By Madan Sual Singh
Chennai, Feb 19, 2020: Social Workers’ Association for Staff and Students and Subalterns’ Alliance for Peace (SAP) organized a two-day “National Conference on Peace and Justice: A Subaltern Perspective.
A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy. It can also mean someone who has been marginalized or oppressed. In describing cultural hegemony as popular history, Antonio Francesco Gramsci (an Italian Marxist philosopher and communist politician) coined the term ‘subaltern’ to identify the social groups excluded and displaced from the socio-economic institutions of society in order to deny their political voices.
Many eminent speakers addressed various themes based on peace and justice from the subaltern perspective during the Feb 17 – 18 conference in the Department of Social Work, Loyola College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
The programs were divided into various important topics. There were speakers like Dr. Anand Teltumbde (senior professor, Goa Institute of Management) who highlighted B. R. Ambedkar’s struggle towards annihilation of caste as it is a form of structural violence.
Teltumbde compared Gautama Buddha (a philosopher, mendicant, meditator, and spiritual teacher who lived in ancient India) and Karl Marx (a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary) who aimed at the same goal but differed in their means to achieve them.
Teltumbde also stated that violence kills all possibilities of alternatives. He concluded his talk emphasizing peace is a state of mind and reservation is a great move towards social justice.
The second theme was ‘Contributions of Subaltern Leaders.”
V. Geetha, a writer, highlighted the contribution of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Indian social activist, politician and the ‘Father of the Dravidian Movement’) and C. Iyothee Thass (a prominent Tamil anti-caste activist) towards peace and justice for the subalterns.
Ramasamy and Thass fought for equality and equal treatment of the subaltern in the Brahminical society.
Geetha insisted that patriarchy should be annihilated along with the caste system.
She stated that Periyar propagated Dravida Nadu to oppose Indian Nationalism to remove the caste system by promoting self-respect.
She ended her speech by stating that the annihilation of caste and eradication of patriarchy leads to a better society.
Other speakers included Ms. Thilagavathy, an advocate and social activist, Dr. Ponnuchamy, a labor rights activist and Mrs. Prema Revathi, a Tamil writer. They spoke on the contribution of subaltern leaders towards the upliftment of the subaltern communities.
The third theme was on “Social Identity and Health Equity, on which Dr. Ezhilan Naganathan, physician and social activist, spoke on the point of negligence towards the subaltern communities to access the health facilities.
Gopi Nainar, a Tamil film director, highlighted on mass media and challenges for peace promotion.
He spoke about the ill-effects of media. He reiterated that media are capitalistic, exploitative and oppressive.
He quoted his life incidents where he faced challenges in the mass media.
Nainar expressed saying that until the oppressed get to determine own opinion, no freedom is possible. Social justice cannot be attained when there is a compromise of ideology.
There were also many speakers like Vasanthi Devi, educationalist, Rehman from Madras University, Vanni Arasu, social activist, Father James, Tribal Development Worker, Wayanad, Kavitha Muralitharan, a journalist from Tamil Nadu and Ajay Kuruvilla, social activist.
M. K. Kanimozhi, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Thoothukudi constituency was the chief guest.
The conference was conducted under the leadership of Jesuit Father A. Louis Arockiaraj, Head of the Department of Social Work and Ambrose Christy, convener from SAP.
More than 160 students from Loyola College, 180 students from 15 Social Work institutes outside of Loyola College and 35 members from 17 NGOs took part in the conference.