A well crafted fake propaganda that has been manufactured and well circulated by the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) and several politicians from Tamil Nadu, is that E V Ramsamy aka ‘Periyar’ has been conferred with an international recognition from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The fake propaganda states, “In 1970, he was honored by UNESCO with an award, the citation of which said: Periyar, the Prophet of a New Age, Socrates of South Asia, Father of the Social Reform Movement, Arch Enemy of ignorance, superstitions, meaningless customs and base manners.” This award was presented to him by the then Union Education Minister Triguna Sen and former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi in Madras (Chennai).
Several references have been made to this fake propaganda, which apparently has been manufactured by the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) and its members. This has been done in the form of articles in several popular Tamil magazines, citations in several Tamil books, biographies of EV Ramasamy and infact the current General Secretary of the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) has written an entire book on this fake propaganda, titled “Thanthai Periyar from the sight of UNESCO”.
This fake propaganda has also been included in State board school text books, State board school examinations and even in Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) question papers.
If one looks at the award plank that was handed over to E V Ramasamy more closely, the organization that provided such an award was actually called ‘UNESCO MANRAM’, clearly this organization is not UNESCO as claimed by several Dravidian members and fans of E V Ramasamy. The same UNESCO MANRAM had given a similar award to Mylai Ponnuswamy Sivagnanam, popularly known as Ma.Po.Si, in the same year 1970. Unfortunately this was never propagated as UNESCO award unlike the one given to E V Ramasamy.
There are other references to the same UNESCO MANRAM, for providing awards to ‘The King Institute of Preventive Medicine and Research’ and ‘Arulmigu Jambukeswarar Akhilandeswari Temple’ in the same year 1970 for their respective roles in the eradication of Small pox.
Earlier this reference was included in the official English wikipedia page of EV Ramasamy, until a facebook user by the name of Jagannath Srinivasan had pointed it out to Wikipedia and got this incorrect citation removed with the above mentioned proofs.
Unfortunately the same facebook user had pointed out in a recent post that admins of the official Tamil Wikipedia pages are refusing to accept this incorrect citation, in-spite of several remainders. This fake propaganda still exists in the official Tamil Wikipedia page of E V Ramasamy.
While the General Secretary of Dravida Kazhagam, K Veeramani, had gone ahead to call this removal of UNESCO citation to E V Ramasamy as an ‘Evil-Brahminical Conspiracy’headed by the Brahmin community in the viduthalai online article, one fails to understand how undoing a fake propaganda can be called a conspiracy? In this digital age where information can be verified at an instance, it is now an accepted fact that the ‘UNESCO’ never provided such an international recognition to E V Ramasamy, it was probably an act by the Dravidian members to pacify E V Ramasamy during his last few years.
On several occasions, E V Ramasamy had used the the term ‘பார்ப்பன சதி’ (evil-brahminical conspiracy) for abusing the brahmins of Tamil Nadu. Ironically the same term is now being used by K Veeramani for debunking the myth that E V Ramasamy was internationally recognized by the UNESCO. Clearly nothing has changed in the propaganda machinery of Dravidian Kazhagam.
