Periyar Select Speeches and Articles

Summary

Social justice has always remained a preoccupation and concern, and even a passion, in the very mental make-up of the Tamil people. The history of Tamil down the ages shows that the socially oppressed and their rights to religious observances have always been upheld. The Tamils were therefore particularly impressed by the principles of Karl Marx. While upholding economic justice, the Tamils also asserted social justice. The emphasis of social justice shifted from a demand for religious rights to a demand for the right to education and social equality. At the same time the European Rationality also influenced the Tamil stock. So it was like a confluence of new sentiments, ideas, rationality and agnosticism that led to institutionalized ideological movements during the 19th and 20th centuries that characterized the tenor of the Tamil thought stream, politics, religion, social structure, empowerment and a revaluation of the traditional. Such institutionalization was best realized by the Dravidian Movement led by EV Ramasamy Naicker, reverently called Periyar. Periyar lived a long life and through and through he had been vociferous and influential. His writings and speeches run to thousands of pages. A few selected speeches and articles, which however are too little to represent the multifarious issues that Periyar addressed, have been presented in this audio book. The selection eliminates a couple of issues because certain causes that made Periyar address those issues no more exist in the Tamil society of the 20th and 21st centuries. The selected speeches and articles are from his corpus on the following issues.

1.       திராவிடநாடு 2. கலைகள் 3. பொருளாதாரம் 4. சமுதாயம் 5. தத்துவம் 6. கிராம சீர்திருத்தம் 7. கல்வி 8. பகுத்தறிவு 9. தேசியம், இயக்கங்கள்