He contends that because the resources necessary for the development of knowledge were denied to the depressed groups, they indeed have become dull of mind, but the same is not applicable to women. Such a statement however, does not appear to be based on any serious reflection. Because, at precisely the same period of time, when a mass of people called depressed emerged because of denial of access to resources for development of their knowledge by a particular group, by the self-same group, women also have been denied access to resources from development of their (women’s) knowledge, controlled and kept suppressed. It is not possible to understand why our comrade does not realise this. Besides he highlights one single poetess Avvai as an example of mental development among women. Had he, in the same breath also pointed out to a single Tiruvalluvar, he would have realised that among the depressed group also there have been one or two people with great mental development. I beg to remind him that we are not here discussing about the rare phenomenon of feminist ideals but about the 99.9% of contemporary women. If, according to our comrade, saying this is contemptuous of all mothers, isn’t it, we demand to know by the same token, that his observation is contemptuous also of the so-called depressed castes?
In order to demonstrate that Avvai also supports the position of Tiruvaluvar, he quotes her ancient saying, “Listen not to women” and connects it to the ideas of Valluvar in his chapter on Joining Woman. He also adduces another ancient saying of Avvai, “Ignorance is an ornament on women”. We need to infer here that our comrade has raised his last weapon. It is our considered conclusion that any one who accepts that the woman is also a rational human being with capacity to think, will never agree to the above statements as coming from a fair- minded person or one who has honestly searched after truth. Otherwise, at least it needs to be said that such positions could have been suitable to those times. We know, at this our readers may encounter some difficulties, however, it does not matter. First of all, there is a story that Avvai and Valluvar were siblings; the same story says that among the seven children born of Adi, a Pulaya lady and Bhagavan, a Brahmin gentleman these were but two; there is another twist to the story, which says that the above- mentioned two had intercourse and as soon as the children were born the parents went way abandoning them. There are also several other developments to the story; it is also said there were not one but many individuals with the name of Avvai. However, if we put aside popular-mythical stories and religious superstitions and also not considering the question of who actually uttered those moral sayings (attributed to Avvai) as well as the Kural poems, whoever that might be, but taking them as they are and investigating their meaning, just as we do any other writings using our reason, we would only arrive at their plain meanings: one ought not to listen to women, ignorance suits them well and that women are not to be left to their own devices.
Now, there would be a host of learned men competing among themselves to offer different commentaries and philosophical interpretations to these sayings. But then, as it is well know, there is no saying in the world which cannot be construed to yield many and differential philosophical interpretations. Therefore, the need to find philosophical and differential meanings for these sayings alone is unacceptable to ratioanlists. What one need not pay attention to here is the answer to the question as to who exactly said these ancient sayings of Avvai or the Kural of Valluvar. These two however, are considered among the best of our moral literature and that is why we are discussing them. The stumbling block in our understanding however is, would persons of such high moral realization really have committed these grave mistakes? But because we are accustomed to deploy the same weapon for all occasions, the weapon may at times turn against the very users and damage them.
