Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy, known as Periyar, was born in Erode on 17 September 1879 and died on 24 December 1973. He left school at nine to help in the family business. A pilgrimage to Kasi in 1904 led him to conclude that Hinduism was Brahminical exploitation (ThePrint).

• 1919 to 1925: he joined the Congress under C. Rajagopalachari's influence, became president of its Madras Presidency committee, and led the Vaikom Satyagraha for temple entry in Travancore. He left the party in 1925 after his demand for communal representation was defeated.
• From about 1925: he started the journal Kudi Arasu and the Self-Respect Movement against caste and Brahmin priestly authority. In 1929 he dropped the caste title Naicker from his name (The Federal).
• 1937 to 1938: he led protests against compulsory Hindi in schools (ThePrint).
• 1939 to 1944: he headed the Justice Party and in 1944 renamed it the Dravidar Kazhagam. In 1949 C.N. Annadurai broke away to form the DMK (The Federal; ThePrint).
• 1950: he said the party's final agenda was to destroy all religion (ThePrint).

His link to this record is recent. The Bahujan Dravida Party (BDP), a party mostly of Tamil Sikhs, follows Periyar and Kanshi Ram, according to Onmanorama. Its founders held yatras from Erode, Periyar's birthplace, and from Anandpur Sahib, and left the Bahujan Samaj Party after Mayawati dropped Periyar from its list of great men. Its national president, Jeevan Singh, says the DMK and AIADMK talk about Periyar but do not implement his ideology, and that "Sikhism is needed in Tamil Nadu" for social transformation (The News Mill, March 2026). Those are the party's claims about Periyar and about its rivals.

He is remembered as the founder of the Self-Respect Movement and the Dravidar Kazhagam and the best-known voice against caste hierarchy in Tamil Nadu. ThePrint says his legacy should push every party in the state to be caste-conscious.