Social Reform
Books that advocate communal distinctions and complexes of superiority and inferiority should be prohibited from being read. If read, they should be confiscated.
Social reform cannot stand apart from politics, nor can politics stand apart from social reform. Politics exists only for human society. Every political active is only for social good. Constitutional law and defense are made only for society and in accordance with social good.
Offering alms and receiving alms. Should be deemed illegal, if human society should prosper without hindrance. Only then will man be able to live in self – respect.
The evils of religion, communalism, tradition and orthodoxy can never be eradicated from our land and society, unless the government creates what may be called a ‘ Department for Defeating Superstitious Belief’s and through it facilitates propaganda against these evils in schools and public places and among students and the people.
The world today has no place for the meek, the poor, the innocent and the honest. Are we to wait for an opportune time to mend this condition?
It is important that communal distinctions, in the name of temple, are eradicated and that all the properties held in the name of temples are utilized for the welfare of the people.
In many matters, without being harmed and demeaned by other s, we have subjected ourselves to a debasement and a lowly condition. Our society will never change. Without our reforming ourselves, without a change of heart among us.
History bears out that the threat of power has never stopped any reform. Social changes will always occur. People also will undergo social change.
Tentative and superficial changes here and there in the name of social reform will not bear fruit. The present social set – up should be destroyed at its very base, and a new social order, free from cast and class be created.
Though we have progressed and changed in the field of politics, we are still backward in the social field. This condition should change.
Ours is an obstinate society. Even after more than three – fourths of the people of the world have progressed, our society is still in a backward and barbaric stage, adamantly following customs of yore, because they have been adopted for a long time by its forebears.
Our society consists of many castes, religions and sects. The human and social distinctions that exist in our country should be put an end to. Without considering that someone else will bring about this change, each one of us should do something for our society.
Whomsoever I love or hate, my principle is the same. That is, the educated the rich and the administrators should not suck the blood of the poor.
Those that pretend to serve the cause of social good for their selfish ends, without caring even a little for our society, are enemies of the Tamils, even if they are themselves Tamils.
In the village where you reside, some fifty people are affected by water – borne and you discover that the well in the village contains the carrier – germs. Pumping out the water completely should clean the well. If the springs in the well are they infected, then they should also be closed and a new well dug. If one insists on drinking the same infected water, then there is no escape for him from that disease. I am engaged in the task of stopping those springs in the well.
The proper task of social reform is to remove poverty from society and to ensure that people do not sell their conscience to make a living.
Reforms should be so brought about as to teach people good conduct, to enlarge knowledge, to cultivate compassion and charity to living beings, and to infuse in them a growing awareness of equality and self – respect.
To discard what is unwanted and to retain what is needed is what reform means.
Those who undertake reform should not be subjected to any control. The real path to reform is to break all the shackles that impede change
Those who are timid and fearful that others would not respect them, they would be ridiculed, that there would be growing opposition to them, and that they would lose the sympathy of the world, can never bring about genuine reforms. No reforms, undertaken by people of these qualities, will ever bear fruit.
The reformer’s real duty is to think of the source of the deterioration and to seek measures to ensure that such deterioration never occur again in the generations to come.
No individual who came forward to achieve social reform on the basis of religion has ever succeeded even to a small extent.
If the education, the rich and the administrators are opposed to the welfare of the toiling people and to their enjoying all the fruits of their labor, then they are only fit to disappear from the face of the earth.
Without an upheaval in our attitude to religion, caste, customs, traditions, orthodoxies, God, and commandments, which are the bases of social tyranny, no political reform will be of any use to the ordinary folk.
Is it necessary that there should be divisions of high (Brahmins) and low (Panchamas) castes in society? If it is said that God is responsible for this, should those of the lowly castes (panchamas and Sudras) worship Him?
-Comrade Periyar – Original source: Dravidarkazhagam. www.periyar.org
