CHENNAI: Amid the hundreds of Tamil speaking cadre of the Dravida Kazhagam who were fuming over the court stay order on the thali removal and beef festival on Tuesday, four Telugu speaking men were silently absorbing the melee at Periyar Thidal.
G D Sarayya, a 44-year-old rice cultivator from Karimnagar district of Telangana, was a special invitee at the function on Ambedkar Jayanti. “I was supposed to perform a folk song and deliver a speech,” said the full time anti-superstition social worker/member of Prajana Nastika Samajam (People’s Athiest Society) and who is a regular at Periyar Thidal every year on April 14.
Sarayya can’t speak English or Tamil, so his 19-year-old son J Spartacus, translated. “My mother was a worshipper but a month after getting married to my father she was able to see his point of view and became an atheist. She too doesn’t wear the thali,” he said.
Spartacus claimed that rationalists were divided by language but were united in their point of view as far as beef was concerned.
“We are followers of Periyar and swear by his writings. He has been the biggest inspiration in our lives,” Spartacus said.
With spurts of anti-Telugu protest in Tamil Nadu due to the alleged encounter of 20 Tamil woodcutters in Andhra Pradesh recently, the conversation naturally shifted to that topic.
“We condemn the killings (of woodcutters),” said 37-year-old K V Ramana, who is a native of Kadapa.
“In cases like this, it is the poor and downtrodden who always die,” Ramana said.