Saturday, June 09, 2007

Web propaganda against EV Ramaswami

I think there is a huge propaganda against EV Ramaswami all over the web. His writings/words are being twisted, are quoted out of context and selectively lifted by few Tamil propagandists for their nefarious designs. Consider this article by Cho. S. Ramaswamy. According to him;

He abused Tamil as the language of barbarians


I could not find those exact words used by EV Ramswami but I found his views about Dravidian languages here.
As expected, he was totally ignorant and irrational about Dravidian languages. This is what he says;


Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are of Tamil origin only. The Tamil that is spoken in Malabar is called Malayalam; the Tamil that is spoken in Karnataka becomes Kannada; and the Tamil that is spoken in the regions of Andhra becomes Telugu. All the four speak only Tamil.

Some scholars consider that Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada came from the same tongue that is they are the offspring of the same mother. This is only a deception according to me. There is only one a deception according to me. There is only one Dravidian tongue, and she is Tamil. And we call her four different names. Because she is spoken in four different regions, she has four different names. It is only Tamil that is spoken in these four regions.


If he considered Tamil barbarian then from his writings it is obvious that he considered all Dravidian languages, including his mother-tongue Kannada, are barbarian. Probably, he held Infosys founder Narayana Murthy's view, an enlightened and not a parochial view. But Cho. S. Ramaswamy gives it anti-Tamil tone.

Then Cho. S. Ramaswamy goes on and makes more damaging accusation of belittling Tamils.

and ridiculed the Tamil people by claiming that he, a Kannadiga, could become a leader of the Tamils because there was no Tamilian fit to lead them.


Now, let us see EV Ramaswami's exact words on this.

Some even asked me: 'You are a Kannadiga; how can you be a leader of Tamils?' I countered; ' Dear fellow! No Tamil has qualified himself to lead! This is because one Tamil does by no means tolerate the rise of another Tamil to a position of leadership '.


Well, the tone is very emotional. It only talks about Tamil infighting or jealousy(My high school teacher once told me that his distinguished colleague once told him that jealousy is the national character of Indians; Now I see it's a cliched observation).

EV Ramaswami might have made many mistakes. I do not agree with many of his views that I read on that page. But the kind of accuasations against him over the web are very stark and really damaging. All I wonder if those accusations(generally, people quote him) are really true or just a propaganda like that of Cho. S. Ramaswamy.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I still feel "Cho" is correct. Guess i need to read more about them

Venkat said...

I consider this view as wrong.Cho is not only correct EVR used abusive language against Tamils in all his meetings which i attended in 1950s

Manju Edangam said...

Venkat:
I did not invent EVR's words. I have tried to understand EVR's exact words and their context. I am afraid Cho has failed to do that. You can go to the link and check for yourself.