Deify
Friday, May 9, 2008 at 11:12PM This is actually a very heartfelt post in the Tamizh blog, but wanted to share this with regular readers in this space as well.
It won't make sense unless we go through some glossary of terms. So ....
Tamizhnadu (Tamilnadu) : The south eastern state in India where the official language is Tamizh (Tamil) .The language is at least 5000 years old!
Kazhagam : Literally means "organization" or "collective" and is a short reference to Dravida Kazhagam (DK) and to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)
Dravidar (not to be confused with the cricket player Rahul Dravid) : The original people whose roots are traced to the local indiginous population that had its origins in present day Sri Lanka and Tamizhnadu - history will tell you that these people spoke Tamizh in a purer form and were dark skinned and eventually mixed with the Northern people (who were not necessarily invaders) but the people who migrated down from the Indus valley. Most of this history was concocted by the British who used the divide and rule policy to separate the North Indians and South Indians so they could rule India. They succeeded in their divisive policy because long after the Brits have left, the Aryan-Dravidian concept is still a sore spot for Indians.
Periyar : The man who is also referred to as "Thandhai" (Father) Periyar or EVR was the brains behind the origins of the DK. The man was a social reformer and tried to knock some sense into the common downtrodden folk in the south to come forward against discrimination by Brahmins. He also became an atheist and todays politics and politicians are all his legacy!
M. Karunanidhi : The present chief minister of Tamizhnadu and the head of the DMK party, who also goes by the name "Kalaignar" (artist), Periyars political grandson (It was Periyar->Annadurai-> Karunanidhi). A fantastic orator, poet, writer and thinker, he used his experience as a story/screenplay/dialogue writer for movies to good use. The man is single handedly responsible for 80% of punch dialogues over a 15 year golden period of Tamizh cinema.
Kalaignar is also a staunch atheist and takes a shot at God, Brahmin bashing at every public speaking opportunity he gets. In his lingo God does not exist. When I was an adolescent, somehow this used to appeal to me. Believe in mankind, not god. Somehow that struck a cord. Service to humans is service to god, god lives in us etc. etc. So the guy striking out against god or striking out god was in my opinion a means to an end.
Later of course when I found that he struck out only against Hindu gods and he did not necessarily go against all the evils in a caste based society and the many other things where he showed that he was just another politician without a consistant standard, the charm was lost on me.
Having gone through all that explaining, here is the funny part. Recently there was a music album release function for the upcoming Tamizh movie "Dasavadharam". On stage was Kalignar. He was introduced as "Tamizh thirai ulagai kaakkum kadavul!" or in other words "the god, the protector of Tamizh cinema!"
That was really ironic.
What happens when an atheist turns into God?
Atheist alone knows!
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