Question

Estimate Periyar as a feminist.

Answer 1

1. Periyar was critical of patriarchy. He condemned child marriage and the devadasi system (institution of temple girls).
2. Right from 1929, when the Self-Respect Conferences began to voice its concern over the plight of women, Periyar had been emphasizing women’s right to divorce and property.
3. Periyar objected to terms like “giving in marriage”. This, he said treats women as a thing.
4. He wants it substituted by “Valkaithunai” (companion) a word for marriage taken from the Thirukkural. Periyar’s most important work on this subject is why the woman is enslaved?
5. Periyar believed that property rights for women would provide them social status and protection. He welcomed equal rights for males and females in property, guardianship, and adoption.
6. He was a strong champion of birth control and contraception and said that motherhood was a burden to women.
7. In 1989 Government of Tamil Nadu fulfilled the dream of radical reformers by the introduction of the Hindu Succession Tamil Nadu Amendment Act of 1989, which ensured the equal rights to ancestral. property for women in inheritance.