Context: The Tamil Nadu government will construct a memorial for social reformer Periyar E.V. Ramasamy at Arookutty in Alappuzha, Kerala. A key figure in the Vaikom Satyagraha, Periyar's memorial site will be the land recently transferred from Kerala to Tamil Nadu without tax.
Information from the news:
- Periyar spent a month in the Arookutty jail, then part of the princely state of Travancore, following his arrest in 1924 while participating in the Vaikom Satyagraha (March 1924-November 1925), a major social reform movement.
- The remnants of the jail still exist on the site where the memorial is proposed.
- The memorial will honour Periyar’s contribution to the Vaikom Satyagraha and the design will incorporate a prison facade.
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy:
- Born in 1879, he worked as a Congress worker till 1925.
- Later, associated himself with Justice Party of Madras.
- During 1920- 1925, being in the Congress Party he stressed that Congress should accept communal representation.
- E.V.R. opposed the Varnashrama policy followed in the V.V.S. Iyer’s Cheranmahadevi/ Seranmadevi Gurugulam/Gurukulam.
- He quarrelled with Gandhi over the question of separate dining for Brahmin and non-Brahmin students at Gurukulam, a Congress-sponsored school owned by nationalist leader V V S Iyer in Cheranmahadevi near Tirunelveli.
- At the request of parents, Iyer had provided separate dining for Brahmin students, which Periyar opposed.
- After failing to bend the Congress to his view, Periyar resigned from the party in 1925.
- Subsequently in 1925, he started the ‘Self-Respect Movement’.
- The aims of the ‘Self -Respect Movement’ were to uplift the Dravidians and to expose the Brahmanical tyranny and deceptive methods by which they controlled all spheres of Hindu life.
- He denounced the caste system, child marriage and enforced widowhood.
- He encouraged inter-caste marriages and himself conducted many marriages without any rituals. Such a marriage was known as ‘Self-Respect Marriage’.
- He attacked the laws of Manu, which he called the basis of the entire Hindu social fabric of caste.
- He founded the Tamil journals ‘Kudiarasu; Puratchi and Viduthalai’ to propagate his ideals.
- He was one of the pioneering voices against Kula Kalvi Thittam introduced by the then Chief Minister C. Rajagopalachari.
- Kula Kalvi Thittam proposed to impose on schoolchildren a method of education, wherein students would learn their family’s profession as part of the school curriculum.
- In 1938 at Tamil Nadu Women’s Conference, appreciating the noble service rendered by E.V.R., he was given the title ‘Periyar’.
- In 1940s, Periyar launched a political party, Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), which espoused an independent Dravida Nadu comprising Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada speakers.
- On 27th June 1970, the UNESCO organisation praised and adorned him with the title ‘Socrates of South Asia’.
Vaikom Satyagraha (1924):
- Vaikom:
- Religious town located inside the Kingdom of Travancore. The town is famous for Vaikom Shiva Temple.
- The temple did not permit lower castes to enter it and even the roads around the Vaikom Shiva temple were closed to the polluting castes.
- The issue of temple entry was first raised by Ezhava leader TK Madhavan in a 1917 editorial in his paper Deshabhimani.
- The protest was initially led by T.K. Madhavan, K.P. Kesava Menon, and George Joseph, among others.
- Till 1917, the Indian National Congress refused to take up social reform, but with the rise of Gandhi and increased activism within lower caste communities and untouchables, social reform soon found itself front and centre of Congress’s and Gandhi’s politics.
- In 1921, T K Madhavan met with Mahatma Gandhi at Tirunelveli to seek his advice and support for launching an agitation.
- Gandhi’s involvement in the struggle proved crucial as it mobilised the educated upper-caste Hindu opinion in favour of temple entry.
- Madhavan joined the Congress and participated in the party’s Kakinada session in 1923, where a resolution was passed for the eradication of untouchability.
- Kerala Congress formed an untouchability eradication council under the leadership of K Kelappan. The council arrived in Vaikom in February 1924 to take out a procession through the prohibited roads.
- March 30, 1924: Two untouchables and an upper caste Nair community person took the road around Vaikom Shiva temple that was closed to ‘polluting castes’.
- Leaders such as C. Rajagopalachari came to Vaikom to offer support and lead the protesters.
- Contribution of Periyar:
- President of the Madras Congress Committee, E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, arrived in Vaikom on April 13, 1924, during the imprisonment of Satyagraha leaders.
- After his release from Arookutty jail in June 1924, Periyar was rearrested in July for his involvement in the struggle.
- He came to be known as Vaikom Veerar (Hero of Vaikom) for his participation in the movement.
- In August, 1924, the Maharaja of Travancore died, following which, the young Maharani Regent, Queen Sethulakshmi Bai, released all prisoners.
- But when a large group of protesters marched to the royal palace in Trivandrum, she refused to allow all castes access to temples.
- In March 1925, Gandhi began his tour of Travancore and was able to iron out a compromise:
- Gandhi organised a peaceful jatha of Hindus from Vaikom to Thiruvananthapuram and back. This jatha helped raise social consciousness against untouchability.
- Three out of the four roads surrounding the temples were opened up for everyone but the fourth, eastern road, was kept reserved for brahmins.
- This was finally implemented in November 1925, when the government completed diversionary roads that could be used by the low castes without polluting the temple.
- In November 1936, almost a decade after the conclusion of the Satyagraha, the historic Temple Entry Proclamation was signed by the Maharaja of Travancore which removed the age-old ban on the entry of marginalised castes into the temples of Travancore.