PM Modi’s ‘Vishwakarma Scheme’ sanctifies birth sanctioned occupations ordained by caste, says Dravidar Kazhagam leader Veeramani

The Vishwakarma Scheme, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech, is a challenge to the annihilation of caste spearheaded by the Dravidian movement and needed to be challenged tooth and nail, contended Dravidar Kazhagam leader K.Veeramani in Krishnagiri on Monday.

 The Vishwakarma Scheme, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech, is a challenge to the annihilation of caste spearheaded by the Dravidian movement and needed to be challenged tooth and nail, contended Dravidar Kazhagam leader K.Veeramani in Krishnagiri on Monday.

The challenge to the Dravidian movement has come through the BJP, which now sanctions caste-based occupations through financial support, Mr.Veeramani said, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Periyar Center in Krishnagiri.

Reading out a report from The Hindu on the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech, Mr. Veeramani slammed “BJP’s Sanathana ideology that inveigled birth ordained caste-based occupations.”

The DK leader said, “The PM’s speech highlights 19 traditional trades including barber, cobbler, washermen, tailors, fishing net weavers, who will be covered under the scheme for financial support to pursue the occupations.”

According to him, the Vishwakarma Scheme was a ruse to keeping castes deemed to be lower in the graded hierarchy from breaking free.

While Dravidian movement helped those, who grazed livestock to become doctors, and engineers, Sanathanam asks you to go back to stitch shoes, cut hair, and keeps you in the vocations ordained by birth and caste, he charged.

“That is the uniqueness of Dravidian land, the land of Periyar and that is why the CM said in Tiruvarur, ‘this is the time of Eklavya and not Dronacharya, and nobody will lose their thumb’” Mr.Veeramani said.