E V RAMASAMY ‘PERIYAR’

Dec. 27, 2019

The distasteful tweet — now deleted — on Periyar by the Tamil Nadu BJP on his 46th death anniversary has triggered a firestorm of protests in the state.

About:

  • Born in 1879, E V Ramasamy ‘Periyar’ is remembered for the Self Respect Movement to redeem the identity and self-respect of Tamils.

  • Periyar started his political career as a Congress worker. He quarrelled with Gandhi over the question of separate dining for Brahmin and non-Brahmin students.

  • He resigned from the party in 1925, and associated himself with the Justice Party and the Self Respect Movement, which opposed the dominance of Brahmins in social life, especially the bureaucracy.

  • Periyar’s fame spread beyond the Tamil region during the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924, a mass movement to demand that lower caste persons be given the right to use a public path in front of the famous Vaikom temple. He would later be referred to as Vaikom Veerar (Hero of Vaikom).

  • In the 1940s, Periyar launched a political party, Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), which espoused an independent Dravida Nadu comprising Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada speakers.

  • As a social reformer, he focused on social, cultural and gender inequalities, and his reform agenda questioned matters of faith, gender and tradition.

  • Periyar died in 1973 at the age of 94. Over the years, Periyar is revered as Thanthai Periyar, the father figure of modern Tamil Nadu.