The Banality of Attaching Psychiatric Labels to Historical Persons

     The Banality of Attaching Psychiatric Labels to Historical Persons

It is a well known, though trite, truism that psychiatric diagnoses cannot be made on the basis of symptoms alone. If this is true of living persons, how much more does it obtain in the case of historical persons? All psychiatric symptoms can occur in any “normal”, i.e., non-disordered person, some time or other in their lives. How, then, can a psychiatric diagnosis be made of a historical person who, by default, cannot be examined by a qualified psychiatrist? If such possibilities arise in the minds of some persons, they should clearly and emphatically be stated as very, very tentative and by no means confirmed. Otherwise, such labelling will be illogical or naive at best and nefarious at worst. 

Such labelling, however, has been going on regarding personages such as Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Mahakavi Subramania Bharati and several others. Let us consider the appropriateness of this in the light of a hypothetical analysis of another historical person, viz., E.V. R. or, as he styled himself for many, many years, E.V. Ramasami Naicker.

EVR is hailed by any number of Tamilians as the “Father of the Tamils” and the “Sun of Rationalism”. Tamilians are justly proud of their language and culture. How does EVR fit in here? Tamil is considered by Tamilians as divine and the greatest language on earth, as well their proudest possession. Bharatidasan, called the “Revolutionary Poet”, has proudly proclaimed “Tamil is yclept Ambrosia”. He also exhorted Tamilians not to spare a calumniator of Tamil even if their mother restrained them. EVR is notorious to have described Tamil as a barbarous language, its great epics and ethical works as garbage or worse. He described Tamilians as barbarians and exhorted them to give up Tamil and learn English for their betterment. He even insisted that the Tamils should speak only English in their homes, rejecting Tamil as their mother tongue. He made the preposterous claim that he, a Kannadiga, was leader of the Tamils because there was no Tamilian fit for that post. 

One prominent feature of Antisocial Personality Disorder, “reckless behaviour that endangers the safety of others” would certainly apply to EVR. It is a fact that he instigated his cohorts to physically attack Brahmins and cut off their hair tufts as well their sacred threads, worn next to their bodies. This evil teaching got translated into action many times, instilling terror among Brahmins. 

“Lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another person” is another criteria of this disorder. EVR never showed any remorse for emotionally hurting religious people, and, additionally, Brahmins physically. “If you come across a Brahmin and a snake, spare the serpent and kill the Brahmin!” is a notorious exhortation of his. (He uses the word “hit”, but since it indicates “kill” with regard to the snake, one should assume the same regarding the Brahmin.) 

In addition to the above, EVR has a history of libertinism, including probably group sex, and nudism which would, perhaps, qualify him to be labelled an exhibitionist as well as immoral person. An example of what would be called highly impulsive behaviour was his cutting down of about five hundred coconut palms as a gesture against toddy-tapping, a typical example of setting the house on fire to kill the bedbugs therein.

An additional point to be noted is that, just as Hitler could rouse millions of followers who treated his words as the final truth and were ready to commit any evil if he required it, EVR had, and continues to have, millions of followers who adhere to every word and view of his, including the self-contradictory ones. Even after he declared he wanted no intelligent followers but only fools, they stayed on. 

In fact, EVR blatantly focussed his hostility against Brahmins alone, ostensibly because they upheld religion and the caste system. But he very conveniently maintained a deafening silence regarding the other advanced castes, who followed caste discrimination very staunchly. He also restricted his anti-religious tirades to Hinduism and never had the courage nor intellectual honesty to apply his rules or rationalism to other militant religions like Islam or Christianity. Dalit movements of the present day declare he did nothing to uplift them, rather supporting the other castes who were oppressing them. Some of his infamous statements state that the price of clothing had gone up because dalit women had begun to were blouses and that unemployment was on the rise because dalit men got educated and obtained jobs, thereby depriving other castes of opportunities. 

The ridiculous situation was that an entire party, the Justice Party, was fully tuned to his policies, even though many of them claimed to be staunch Hindus and devotees of Tamil. The irony of Tamil “patriots” hailing an iconoclast of Tamil as the “Father of the Tamil” was openly disregarded by them, purely out of their anti-Brahmin attitude.

The peak of EVR’s infamy was his staunch opposition to India gaining independence. He even begged the British to at least retain the erstwhile Madras Presidency (which contained present-day Tamil Nadu and parts of other states) as their colony!

On a similar note, C.N.Annadurai, an erstwhile chief minister of Tamil Nadu, can be labelled a tobacco addict with suicidal behaviour, since he died of cancer owing to his gross snuff habit. He, too, is hailed as a great leader of the Tamils and a supreme master of the Tamil language, though he wrote scurrilous tomes ascribing obscenity to Kamba Ramayana, the greatest epic in Tamil.

Casting our gaze farther afield, it is well-known that the immaturity of Jawaharlal Nehru in demanding the post of Prime Minister, threatening to quit Congress otherwise, that has let to numerous calamities and enduring pain because of Pakistan and China, including the loss of substantial territories to them and continuing terrorism. His megalomania that he was a leader of international stature blinded him to the threat of Chinese invasion. It has been said his infatuation for Lady Mountbatten, who likely influenced his decisions such that they favoured Britain, flung India down a tortuous path and changed its history for the worse. It has even been claimed that he died of tertiary syphilis.

All this is not to attach any psychiatric label to the above two personalities, but to apply reductio ad absurdum to the practice of making psychiatric diagnoses of historical persons. After all, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.