An appeal for crowd funding

[rangasamy rajaraman]

[15/07, 18:17] Rangasamy Rajaraman: Why Periyar?

The Need

We are living through confusing times in Tamil Nadu - politically and culturally. A generation of the mass that doesn’t understand values of  neither social justice nor equality has unethically gained traction to lead the state. The old can die and make space for the new only when the new is an improvement over the old. Instead, when the new is a much regressed version of the old, all we have to do is to sharpen and refine the perspectives of true social change till it can replace the “regressed new”. 

Like all the global leaders of social movements for social change and progress, Periyar worked hard to emancipate people from the chains of ignorance and discrimination of all sorts in Tamil Nadu. Ironically, “the regressed new” doesn’t even seem to recognise let alone accept its ignorance and the discriminations they face. Hence, the need to publish Periyar again and again as long as his vision of human liberation has been achieved in Tamil Nadu and not just his goals of  political liberation. We have attempted to translate him to English with the direct intention to propagate his ideas and perspectives beyond linguistic and cultural barriers. 

The Effort

Being a time consuming process, spread over many month-long sessions for the past 9 years (2017-2026), the book demanded a serious team effort right from the beginning of the project. A team of translators and editors had worked alongside to bring out the best translated version out of Periyar’s complex texts and language. We have managed to draw out consistency in the literature and improved comprehension wherever required without deviating away from the essence of the text. We have remained honest to the language style of Periyar and tried to reflect it in the translation to the point that, at times, it would feel like reading Periyar written by himself in the English language.

Translating Periyar’s complex texts encouraged us to adopt a unique process of translation. From one sentence being one long paragraph, sentence structure that was elongated with lots of transition words which were often causing confusion and incomprehension, complexities that came with his speeches converted as urgent hand written notes and formed into a proper article later, the speaking-to-common-people language style Periyar adopted in writing his articles, like that each article posed a different challenge of its own. We had to adopt an extensive collaborative process due to these challenges. People who were proficient in both English and Tamil language, people who were good in Tamil but only had a working understanding of English, people who knew English well enough but only had a limited proficiency in Tamil - common factor among all of them was being familiar with Periyar’s thoughts and writings - all of these people had to work together to delineate Periyar’s articles word by word, sentence after sentence, paragraph to paragraph. 

The Inside 

Selection of articles was based on the idea to reflect Periyar across all spheres of his thoughts both political and cultural; the aim was to not limit him to the orthodox false narrative of him being a dry materialist, just as an atheist or as a brahmin-hater. Through the chosen period between 1925 and 1931, we can witness Periyar’s thought evolution in every aspect; from being a believer to becoming a non-believer, from being a Gandhian to becoming an outspoken critic of Gandhi, Periyar would expand and embrace changes generously on his quest to change the regressive nature of the society he lived in. 

About Us 

Vidiyal Pathippagam is one of the prominent publishing houses in Tamil Nadu. Founded by the late Comrade Sivagnanam, who saw publishing as a way of political activism, he made Vidiyal his life project and published books that initiated social dialogue for social change. Over the course of 35 years since its inception, Vidiyal has commissioned very important works that involve translating and introducing global progressive ideas and perspectives in Tamil language. With a niche reading community, Vidiyal has published books across genres including people’s history, philosophy, art, political history, on global and regional social movements of social change, texts of political and cultural imperialism, accounts of the marginalised and subaltern voices, war fiction and non-fiction, economic analyses of capitalist mode of development and accounts of systemic ecological analyses.

The Goal 

This translation of Periyar is a very passionate political project for Vidiyal. We believe in the immediate need to take Periyar to corners where fascism is slowly seeping in. We believe we need his audacity to encounter the death of political institutions in the country due to regressive politics. We need Periyar, his social leadership, to actively build a civil society that’s free of all sorts of discrimination. We need Periyar to help us think critically and scientifically at the time when misinformation has become a weapon of the ruling elite. We need Periyar’s single minded social action to break through the divisive social hallucination that the fascist forces are wielding on the society, especially when it feels like all doors are closing in at the front of democracy and freedom. We need to work towards realising Periyar’s vision of human liberation. We believe this book will serve as a tiny spark in such a political endeavour for social change.

Our Appeal

Despite being a non-profit publishing house, Vidiyal has endured well in financing this project for the past nine years because of our generous contributors. But looking forward to being able to make this book a great success at the national level and to publish it with international standards, we are trying to expand our financial strength. With the help of like-minded people who believe in and work for progressive social change in Tamil Nadu, we will be able to move forward and publish the English book of Periyar without any further delay. We request you to contribute towards the crowd-funding effort for the book and be part of our effort that would take Periyar to an expansive mass of readers and political activists who would celebrate him and work actively to realise true human liberation.

 👆🏻This is regarding English translation of Periyar selected articles by Mr.Mathew Baxter U S native professor.

We need crowd funding

Yahoo Mail: Search, organise, conquer

[R Shanmuga Sundaram]

Please provide the link to the crowd funding site.

Regards/Shan

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[rangasamy rajaraman]

Will do soon

Yahoo Mail: Search, organise, conquer

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