Yukthivadi (The Rationalist) was the first rationalist/atheist journal published in Malayalam. The contribution made by Yukthivadi to the renaissance of Kerala, India is phenomenal.
Yukthivadi started its publication in August 1929 from Ernakulaam under the editorial board of M. Ramavarma Thampan , C. Krishnan , C.V.Kunhiraman , Sahodaran K. Ayyappan and M.C.Joseph. In a statement published in the first issue of Yukthivadi, Sahodaran K. Ayyappan wrote: Rationalism is not a religion. It is an attitude to accept knowledge based upon reason. Yukthivadi will attempt to generate such an attitude amongst the people. To do this, we will have to criticize irrational faiths and propagate rational knowledge. Since Yukthivadi does not believe in any ultimate knowledge, it will not hesitate to correct itself based upon the latest information and knowledge. Every rationalist is bound to do so. The only one maxim that Yukthivadi accepts as unchangeable is that the knowledge should be based upon reason.
In spite of the fact that all of the editorial board members were well known social activists, the conservative Kerala welcomed its publication with the expected derision. Even such a well known personality as Murkoth Kumaran did not hesitate to pen a poem denigrating the publishers. Not surprisingly, a meeting of a religious sect passed a resolution cursing the publishers of Yukthivadi!
In August 1931 M.C.Joseph became its sole editor-publisher and shifted the publication to Irinjalakkuda . For the next forty five years until June 1974 M.C.Joseph brought out the magazine without any interruption. In July 1974, because of his failing health (he was 87 then), he handed over the magazine to Unni Kakkanad, who published it for yet another decade before it ceased publication.
The vibrant rationalist movement that is seen in Kerala today is undoubtedly the direct consequence of the ideas spread by Yukthivadi for more than half a century.
The contribution of the magazine towards the origin and growth of leftist ideology in Kerala should be self-evident if viewd in the light of what Lenin wrote in Socialism and Religion: Religion is the opium of the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.
Our Party is an association of class-conscious fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to the lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs.
We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat religious fog with purely ideological weapons, by means of our press and of word of mouth.......;And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
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Last updated: 05-18-2005 18:44:52
