue in the school premises will not automatically covert the children into an atheist outlook… Ultimately the understanding of the philosophy of such a personality will only help them from having scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform as enshrined under Article 51-A(h) of the Constitution.”

Fallout of the attack on Periyar

The universal condemnation of BJP leader H Raja’s social media remarks — he has since removed the post and apologised — underlines the iconic status Periyar enjoys in Tamil Nadu. DK now has limited political influence in Tamil Nadu, but Periyar has grown beyond the DK and even Tamil Nadu. While caste discrimination continues to be prevalent in the state, every political party pays at least lip service to Periyar’s ideals of social and political justice.

In a way, Raja was right to compare Lenin and Periyar — Periyar is to the Dravidian Movement as Lenin is to Communism. Raja’s rejection of Periyar was construed as a rejection of his ideals. The BJP, which is trying to wear down the image of a Hindi-Hindutva outfit in Tamil Nadu, could find it difficult to live down Raja’s comments.

Periyar is seen as an icon of OBC political assertion. Any attempt to deride him will be seen as an attempt to undermine the gains made by OBCs even beyond Tamil Nadu.

Source: indianexpress

The Importance Of Cheering For Caster Semenya

Lindsay Gibbs

Sports Reporter at ThinkProgress. Contact me: lgibbs@thinkprogress.org.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya reacts after finishing in second place in the women’s 800-meters final at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London. CREDIT: LEE JIN-MAN, AP

You might not know the name Caster Semenya, but it’s likely you’ve heard her story.

When she was only 18 years old, the South African runner won gold at the 2009 world championships in the 800 meters. She went on to win the silver medal at the London Olympics, and is the overwhelming favorite in Rio.

But, unlike her record-setting peers on the track, Semenya isn’t best known for her speed.

Semenya is allegedly intersex. Ever since three hours before her world championship race in 2009 — when news unacceptably leaked that the International Association of Athletics Foundation (IAAF) was going to subject her to a gender test — she has been more famous for her naturally-occurring testosterone levels than her talent.

“God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”

Over the last seven years, the narrative surrounding Semenya has taken on a life of its own. She’s no longer viewed as a human being; she’s merely a concept to debate. While others get fawning Sports Illustrated covers when they dominate their sports, Semenya gets ridiculed and questioned, poked and prodded.

When the controversy over her gender erupted, it took Semenya and those close to her by surprise.
 

According to the Guardian, at the world championships, she “was so overwhelmed by the global controversy that she had to be persuaded to accept her gold medal.”

Still, through it all, Semenya just keeps running, and refuses to apologize for the body she was given.

“God made me the way I am and I accept myself,” she said back in 2009, when intimate details about her body first became a talking point for pundits.

“I can’t stop running because of people,” Semenya said to the BBC last year, as reported by ESPN. “If you have a problem with it, come straight to me and tell me. I cannot stop because people say no she looks like a man this and that. It’s their problem, not mine.”

That attitude in itself is worth celebrating.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya celebrates winning silver in the Women’s 800m final at the 2011 World Athletics Championships in South Korea. CREDIT: LEE JIN-MAN, AP

Now, before we continue, let’s get a few of the facts straight.

The IAAF cleared Semenya to compete in 2010, and the following year, it implemented new regulations for women with hyperandrogenism, or elevated testosterone levels. The purpose of the new rule was to maintain the division between men’s and women’s sports, based on the belief that the primary reason that elite male athletes are better than elite female athletes is testosterone.

If women tested had testosterone levels higher than the new rules permitted, they had to artificially lower them through medication or invasive surgery in order to keep competing against other women.

 

Thus, Semenya’s presence in Rio is completely by the rules. Furthermore, it’s crucial to note that she has never been suspected of doping or cheating in any way; her condition has never been officially confirmed or detailed; and there is no definitive proof that she took anything to lower her testosterone levels between 2011 and 2015 in order to comply with IAAF regulations.

However, from 2010 to 2015, most of Semenya’s times in the 800m were great but not other-worldly, and this year, she is running even faster than she did in 2009. While there are multiple explanations for her career renaissance — she just started to work with a new coach; she is finally healthy after dealing with injuries for a few years; she is taking her fitness and training more seriously than she did earlier in her career— many assume it is because she no longer has to artificially suppress her testosterone levels.

In the past, the IAAF has specifically documented that they single out female athletes who “display masculine traits” for testosterone tests.

So how did we get here, to the place where a quiet 25-year-old from a small village in South Africa is the poster child for gender limits in sport?

Well, back in 2009, IAAF officials said they were forced to gender test Semenya because her time in the 800m dropped seven seconds in less than nine months and they had to make sure she didn’t have an “unfair advantage.” But that was not the sole reason.

“Just look at her,” Russian Mariya Savinova, who finished fifth in the 2009 world championship, told reporters after the race. (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Savinova just happens to be known as “the face of Russia’s doping scandal.”)

Unlike drug tests, gender tests (or testosterone tests, if you will) are not carried out at random. And Semenya happens to be tall, muscular, flat-chested, and black. This is not a coincidence. According to Katrina Karkazis, a senior research scholar at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, in the past, IAAF specifically singled out female athletes who “display masculine traits” for testosterone tests, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has encouraged its national charters to “actively investigate” any “perceived deviation” in gender.

In practice, gender testing is far more about policing women’s bodies than protecting women’s sports.

Dutee Chand CREDIT: RAFIQ MAQBOOL, AP

Testosterone tests tend to target women who don’t fit into the ideal Western standards of what a woman should look like — delicate and overtly feminine, white and lithe. This includes women like Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter who was selected for gender testing after her success at the 2012 under-18 national championships and 2013 Asian Championships.

The tests Chand was forced to undergo — without explanation, mind you — were extremely invasive. As reported by the New York Times, it involved an MRI and a gynecological exam that included “measuring and palpating the clitoris, vagina and labia, as well as evaluating breast size and pubic hair scored on an illustrated five-grade scale.”

She was subsequently banned from competition, and wasn’t given a reason until she found out through the media that she produced more testosterone than most women.

To echo Jessica Luther of Excelle Sports, “ How is this in any way okay? How can we care more about some old racist, transphobic, and sexist imperial idea of ‘woman’ than about the lives of these actual women?”

But instead of undergoing an operation like four elite athletes from “rural or mountainous regions of developing countries” were allegedly forced to undergo before the London games, or taking medication to alter her body’s natural chemistry, Chand decided to fight the ruling.

Thanks to Chand’s legal challenge, the CAS overturned the hypoandrogenism regulations last year. And this year, Chand made it all the way to Rio, with her natural body in tact.

But, significantly, Chand did not win the gold medal in her 100m Olympic race this week. In fact, she didn’t even advance to the semifinals, let alone the final. She finished seventh out of eight in her heat, with a time of 11.68 seconds.

Her naturally elevated testosterone levels did not launch her directly to the top of the podium, or automatically separate her from the rest of the field. Among other athletes on the Olympic stage, she was simply one of the many elites watching the handful of exceptionals breeze past them.

Chand still made the most of her trip to Rio, though, by meeting one of her idols.

This photo is everything. Tears of joy! Dutee and Caster! pic.twitter.com/qPamidKnJa

— Katrina Karkazis (@Karkazis) August 15, 2016

You’d think that Chand’s rather mortal performance would put this argument over elevated T levels into perspective. Of course, it hasn’t.

There is literally a sense of trepidation in the air ahead of Semenya’s 800m final on Saturday. Everyone is already discussing what it will mean if Semenya wins, and, heaven forbid, beats the world record time of 1:53.28. (Which at 33 years old is the longest-standing record in track and field.)

The Associated Press calls Semenya as a “dilemma.” Denise Lewis wrote in wrote in Telegraph Sport that Semenya’s inclusion is “not a healthy situation for the sport.” Tom Fordyce of the BBC wrote if Semenya breaks the world record in Rio, it could spell the end of her career because of the attention it would bring to her condition.

And Paula Radcliffe, a ridiculously dominant marathon runner in her time who currently holds the world record in the sport, says Semenya is an affront to the entire competition.

“When we talk about it in terms of fully expecting no other result than Caster Semenya to win that 800m, then it’s no longer sport,” Radcliffe told the BBC.

Semenya should not be seen as a threat; she should be seen as a treat.

But all of this pearl-clutching and fear-mongering is as absurd as it is demeaning.

After all, sports are supposed to reward freak-of-nature athletes. Looking across the Olympic games, it’s clear that there is no one “right way” to have an Olympic body, especially for women. There are super skinny and flexible synchronized swimmers, short gymnasts, plus-size weight lifters, and abnormally tall basketball players. Every elite athlete has some sort of physical advantage they were born with.

Semenya runs in her 800m preliminary heat in Rio on Wednesday. CREDIT: MARTIN MEISSNER, AP

And the most dominant athletes? They really have the physical gifts. Michael Phelps has feet and hands that are practically fins. Usain Bolt is much taller than most sprinters. Simone Biles is even shorter and more muscular than the majority of the gymnastics field.

These stars have found ways to maximize the gifts they were given and take their sports to the next level. Their dominance isn’t seen as boring; it’s seen as extraordinary. How is what Semenya is doing any different? The concept of a level playing field has always been a myth. From bodies to coaches, economics to nationality, a lot of luck and chance goes into who turns into an Olympic athlete and who doesn’t.

For that reason, Semenya should not be seen as a threat; she should be seen as a treat. After all, a woman running in the body she was born with and setting records is not an affront to the sanctity of sport. It is the entire purpose of sport. We should be marveling at it.

The public flogging Semenya has endured would have broken most people. Her trip to the world championships in Berlin was only her second trip away from home, and it ended with bookmakers offering odds on her gender. Shy and private, she’s tried to stay away from the spotlight that’s followed her over the last decade, but she’s never given up her love for and dedication to her sport.

“Running is what I will always do,” Semenya said.

“Even if, maybe, the authorities could have stopped me from running in 2009, they could not have stopped me in the fields. I would have carried on with my running, it doesn’t matter. When I run I feel free, my mind is free.”

There are two more chances to see Semenya run in Rio: the 800m semifinals on Thursday night and the final on Saturday night. Cherish it, because her races are truly something special — not because of her gender, because of her greatness.

Source: thinkprogress