E.V.R. Periyar's Rationalist Movement for Dalit Rights • Philosophy Institute

In early 20th-century Tamil Nadu, a merchant’s son from Erode would go on to deliver one of the most radical challenges to the Indian social order ever mounted. Erode Venkata Ramasamy – known as Periyar, meaning “the respected one” or “the elder” in Tamil – became the most uncompromising voice against caste oppression, Brahminical dominance, and the religious structures he believed sustained both. His weapon was not just protest, but philosophy: a rigorous, confrontational rationalism that insisted on reason, dignity, and self-respect as the only true foundations of a just society. Understanding Periyar means understanding why ideas, not just laws, are what ultimately transform a civilization.

Who was E.V.R. Periyar?
Rationalism as a tool of liberation
Atheism as political strategy
The Self-Respect Movement
Challenging the caste system directly
The Vaikom Satyagraha and temple entry
Periyar and the question of women’s liberation
Dravidar Kazhagam and the Dravidian political legacy
Periyar and Ambedkar: parallel struggles
Periyar’s enduring relevance

Who was E.V.R. Periyar?

Erode Venkata Ramasamy was born on 17 September 1879 into a Kannada-speaking Balija merchant family in Erode, then part of the Madras Presidency. His early exposure to temple culture and orthodox Hindu practice did not produce devotion – it produced skepticism. A visit to Varanasi early in his life, where he personally experienced the humiliation of caste-based exclusion at the dining halls of a sacred temple, crystallized his rejection of religious orthodoxy. Periyar joined the Indian National Congress in 1919, believing the nationalist movement might address caste inequality. However, he grew disillusioned with the party’s indifference to the systematic exclusion of non-Brahmins from government positions and educational institutions, and resigned in 1925. From that point forward, his life was devoted entirely to the fight for the oppressed.

Between 1929 and 1932, Periyar toured British Malaya, Europe, and the Soviet Union, experiences that deepened his commitment to atheism, rationalism, and socialist principles. He returned to Tamil Nadu with a sharpened ideological vision: that social liberation required the complete dismantling of religious authority and caste hierarchy, not merely reform from within them.

Rationalism as a tool of liberation

Periyar’s rationalism was not abstract philosophy. It was a direct, practical response to the lived reality of caste oppression. His core belief was that social liberation could not be achieved merely through legal provisions or symbolic reforms – it required a fundamental questioning of societal norms, religious dogmas, and caste-based privileges. He consistently emphasized education, critical thinking, and social dignity as essential tools for empowerment.

Periyar felt that a small number of cunning people created caste distinctions to dominate society, and that the first step toward resistance was developing self-respect and the capacity for rational analysis. According to him, a self-respecting rationalist would immediately recognize that the caste system stifled human dignity and would strive to dismantle it. This is why rationalism, for Periyar, was inseparable from social justice – it was the psychological precondition for liberation.

Atheism as political strategy

Periyar’s atheism went far beyond a personal rejection of god. As scholar Karthick Ram Manoharan argues in his work Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism (Orient BlackSwan, 2022), Periyar’s opposition to religion was not a reductive rejection of the spiritual but was rooted in a broader critique of hierarchical power. Political atheism, as Manoharan frames it, targets the way divine authority is used to justify social domination.

Periyar believed that Hinduism was incapable of self-reform, and that only its removal could eradicate casteism once and for all. He argued that core concepts like karma, dharma, and rebirth were weaponized to make oppression appear natural and inevitable – when a Dalit was told their suffering was the result of past-life sins, religion became the perfect instrument for maintaining the status quo. His famous slogan “No god, no religion, no Gandhi, no Congress, no Brahmins” was a call for complete intellectual and social revolution. He argued that as long as people believed in divine sanction for social hierarchy, they would never effectively challenge oppression.

It is important to note that Periyar said on several occasions that if god or religion could stand by the side of social justice and against oppression, he had no dispute against them. His opposition was not metaphysical but moral: the problem was that religion, as practiced, consistently sided with the oppressor.

The Self-Respect Movement

The Self-Respect Movement is a human rights movement originating in South India aimed at achieving social equality for those oppressed by the caste system. It was founded in 1925, with E.V. Ramasamy invited to head what began as a movement against Brahminism in Tamil Nadu. The movement’s influence spread far beyond Tamil Nadu, reaching Tamil communities in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Singapore.

The term “self-respect” encapsulated the movement’s core ideals: the abolition of distinctions between untouchables and Brahmins, between the rich and the poor, and between men and women. Periyar argued that self-respect had to precede all other values – even political freedom. Political independence that left caste hierarchies intact, he insisted, was not true freedom at all. He declared that the Self-Respect Movement alone was the genuine freedom movement, because political freedom without individual dignity was hollow.

Challenging the caste system directly

The movement took aim at every institution that reproduced caste inequality. Periyar encouraged inter-caste marriages to combat the superstitions of the caste system, arguing that marriage was a contract between two individuals and that caste considerations introduced by parents were entirely irrelevant. Thousands of such inter-caste marriages took place under the movement’s influence, and in 1967, Tamil Nadu passed a law making priest-free marriages legally valid – a direct legislative outcome of Periyar’s activism.

Periyar also led fierce opposition to the Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy) introduced in 1952, which would have required students to learn their fathers’ caste-based vocations after school. He felt this scheme was a calculated device against Dalits and Other Backward Classes, whose first generations were only then accessing formal education. His sustained protests contributed directly to the policy’s eventual withdrawal.

The Vaikom Satyagraha and temple entry

Periyar participated in the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924, a nonviolent movement demanding the right of lower-caste people to use roads leading to a temple in Kerala. He was arrested twice during the agitation and earned the title “Vaikom Veeran” for his courage. The movement led directly to a series of Temple Entry Acts that gave non-Brahmins access to religious spaces previously barred to them – a concrete, policy-level victory for the anti-caste movement.

Periyar and the question of women’s liberation

Periyar’s commitment to women’s rights was not a secondary concern – it was central to his entire philosophy. By combining rationalist critique, anti-caste activism, and advocacy for women’s rights, he laid the foundation for a more egalitarian Tamil society. He recognized that caste and patriarchy were deeply intertwined, each reinforcing the other through religious sanction.

According to scholar S. Anandhi, Periyar saw patriarchy as ubiquitous, pervading not only marriage and family but also language, literature, and gender-based socialization. Periyar campaigned vigorously against child marriage, the dowry system, and the institution of caste-based marriage rituals. He believed that economic independence was the key to women’s liberation, and he actively promoted women’s education and employment. His advocacy for women’s right to property and his support for widow remarriage were considered radical positions for his era.

His ideas influenced concrete reforms in Tamil Nadu including higher female school enrollment, wider acceptance of inter-caste marriage, and broader questioning of dowry and compulsory motherhood. Feminist scholar V. Geetha has argued that the Self-Respect Movement offered women an alternative identity grounded in comradeship and radical subjectivity, rather than in family and community compliance.

Dravidar Kazhagam and the Dravidian political legacy

In 1944, Periyar renamed the Justice Party as Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), an organization that worked for the rights of Adi-Dravida people against both political domination by pro-Hindi nationalists and socio-cultural domination by Brahmins. The DK underwent several splits, and major political parties including the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) owe their origins to the Self-Respect Movement.

Periyar’s insistence on the importance of individual rational dialogue left a lasting mark on Tamil political culture. His major contribution to modern Indian social thought is possibly his emphasis on dialogue – the idea that each individual must think independently, engage in rational discussion, and participate in collective decision-making. He pointed to the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates as an ideal in this regard. Since 2021, Tamil Nadu celebrates Periyar’s birth anniversary on September 17 as “Social Justice Day,” a recognition of how thoroughly his thought has become embedded in the state’s political identity.

Periyar and Ambedkar: parallel struggles

Periyar’s anti-caste philosophy invites comparison with that of B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit jurist and architect of India’s Constitution. The two leaders met in 1944 and were both the most significant leaders of lower-caste movements in India at that time. They shared a fundamental critique of the caste system, though their strategies diverged. Ambedkar ultimately chose Buddhism and institutional politics as his route to Dalit emancipation, while Periyar largely rejected electoral politics in favour of mass social movements, popular atheism, and public protest, believing that the end of caste was best achieved through the destruction of Brahminism itself.

Both thinkers, however, agreed that caste could not be dismantled without addressing its ideological foundations – and both saw religion, in its dominant Brahminical form, as one of those foundations. Their combined legacy continues to shape anti-caste discourse in India.

Periyar’s enduring relevance

Dalits and other marginalized communities continue to face barriers in education, employment, and political representation. In this context, Periyar’s insistence on rationalism, education, and social self-respect provides a framework for understanding and addressing ongoing injustices. Contemporary Tamil social movements – from campaigns for caste equity to gender rights and secular governance – draw directly from his philosophy. The genuine followers of Periyar must also engage seriously with critiques generated by new Dalit intellectuals, who point out that the political parties claiming his legacy have often been absorbed into electoral politics in ways that dilute the radical potential of the original movement.

What makes Periyar philosophically distinctive is the insistence that liberation must begin internally – with the refusal to accept one’s own degradation as natural or divinely ordained. The Self-Respect Movement sought to construct a new, rational society free of caste, religion, and the deities used to justify hierarchy. Nearly a century later, that project remains unfinished – and urgently relevant.

What do you think? If rationalism and self-respect are the foundations Periyar identified for social liberation, what does it mean that caste discrimination persists even in highly educated, urbanized communities today? And can a movement that links atheism so centrally to its social vision find common ground with religious Dalit thinkers who have also fought for dignity and justice?

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Table of Contents

Who was E.V.R. Periyar? 🔗

Rationalism as a tool of liberation 🔗

Atheism as political strategy 🔗

The Self-Respect Movement 🔗

Challenging the caste system directly 🔗

The Vaikom Satyagraha and temple entry 🔗

Periyar and the question of women’s liberation 🔗

Dravidar Kazhagam and the Dravidian political legacy 🔗

Periyar and Ambedkar: parallel struggles 🔗

Periyar’s enduring relevance 🔗