The narrative is shockingly similar

The Narrative is shockingly similar 

            Recently I attended a seminar on our country's secularism and the main speaker was writer Tamilselvan, one of the important functionaries of Tamilnadu Progressive writers and artists association. The association is a known intellectual and writers wing of the CPM in the state. Writer Tamilselvan is the author of many books and also an important left wing leader. He surprisingly gave his speech with a power point presentation which I think,kind of impeded his flow of speech. He is one of the prolific orators of the party and he is always at his natural best on stage. With a power point at hand, he might have wanted to try something new using modern technology. In my view the use of such a tool for a person like him did not make his speech any better. 

        In about one and half hour of speech he tried to cover everything from evolution of  humans to historiography of races in the Indian sub continent to the present day hindutva politics. His point of discussion of the day was 'who we are' which reminded me of Bhagwan Ramanar's tile of the book "Who am I". He talked about the history of human civilization at length and during the course of his speech he quoted Yuval Noah Harari, author of Homo sapiens which was a surprise since left leaning people normally don't use his name as Yuval did not say anything nice about Communism in his book and yuval also does not give any prominent place for communists in human history in any of his famous books. He also calls Communism a new kind of humanity based religion which no communist worth his salt will accept. 

      Well, what prompted me to write this write up on this seminar is Tamil selvan's passing remarks on India's freedom movement which for a major part led by Gandhi. At one point the author was telling the audience that Gandhi was leading the struggle in his own leisurely pace that he organized only three major struggles, one each for one decade. First in the year 1919 to 1922 , Non cooperation movement, in the thirties Salt Satyagrahaand in the end Quit India movement after world war 2 in 1942. He said that apart from these movements he declared leave for most part of the time.  He also opined that India did not get independence due to any of these struggles organized by Gandhi or INC party. He asked that if India became free because of the heat generated by Quit India struggle how come it took the British five long years after 1942 to grant Indian independence. So, he concluded that British granted independence not due to any struggle or movement by Gandhi but primarily because of the revolts and fissures within the ranks of British Indian Army brought about by the heroic armed struggle by Indian National Army led by Subash Bose. These made the British realize that they could no longer control the army and the people. And they decided to give independence. Okay. This narrative as the primary reason for success of Indian independence has been doing the rounds since long especially after BJP coming to power in 2014. Yes, the BJP has a reason to peddle out this narrative to belittle the role of Indian National congress and Gandhi Nehru duo in the struggle for Independence. This same view was held by some British politicians too. We all know that Winston Churchill was against Indian independence and predicted fragmentation of India within the next twenty five years. Many right wing politicians and if I am not wrong, dravidian movement leaders of the time also echoed the same views. In fact Periyar EVR was one step ahead and wanted the British not to give independence & he pleaded with them to rule at least the southern part of the country from Britain. British did not heed to his advice as he was not as influential. 

       Here, it is not my intention to bring out the positive and negative role of the communist movements during the days of freedom struggle. INC and CPI were competing for space in the indian political landscape and the communists were oppressed more than that of the INC by the British since the communists believed in armed rebellion unlike that of INC which was carrying out struggle through non violent methods. 

 Shockingly similar

   Coming to the present day seminar on secularism, the mocking tone of the leftist speaker on the freedom movement is very surprising to me and his views are shockingly more similar to the right wing propagandists like Sai Deepak and Anand Ranganathan on Youtube channels. In my opinion this ( mocking the freedom movement ) is mainly due to the fact that the present day Tamilnadu CPM leaders are more influenced by the political narratives of Dravidian school more than that of the left.  

Saiva vaishnavite sects came from outside

     During the course of his speech the writer said every religion in this country came from outside not just islam and Christianity.  He said even Shaivite and Vaishnavite sects as it is practiced are not indigenous & they also came from outside. He didn't really elaborate on that point.  But he was telling the audience on Nadukkal  and ancestoral worshipping of pre historic times. And he would have meant that only those kinds of worshipping are local and the other 'proper' religious sects evolved much later with heavy borrowings of  "outside" philosophies. So he says that not just islam every other religion in this country is foreign - including that of Saivism and vaishnavism. Probably he wouldn't dare say the same on Buddhism or Jainism as they were against the Vedas. The same person was telling the audience on migration of four different racial groups into india during pre historic times. And the four groups inter mingled and no one in India today is pure racially as per findings of latest scientific study. This inter mixing of races happened  much before the birth of religions. So all the Indians are from the same ethno racial clans. But later on the same writer goes on to say that the saivite and vaishnavite philosophies originated outside the sub continent. It seems that he contrdicts his own statement. 

      The topic under discussion was secularism and the speaker discussed anything but the historical context of secularism. 

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