The fact remains that Rajinikanth has riled both Dravidian camps

What made Rajinikanth come out with such stern condemnation of an event that took place nearly 50 years ago will remain a mystery for a while more, at least until he plunges full time into politics sometime this year when the Assembly elections still lie ahead in the summer of 2021. It’s not easy to buy a theory that his naivety in politics sucked him into the narration because he was at the Thuglaq jubilee event.

We would know whether this Pongal offering harking back to half a century ago was a prelude to his political plunge if he does make his foray public with a clear enunciation of the politics he would like to pursue - spiritual, or a pure power-oriented thrust, or one just to bring about the big change in Tamil Nadu. What Rajini’s firm stand on there being no need for an apology does, however, suggest he has made up his mind on where he will be going in his political journey.

The whole episode was in a way surreal. In recalling one perverted event in which zeal for reform and the battle against superstition went too far in denigrating Hindu Gods in the crudest manner imaginable, Rajini had opened up a can of worms. Nearly 50 years down the road, not even the staunchest Periyar follower would like to believe that any re-enactment of the exhibition of iconoclastic atheism would be possible in these more enlightened times.

And in any case faith seems to have far overtaken the doubters leaving space only for conflicting opinions to co-exist without any overt opposition to the majority.

As a nation we have been prone to worshipping thought leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Periyar without ever following their teachings. So anything said of the iconic thinkers will be taken amiss. If Rajini does not wish to apologise he may have been convinced by the Illustrated Weekly of India issue in which all the excesses of Periyar’s followers were made explicit in images seen on the banners held aloft by many in the procession in which vulgarity was more obvious than any nudity. In any case, ‘nirvanam’ in the Indian thought stream, history and culture is not as bad as ‘abasam’.

What we lose sight of in any set of arguments about the 1971 procession is Periyar’s revolutionary thinking was far above what happened on the ground in this awareness really on eradicating superstition. How else do we explain how a man who has been dead now for 37 years be bang in the centre of a political controversy? The fact is he is still considered the father of the Dravidian movement and the parties, even if a major one split from his DK (into which the Justice Party members were subsumed) due to differences over his marriage to a much younger woman and that Dravidian party further split after a bitter fight for leadership. Such is his legacy that it continues to “live” on decades in which so much has changed.

EK Ramaswamy’s Dravidian Self-Respect movement created a template and its progenitor became ‘Thanthai Periyar’, father figure and great man, as opposed to Mahatma Gandhi, the great soul, from whom he distanced himself and quit the Congress in 1925. His fight against the caste system was radical in its time considering how deeply entrenched for centuries the obnoxious system was.

And he was far ahead of his time in speaking up for women in colonial India’s patriarchal society.

It would be a travesty then if Periyar were to be recalled only for his anti-Brahmin stance. His hatred was focused on them because they were thought to be the top of the pyramid for centuries, if not millenniums. It would also be a travesty if the excesses seen in that one day in 1971 were to be held against Periyar forever.

Angry students we may have been on hearing about what happened that day in Salem, but we can see it in a historical light now as something that took place late in Periyar’s life and over which he may have had less control than popularly believed. It is a day of excesses that even his followers must forget.

Now, coming to whether Rajinikanth should apologise for raking up a dark event from history - as facts as established by reports published close to the day bear out, Rajini may have been on doubtful ground only in details about nudity in Rama and Sita effigies. But that is quibbling over technicalities as the fact remains that his account of the day’s event stands up in general terms.

The audio clip of Periyar narrating his side of the ‘anti-superstition’ rally went viral recently in which Periyar, in his account of the incident, admits that he exposed the ‘obscenity of the Gods’.

The fact remains that Rajini has riled both Dravidian camps.

As ideological descendants of Periyar, DMK sees him as a threat while the AIADMK sees him as an unpredictable wild card, much like his fellow star Kamal Haasan who, however, has already stepped into politics and made somewhat of an impression on poll debut. The BJP may be cheering now in having found a Hindu champion, but there are miles to go before the ballot next summer.