Shri Raghy,
Personally, I believe Sri.Raju. If he says he attended a meeting where certain words were said by the speaker, I see no reason to doubt Sri.Raju's words.
In fact, I read such words from the web about 6 months back. But, I don't find that page anymore. (Sometimes I read news about an incident in the morning; after a couple of hours, I don't see any reference of such information. Either the pages get blocked or gets deleted).
Quite apparently not everything one gets to read from blogs / forums is true. However, each one is free to make claims of veracity as they so wish to.
Ramasamy Naicker's speeches are known for spreading hatred against one community. He did not choose any diplomacy in his language. If anyone chooses similar approach in the use of language in this forum, such person would be thrown out of the forum by the moderators. That is the reality.
Let us not compare language-civility of the secular world (such as this forum) with language used in religious circles. In religion, there is nothing called civility. To understand how bad language in “scriptures” can be, am giving you 2 examples from Buddhist literature. Am giving these non-hindu examples since it is already well known how the shastras pour scorn on the word 'shudra" in hinduism:
1)
Soṇa Sutta (AN. 3. 221-222) where the Buddha describes the five ways in which dogs are better than brahmins.
2) Commentary of Buddhagosha on
Digha Nikaya 3.27 (Ajjanasutta 4) where the mouth of Brahma is compared to something in a derogatory way (please read p.207 of the link).
So, is Buddhism a religion that spreads hatred against one community (brahmins) ? Similarly shouldn’t Smarta-ism (religion of the smartas / smritis) be taken as a religion that spreads hatred against one community (shudras)?
Practically every “religion” on earth (except few like Jainism) indulge in labeling, name-calling, and demeaning other “faiths” in gross-est of terms. The vedic religion must have been the first religion that successfully “demonized” its enemies (demonology / the mind of a demonologist should be interesting indeed).
But characterization happens even today. Till date some sadhu initiates (ex: naga sadhus) are given a danda (stick) to ‘protect’ themselves against 4 enemies (thorns, brahmins, women and dogs). Such ideology is a part of their belief system. Even a white-man, Peter Owen, was given the same advice:
hinduism_extreme_pilgrimage.avi (Please see from 37.45 to 38.15).
Now coming to EVR’s writings. If his words should be rejected for spreading hatred towards Brahmins, then should not the Smrithis also be rejected for spreading hatred towards shudras?
If brahmanical ‘orthodoxy’ had expressed atleast regret over the offending portions of the smrithis in the colonial period, then perhaps EVR writings would have never happened (or atleast they wud not have been sooo bad).
Anyways, what do we see even in the year 2011 AD. Every now and then someone will post on how holy / noble the smrithis are. We are told how noble the chaturvarna system was and how ideal the world was then.
So, Raghy Sir, imo, its not right to isolate only one person (like evr) or one religion (like buddhism) for their writings.
Let the present-day brahmins reject smrithis first. Let brahmins / the orthodoxy declare them invalid under a democracy. Then perhaps in future, once a level playing field has been achieved in all respects, we can expect all government offices to remove the photo of EVR from their walls.
Ramasamy Naicker opposed only Hundu religion in the name of 'rationalism'. He knew he would face unpleasant backlashes had he spoke against Islam or Christianity. Neither Ramasamy Naicker nor the DK party ever had reasonale explanations for this 'selective' rationalism. Nobody could ever convince me defiling a temple and its sorooundings could be counted as 'rationalism'.
I too do not agree with defiling idols.
As former Hindus, the focus of Ambedkar and EVR would have naturally been their own religion. To be more precise the focus of both men was anti-casteism, and it is apparent that Islam / Christianity did not create the caste system. So i do not see why should they have spoken about christianity / islam. It is quite apparent that neither of them had explored the quran / bible. They were bothered only about the state of "caste" in their times.
M.Venkatesan is from Dalit community. He gives compelling evidences to show Ramasamy Naickar was not supportive to Dalit community. It would be hard for anyone to go past those evidences without addressing them.
I was hoping you wud mention Venkatesan. I had mentioned Venkatesan in an earlier post on this thread. But anyways, I request you to put forth points from his writings that supposedly are “evidences” to prove that EVR was not supportive to Dalit community.
Vaikom Dalit temple entry was not Ramasamy Naicker's sole effort; it was well planned and well developed by Sri.Narayana Guru and Kerala Congress before Ramasamy Naicker got involved in that.
Before EVR’s involvement there were systematic struggles by others to enter the Vaikom Shiva temple. At one point, one dalawa (kunchikutti pillai) ordered the massacre of 200 Ezhavas to prevent their entry into the Vaikom temple. Then Narayana Guru himself was prohibited from walking on the roads around the temple. But Narayana Guru was a sadhu and not the sort that cud even dream of a violent temple entry struggle.
But everyone (mainly ezhavas) kept persisting with their objective. This article mentions the collective efforts of everyone, (T.K.Madhavan, Congress party, Ezhavas, etc) in settling the issue:
Vaikom Satyagraha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A breakthrough of sorts was achieved after EVR was asked to join the Vaikom struggle. The namboothiris made an effigy of EVR and did a yagna to kill the enemy (that is, EVR). Instead the Raja of Travancore (the local king) died. Although EVR was released from prison the temple entry was not achieved. And only the compromise to open the streets in the temple area to all castes was achieved. This was achieved by 2 women (T.K.Madhavan’s wife and Nagamma, EVR’s wife).
Though the word was given (to open temple-streets to ‘low-castes’) it was apparent that the ‘savarnas” would not allow it to happen in reality. It took agitations by TK Madhavan and efforts by Gandhiji to get it done. Anyways I feel perhaps opening the streets to all castes finally happened mainly because the Police Commissioner was a British officer.
This Vaikom temple entry is yet another example of how the orthodoxy was at that time.
Regards.
