E. V. Ramasamy Periyar

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s birth anniversary (September 17) as Social Justice Day.

• Periyar is often referred to as an iconoclast because of the rebellious nature of his ideas.
• His thoughts had clarity and honesty which led people practicing different faiths to discuss and debate his ideas on rationality and religion.
• He had vision for eradiating social evils, political reforms, oppressing the minorities, etc. some of his vision has been discussed in this article.
• The World Day of Social Justice is an international day recognizing the need to promote social justice, which includes efforts to tackle issues such as poverty, exclusion, gender inequality, unemployment, human rights, and social protections. It is celebrated on 20th February every year, different from India’s case.

About E V Ramasamy Periyar:

• E V Ramasamy Periyar was born in 1879.He was an Indian social activist and politician.
• In the 1940s, Periyar launched a political party, Dravida Kazhagam (DK), which espoused an independent Dravida Nadu comprising Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada speakers.
• 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.

As a member of Congress Party:

• E.V. Ramasamy joined the Indian National Congress in 1919.He disagreed 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.

Vaikom Satyagraha(1924-1925):

• Vaikom Satyagraha was a satyagraha in Travancore,Kerala against untouchability in Hindu society.
• The Satyagraha was aimed at securing a freedom to all sections of society through the public roads leading to the Sri Mahadeva Temple at Vaikom.
• K. Kelappan played a dominant role in the Vaikom Satyagraha and was also the leader of the Guruvayur Satyagraha in 1932.
• Gandhiji, Chatampi Swamikal and Sree Narayana Guru had also supported the movement.Further, Periyar also came from Tamil Nadu to support the movement.
• The other prominent leaders in the movement include T K Madhavan, Velayudha Menon, K Neelakantan Namboothiri, T R Krishnaswami Iyer and George Joseph
• The movement managed to open the roads around the temple for their use.The temple entry movement gained momentum after this.

Self Respect Movement:

• The Self-Respect Movement was dedicated to the goal of giving non-Brahmins a sense of pride based on their Dravidian past.
• It’s aim was to achieve a society where backward castes have equal human rights and encouraging backward castes to have self-respect in the context of a caste-based society that considered them to be a lower end of the hierarchy.
• It was founded in 1925 by S. Ramanathan who invited Periyar to head the movement in Tamil Nadu.

As a President of Justice Party:

• A political party known as the South Indian Libertarian Federation (commonly referred to as Justice Party) was founded in 1916.
• It was formed to principally oppose the economic and political power of the Brahmin groups.
• The party’s goal was to render social justice to the non-Brahmin groups.Periyar took over the leadership of the party in 1938.

Relevance of Periyar in current times:

• On one level, a few people are benefiting greatly from the rampant rise of acts of violence against minorities. These people have such an external defence mechanism that it becomes easy for them to use incendiary rhetoric and get away with it.
• The discussion that Periyar initiated continues to-date, and is the antithesis to this manner of societal regression.
• Periyar proclaimed that he would always stand with the oppressed in the fight against oppressors and that his enemy was oppression.
• Spaces for debate are shrinking all over the world. Majoritarianism and populism are not enabling sensible conversations in any public sphere.
• At such a time, Periyar stands as a stellar precedent, reminding us of a time when people with opposing ideas were invited to the stage for a debate.