WHY ANTI-BRAHMINISM? 

marriage”, which eliminates priests. He also established a powerful Press and a publishing house. Periyar will thus go down in the history of India as one of the greatest pillars of anti-Brahminism. Unfortunately, his rationalist crusades got confined to Tamil Nadu as he was not good at English or other languages. What is the inspiration behind anti-Brahminism? Search for equality and human respect. The non-Brahmins might not have secured these to their satisfaction but certainly they have at least succeeded in driving Brahmins out of political power in the whole of the South & Maharashtra where anti-Brahminism has had a tremendous impact. Ambedkar did not reject religion as such. He went over to Buddhism. But Periyar was a militant atheist. To him conversion was no solution. Ambedkar wanted to reform Hinduism but Periyar called for its destruction. Therefore, he is rightly hailed as India’s first and fore- most rationalist who was able to win over people of all castes including Untouchables. However, his followers later started compromising, forced by their greed for political power and thus gradually played into the hands of Brahmins. Periyar had strictly warned that Dravidian movement must be confined to cultural and social issues and should not stray into electoral politics. The followers did not heed this advice and as a result they are today well on their way to lose the battle in their war against Brahminism and hand over TN back to Brahmins. No other ideology has helped the submerged sections of India as much as anti-Brahminism. If the masses in South India are better informed, more progressive & militant than their counterparts in the North, the credit must go to this ideology. It had its impact on all other ideologies including Marxism. India’s topmost Marxist, EMS Namboodiripad, has himself admitted this in an article in the Economic & Political Weekly (Feb. 1979). Unfortunately, anti-Brahminism is losing its teeth in recent times because all those non-Brahmins who climbed up the ladder of life with the help of this ideology deserted, if not betrayed the movement and joined the enemy camp thanks to Sanskritization and Westernization. The upper caste non-Brahmins particularly those belonging to the landed Shudra castes have turned into neo-Brahmins, if not super Brahmins, and thus swelled the rank of Brahminism. Not only these beneficiaries of anti-Brahminism have been indifferent to the plight of the more oppressed group lower below the caste ladder, particularly the Untouchables, but more than that they have turned more aggressive towards them. So much so the Brahmins have started telling the Untouchables that it is not they who are committing atrocities on them but the non-Brahmins. These are the very non-Brahmin oppressors who were once in the forefront of the anti-Brahmin movement to displace the Brahmins from positions of power. Once they occupied it driving out the Brahmins, they started imitating the Brahmins and excelled them in cruelty. This is the inherent weakness of conforming to mere “caste struggle” which makes the winner in the race to swell the ranks of the oppressors. If the army of the oppressed should not suffer defection and desertion and if it has to gain strength day by day, this purest indigenous ideology of anti-Brahminism will have to be suitably amended to combine class-struggle, ” the Marxian concept, “with caste struggle”. A happy welding of Marxism with anti-Brahminism which we had described as “class caste struggle” or “Indian Marxism”, can alone bring us the desired result.