Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin marveled at the change that had happened at Vaikom in Kerala, where the streets that were barred for lower caste people to walk through a 100 years ago now bustled with humanity with caste discrimination becoming a thing of the past.
In an epistle to his cadre on Friday, Stalin said the memorial constructed for the leader who strove for doing away with the discrimination had received a facelift after it had been refurbished, standing testimony to the seeds sown for today’s Dravidan Model government a century ago.
When he visited the Periyar Memorial in Vaikom, he realized how that seed sown then had bloomed and grown into a fruit bearing tree providing the shade of equality, he said and recalled the event of 1924 that took Periyar from Erode to Vaikom, an unknown place for him and fight for the rights of the people whom he did not know.
Since the roads around the Mahadevan temple in Vaikom that was part of the Travancore princely state were blocked for lower caste people, Periyar, who was then the president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, was invited to spear the agitation demanding the opening of the roads, he said. It was that struggle that turned into the seed for the Self Respect Movement that he would launch later on, he said
It was the Self Respect Movement that became the Dravidar Kazhagam, from which the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was carved out by C N Annadurai, he said.
The State government had spent Rs 8.80 crore for the renovation of the memorial of Periyar, he said acknowledging the support of Kerala Chief Minister Pinayari Vijayan, a leader who believed in social justice, he said.
When he landed in Kochi on December 11, DMK cadre gave him a rousing welcome and when he drove down to the refurbished memorial on December 12 for the opening ceremony again he was received with overwhelming love and affection by the people of Kerala, he said.
Even after a century has passed after Periyar spearheaded the struggle in Vaikom, the need to continue the fight by following the path of Periyar, C N Annadurai and M Karunanidhi persists, Stalin said, referring to the Union Government deciding to bring in the law for ‘one nation, one election’ in Parliament. This was a time to redeem the self-respect of the States, he said.
