Honouring Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy on His Birthday - The Man Who Asked India to Question

Every generation inherits two things: a world built by those who came before it, and the right to question whether that world deserves to continue unchanged.

Few modern Indian social reformers embodied the second principle as forcefully as Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy, widely known as Periyar.

Born on 17 September 1879 in Erode, in present-day Tamil Nadu, Periyar became one of the most consequential and controversial figures in the history of South Indian social reform. His politics and activism were closely associated with rationalism, the Self-Respect Movement, opposition to caste hierarchy, women’s emancipation, linguistic autonomy and criticism of religious authority.

On his birthday, remembering Periyar should mean more than placing his portrait on a poster.

It should mean remembering the questions he forced society to confront.

What Gives One Human Being Authority Over Another?

Much of Periyar’s intellectual and political life revolved around hierarchy.

Why should someone’s birth determine their social status?

Why should a priest possess authority merely because tradition says so?

Why should women obey men?

Why should some occupations be inherited?

Why should a language be imposed upon people who speak another?

And perhaps most importantly:

Why should tradition be protected from questioning merely because it is old?

These questions placed Periyar in direct conflict with entrenched social and religious institutions.

His answer was not subtle: inherited authority had to justify itself.

The Self-Respect Revolution

In the 1920s, Periyar became the central figure of the Self-Respect Movement.

The name itself contained a political philosophy.

Before asking people to seek approval from society, Periyar wanted them to possess dignity within themselves.

The movement challenged caste distinctions, hereditary privilege, patriarchal customs and religious control over social life. Self-respect marriages became one of its best-known innovations, seeking to allow couples to marry without requiring Brahmin priests or traditional religious ceremonies.

The underlying proposition was radical for its time:

Human dignity does not require religious certification.

A marriage derives its moral significance from the people entering it—not simply from the authority of someone conducting a ritual.

His War Against Caste

Periyar regarded caste not merely as individual prejudice but as a social system reproduced through religion, marriage, occupation, education and inherited status.

His criticism was particularly directed at Brahminical hierarchy and scriptures or traditions that he believed legitimised caste.

His rhetoric could be extremely confrontational, and both his language and some of his broader political positions remain subjects of historical and political disagreement.

But the problem he attacked was concrete.

Millions of Indians lived within a society where birth could determine occupation, marriage possibilities, social interaction and access to institutions.

Periyar demanded that these arrangements be subjected to reason rather than accepted as destiny.

That principle remains larger than any single ideological movement:

No child should inherit inferiority.

Periyar and Women’s Freedom

Some of Periyar’s most striking arguments concerned women.

He challenged compulsory marriage, restrictions on widow remarriage, expectations surrounding female chastity, unequal sexual morality and women’s economic dependence upon men.

He argued that education and economic independence were essential to women’s liberation.

These positions matter because equality cannot exist merely in constitutions or speeches. It must enter the household.

Who controls money?

Who decides whether someone marries?

Who determines whether someone has children?

Who receives an education?

Who performs unpaid labour?

Who is permitted sexual and personal autonomy?

These are questions of power.

Periyar helped force them into public debate.

Language Is Also About Power

Periyar was also an important figure in resistance to compulsory Hindi in the Madras Presidency. In 1937, the provincial government introduced compulsory Hindi instruction in secondary schools; Periyar became a prominent leader of the agitation against the policy. (⁠Learning Corner)

His opposition was not necessarily an argument that people should never learn Hindi.

The deeper issue was imposition.

India’s extraordinary linguistic diversity creates an enduring democratic question: how can a country communicate nationally without converting one community’s language into another community’s obligation?

For Periyar, Tamil possessed its own history and intellectual dignity and did not need permission from another linguistic culture to survive.

The larger principle remains useful:

Learn languages freely. Preserve languages proudly. Impose languages cautiously.

Rationalism Was His Weapon

Periyar did not reserve his criticism for governments.

He questioned gods, scriptures, rituals, mythology, priests and religious institutions.

For admirers, this represented intellectual emancipation from superstition and caste authority. Critics have objected to aspects of his rhetoric, including sweeping or provocative attacks on religious traditions and communities.

Both facts belong in a serious remembrance of him.

Honouring a rationalist by pretending he was incapable of error would contradict rationalism itself.

Periyar does not need to become another sacred personality.

His ideas can be read, challenged, rejected, modified or developed further.

Indeed, perhaps the most Periyar-like response to Periyar is:

Question Periyar too.

Social Justice Requires Material Change

The intellectual tradition influenced by the Dravidian movement did not understand caste equality purely as a matter of changing attitudes. Education, employment and economic mobility were also important because caste historically restricted communities to inherited occupations. Modern education and industrialisation therefore became mechanisms through which those constraints could be weakened. (⁠Learning Corner)

That distinction remains important.

Telling someone that they are equal is insufficient if they cannot enter the school, profession, neighbourhood, institution or economic system available to everybody else.

Dignity requires both recognition and opportunity.

Don’t Replace One Orthodoxy With Another

There is also a danger in every successful reform movement.

The rebel becomes an icon.

The icon becomes untouchable.

The writings become doctrine.

Followers begin defending the person rather than examining the ideas.

Eventually, a movement created to destroy unquestionable authority creates another unquestionable authority of its own.

That would be a strange fate for Periyar.

A better tribute would preserve his permission to dissent.

You should be free to disagree with religion.

You should also be free to practise religion.

You should be free to criticise Periyar.

You should be free to admire him.

You should be free to speak Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, English—or several languages at once.

You should be free to marry across caste or religion, or not marry at all.

You should be able to question your parents, teachers, politicians, priests, corporations, ideologies and social movements.

Freedom becomes meaningful when the individual retains the right to say no.

From Self-Respect to Universal Human Dignity

Periyar emerged from a particular historical struggle in Tamil society.

But the principle of self-respect does not have to remain geographically or politically confined.

A Dalit deserves self-respect.

A Brahmin deserves self-respect.

A woman deserves self-respect.

A man deserves self-respect.

A transgender person deserves self-respect.

A believer deserves self-respect.

An atheist deserves self-respect.

A Tamil deserves self-respect.

So does every other human being.

Equality becomes coherent when nobody must be degraded in order for somebody else to become free.

The Best Birthday Tribute Is a Question

Periyar died in 1973.

The questions did not.

How much inequality should society tolerate because it is traditional?

When does faith become coercion?

When does cultural pride become domination?

Can marriage become genuinely equal?

Can caste survive when people stop organising marriage around it?

Can education teach children how to think rather than what to think?

Can India protect linguistic diversity without turning language into permanent political conflict?

And perhaps the question underlying all the others:

What authority should any institution possess over a human being who does not consent to it?

Those questions are unfinished.

That may be why Periyar still matters.

On 17 September, the most meaningful way to honour Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy is therefore not simply to remember the man.

It is to preserve the intellectual freedom to question the structures around us—including the structures built in his name.

Happy birthday, Periyar.

Not because every conclusion you reached must be accepted.

But because a society capable of questioning itself is stronger than one frightened of questions.

And self-respect begins when a human being discovers that they have the right to ask them.