Table Of ContentRevolt - A Radical Weekly in
Colonial Madras
Edited by
V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai
Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam
Revolt - A Radical Weekly in Colonial Madras
All Articles Selected and Edited by V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai
Design: C. Arumugam
Cover: Avinash Veeraraghavan
Production: C. Arumugam and V. Geetha
Printed and bound by Ind-com Press, Chennai, India
Published by: Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, 29, Journalists’ Colony,
Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 600041
Contents
Preface...................................................................................................... 5
Freethought, Atheism and Social Radicalism in Colonial Madras..................7
PART I NATIONALISM AND ANTI-CASTE RADICALISM ......15
1 THE PERILS OF NATIONALISM
1.1 The Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress....................... 19
1.2 Congressmen in Madras .................................................................... 29
1.3 Congress Conservatism...................................................................... 47
1.4 Nationalism: Principles and Practice................................................... 60
1.5 The Political Economy of Khadi....................................................... 67
1.6 Opposing Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya......................................... 80
2 ANTI-CASTE RADICALISM
2.1 Self-respecters and their Movement..................................................101
2.2 Organising for Self-respect...............................................................115
2.3 Self-respect and Socialism.................................................................147
3 POLITICAL NON-BRAHMINISM AND THE JUSTICE PARTY
3.1 The Non-brahmin as Citizen ...........................................................157
3.2 Some Non Brahmin Leaders ............................................................176
3.3 Impasses in Political Non-brahminism: ..............................................181
4 REVOLT AND THE MAKING OF
ANTI-CASTE RADICALISM ........................................................201
PART II OPPOSING VARNADHARMA................................. 219
1 ‘UNTOUCHABLES’ AND CASTE HINDUS......................................222
1.1 The Crime of Untouchability..........................................................222
1.2 The Perils of Reform.......................................................................229
1.3 Castes and Conferences ...................................................................238
2 REPORTING ON ANTI-CASTE RADICALISM IN KERALA,........
MAHARASHTRA AND NORTH INDIA
2.1 The SNDP Yogam and the Self-Respecters.....................................247
2.2 Self-Respect in Maharashtra.............................................................259
2.3 Fighting Caste in North India ..........................................................272
3 AGAINST FAITH AND CASTE .........................................................
3.1 The Idea of Karma..........................................................................281
3.2 Priests and Parasites..........................................................................284
3.3 Questioning Custom and Practice....................................................288
3.4 Hinduism? .......................................................................................292
3.5 The Follies of Faith and Belief.........................................................302
4 BRAHMINISM
4.1 Caste Privilege.................................................................................309
4.2 Brahmana Rule?...............................................................................312
4.3 Fighting Brahminical Privilege..........................................................321
5 TAMIL SAIVISM AND SELF-RESPECT........................................353
6 VARNADHARMA
6.1 Understanding Varna and Caste ........................................................391
6.2 Opposing Varna................................................................................396
PART 3 THE WOMEN’S QUESTION...................................... 406
1 ARGUING FOR EQUALITY........................................................411
2 ON MARRIAGE AND CHILD-BEARING
2.1 The Marriage Question...................................................................422
2.2 Birth-Control...................................................................................459
3 DEBATING RIGHTS: LAW AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION
3.1 The Case for Hindu Law Reform....................................................466
3.2 Debates on the Age of Consent and Child Marriage Restraint Bills..471
3.3 The Devadasi Abolition Bill .............................................................500
4 EDUCATING AND ORGANISING WOMEN.............................504
5 COUNTERING CRITICS.............................................................516
PART 4 SELF-RESPECT AND ATHEISM ............................... 525
1 THE ARGUMENT FOR ATHEISM
1.1 Debating Atheism and Nationalism...................................................527
1.2 Religion and Education...................................................................546
1.3 The Atheistic Writings of S. Guruswami ...........................................553
1.4 Atheist Miscellany............................................................................572
2 RELIGION, POLITICS AND THE STATE
2.1 Amanullah’s Afghanistan...................................................................582
2.2 Modern Turkey................................................................................592
2.3 Soviet Experiments in Atheism.........................................................599
3 RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE: DEBATING EUGENICS.........603
4 FREETHOUGHT FROM ELSEWHERE......................................607
INDEX ............................................................................... 622
Preface
Revolt was the Self-respect Movement’s first English weekly. In 1925
only 7% of the population in Tamil Nadu was literate. Yet, Periyar dared
to start the Tamil weekly Kudi Arasu that year. In 1928, the year that saw
Revolt being published, very few Tamilians knew to read or write
English. It is surely a historical feat that Revolt continued to be published
until 1930. Periyar’s deep and abiding interest and commitment to
destroying caste, women’s rights, his opposition to obscurantist faith
and belief, to Brahmins, and his endorsement of proportional
representation led him to risk such ventures such as these. Outlining
the reasons for starting an English weekly, Periyar noted that he desired
the ideals of the Self-respect movement to be known to people outside
Tamil Nadu; he also wanted an English forum to counter the views
expressed by Brahmins and the politically selfish class against the Self-
respect movement, which found an easy berth in existing English
publications.
During the short period of its existence Revolt responded to national
and international issues and concerns: the religious reforms undertaken
by Amir Amanullah of Afghanistan; the Congress’ problematic stance
on untouchability; that party’s double facedness in its dealings with
the British (invoking in this context, Hegel’s dialectic!); the controversy
created by the publication of Katherine Mayo’s Mother India; the temple
entry struggles organized by the Self-respecters; Dr Muthulakshmi’s
devadasi abolition bill, the Child Marriage Restraint Bill, and especially
the orthodox Hindus’ opposition to both… In each of these instances
Revolt argued its case intelligently sharply, and its editor Kuthoosi
Guruswami’s wit and satire rattled many an orthodox person’s
composure. Guruswami’ critical essays on the Ramayana were in fact
sent to Gandhi and he was forced to distinguish ‘his Rama’ from the
Rama that Guruswami’s essays revealed.
Revolt and its editors were in touch with international rationalist and
atheistic groups and published several essays on science, atheism. and
so on. The weekly carried news of anti-caste groups elsewhere in India
as well.
Revolt holds a veritable mirror to the times, and allows us to see the
Self-respect movement in its context, and appreciate its – and Periyar’s
– perspective on various matters. Yet these views and ideas, especially
Periyar’s principled opinions on a range of subjects are as valid for our
times as they were for his – and so, to make available these ideas to
today’s young people in India and elsewhere, Periyar Dravidar
Kazhagam decided to extract important and seminal articles from Revolt
and publish them in a single volume.
Of the 55 published issues of Revolt, a few were entirely unreadable.
We then requested V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai, whose contribution
to Periyar Studies is well known, to sift through all the readable issues
and make a selection for the proposed volume. They agreed to this,
and have completed this task, for which we are truly grateful to them.
This volume is part of Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam’s larger efforts to
anthologise Periyar’s speeches and writings, as they appear in Kudiarasu
and we are indeed proud to be bringing out this English volume.
In solidarity
Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam
Freethought, Atheism and Social
Radicalism in Colonial Madras
V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai
A secular, freethinkers’ union was active in Madras in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. It affiliated itself with and was perhaps known
to Freethought circles in England. The union called itself ‘the Chennai
Suyaakina Sangam’, calling attention to its will to think through rather
than accept truth as given and handed down. The sangam ran two
journals, Tattuva Vivesini in Tamil and The Thinker in English. We do not
know enough about the circumstances that halted their publication,
but the forthright and freewheeling critique of scripture and priesthood
which Tattuva Vivesini put forth did leave its mark in the Tamil intellectual
world. Some of the Tamil Buddhists who gathered around Pandit
Iyothee Thass and those who were drawn to the rational aspects of
Buddhism such as M. Masilamani and Professor Lakshminarasu in the
early twentieth century knew of the Madras secularists.
This tradition of criticizing religion in public and suggesting a
recognizably atheistic and rationalist world view was returned to history
in the 1920s, with the founding of the Self-Respect movement. Voiced
in public forums, private social gatherings and cultural events, and
consistently argued in various Self-respect magazines and journals,
rationalism and atheism acquired a characteristic resonance, as they
spoke to and addressed the critical claims of their vernacular and
historical contexts. Drawing on the marvelously lucid and satiric writings
of freethinkers in Victorian and Edwardian England and the United
States of America, Tamil atheists and rationalists deployed these learnt
principles to advance a critique of the indecent inequities of caste
society and Brahmins and Brahminism. They called attention, in
particular, to the manner in which religion and politics intertwined
and informed both the politics and practice of Congress nationalists,
in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the country. Self-respecters put forth
a radical critique of Gandhi’s ‘resolution’ of untouchability, which
subjected the Mahatma’s humane piety to pitiless, rational scrutiny.
Such a lens was also taken to the women’s question, and this led to the
making of an extraordinarily rich feminist point of view, which baffles
us even today, by its fearlessness and commitment to equality in both
sexual and social relationships.
8 Revolt – A Radical Weekly in Colonial Madras
Revolt: A Brief Description
Amongst the Self-respect journals which adopted radical rationalism
as their creed, Revolt stands out. For one, it was the first English language
weekly to be published by the movement, and edited by Ramasami
Periyar. Secondly, given its potentially wider readership, it constituted
the Self-respect movement as uniquely internationalist – aligning it,
both discursively and historically, with filial movements in the rest of
India and with rationalists elsewhere in the world.
The weekly was launched at Erode, the birthplace of Periyar
E.V.Ramasami on November 7, 1928, which, in the words of the leader
written for its first anniversary number, was “that memorable day in
the history of the nations, the day of the anniversary of the immortal
Revolution in Russia, the day which is looked upon as the violent
explosion of human liberty, the day which is memorialised by millions
in Russia for the mighty mixing up of monarchs and the masses”. It
was printed and published by Periyar’s wife Nagammal at ‘Unmai
Vilakkam Press’ (Truthseekers Press).
The journal was briefly shifted to Madras and then back to Erode
before it ceased publication in early 1930. In the declaration filed before
the Judicial Magistrate for registering the journal, Nagammal said: “By
the word ‘Revolt’, I mean breaking with restrictions. That is, breaking
against that constraint which goes against nature and reason - whether
in politics, in bureaucracy, capitalism or in gender relations - whichever
constraint that violates human welfare (dharma) and human nature”
(Kudi Arasu, 22.4.1928)
Revolt was thus at once agitational and pedagogic and given to the
making of a transformed and new commonsense. Along with news of
political Non-brahminism and the Self-respect movement, of various
conferences and addresses, it carried articles on contemporary politics,
social reform and ran regular columns on science, religion and atheism.
Revolt’s editors and writers responded with alacrity to the anxieties of
the hour, to pressing political and social events, such as the Simon
boycott (1927) and the release of the Nehru Committee report (1928);
the tabling of the Child Marriage Restraint Act and Devadasi Abolition
Bill (1927-28). These situations were well-utilized by the paper’s
columnists to expound to the non-Tamil world, critical, home-grown
ideas of Self-respect, mutuality, progress and justice. Indignant, wickedly
funny and expounding a philosophy of social compassion and
Freethought, Atheism and Social Radicalism in Colonial Madras 9
comradeship, Revolt provided a much needed antidote to the
sanctimonious tenor of political and social debates in Tamil Nadu.
Unmindful of criticisms voiced from orthodox quarters and the
nationalist press, however vituperative these were, Revolt persisted in
its radicalism.
Revolt was initially edited by Periyar, along with S. Ramanathan, Periyar’s
peer and comrade in the Self-respect movement. Erudite, brilliant and
consistent in his atheism and rationalism, Ramanathan wielded an
elegant, ironic pen. Subsequently S. Guruswami, married to the feminist
and rationalist, Kunjitham, took over as joint editor. Savage in its satiric
intent and mocking in tone, Guruswami’s distinct political humour
and incisive prose created enduring vignettes of social hypocrisy,
orthodoxy and authority. Most other writers who wrote signed articles
in Revolt were associated with the Non-brahmin and Self-respect
movements – K. M. Balasubramaniam, P. Chidambaram Pillay, R.
Viswanathan, to name some of them. Some, including a few Brahmin
contributors, appear curious critics of obscurantism and superstition
and it is not clear what their political affiliations were.
Regular contributors to Revolt included those whom we only know
through their pseudonyms or initials – ‘Kirk’ (which, if read as
comprising Tamil syllables, means ‘madman’),’Fountain Pen’, ‘Ritus’,
‘B.G.’, to name a few. Sometimes we are able to identify the men behind
the initials. ‘P.C.P’, for instance, was P. Chidambaram Pillay; ‘Jeejay’,
was George Joseph, the intrepid nationalist from Kerala, and ‘Esji’, the
inimitable S. Guruswami himself. Typically, editorials and lead articles
carried no bylines. There was at least one consistent woman contributor,
Miss Gnanam, whose witty and sharply edged criticism of religions is
remarkable for its clarity and boldness.
Besides essays and columns by these and other writers, who wrote
using pseudonyms, Revolt reproduced, sometimes translated from the
Tamil, writings and speeches by Non-brahmin and Self-respect leaders,
publicists and intellectuals, including Periyar, R. K. Shanmugam and
A. Ramasami Mudaliar. It also extracted articles from like-minded
journals published elsewhere in the country that featured the views of
the Jat Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore, an anti-caste association, linked to
the Arya Samaj; and which reported on Dr Ambedkar and the incipient
dalit movement in the Bombay Presidency. Revolt followed anti-caste
debates in Kerala, those initiated by Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana
10 Revolt – A Radical Weekly in Colonial Madras
(SNDP) Yogam. The magazine also featured regular news and views
from the global world of rationalism and atheism.
Revolt in Its Time
Revolt was active for over two momentous years: from 1928-1930. The
mid-and late 1920s were marked by workers’ unrest in Bombay and
Calcutta in key industries, the great railway strike and articulated rural
discontent in the Andhra region of the Madras Presidency and the
United Provinces. These years also saw the determined assertion of a
radical anti-untouchability politics in the Bombay province under the
leadership of Dr Ambedkar, which directly challenged the Gandhian
approach to reform, and threatened to steal nationalism’s moral aura
from it. Besides, Congress nationalists had to contend with youthful
militancy in Bengal and Punjab. The Young Bengal group and Bhagat
Singh’s Hindustan Republican Army (HRA) offered political
alternatives that diminished the appeal – at least to the young – of
habitual nationalist rhetoric that now appeared wan and discordant.
In the Tamil country, the years 1928-1929 were crucial for other reasons
as well. The Devadasi abolition debates, occasioned by Dr
Muthulakshmi’s bill that sought to end the practice of dedicating young
girls to temples, got under way in 1928. The Tamil cultural world was
soon beset with a host of questions to do with social and sexual practices
in caste society and the sexual subjugation of women. During the same
period, H. S. Gour and Har Bilas Sarda’s legislative efforts to raise the
age of consent to conjugal as well as extra-marital sexual intercourse
and restrain child marriage respectively incited orthodox opposition
and fury in Madras (such fury was not exhibited in other parts of the
country). In turn, such fury and ire led to the consolidation of radical
opinion on the subject. Tamil radical thought to do with gender
benefited too from nationalist horror over the publication of Katherine
Mayo’s infamous Mother India (the book was published in 1927) and
the subsequent defenses of Hindu culture which followed in the
following years. Self-respecters utilized Mayo’s arguments to put forward
their distinctive critique of caste and of women’s status in Hindu society.
Tamil publicists and ideologues were also involved at this time in intense
debates over the rights of the so-called untouchables to enter temples.
Self-respecters were in the forefront of several temple entry struggles
and active in other causes to do with opposing and castigating
untouchability. They were particularly watchful and critical of moderate
