Tamil Nadu is the graveyard of national political parties. It buried the Congress at its peak then in 1967. The BJP, also at its peak now, has been pregnant with possibilities but has failed to deliver. Never a serious player in the state before the dawn of the Modi-era, the BJP has been humbled in every election since his arrival in 2014 (2019, 2021 and 2024).
Pundits and laypersons, Tamil Nadu confounds everybody alike. What makes it the strongest citadel of regionalism in contemporary politics that is now soaked in nationalism? Why is it a unique entity even among its culturally similar southern states? All these states are also fiercely proud of their cultural moorings, but none practices antagonism to national parties as a principle of state policy, so to say. What makes it stand out and stand apart? Is it true that a monolithic national narrative suppresses or seeks to suppress the state's distinct Tamilakam (Tamil Nadu of yore) identity and ancient glory? Or, do the state's Dravidian parties deliberately stoke the sense of cultivated alienation and grievance to perpetuate their careers? What has Dravidian politics delivered that the state does not want a taste of any other model? What is the collective angst of the Tamils? Is it justified? Why can't the rest of India fathom it? As another grand electoral spectacle looms in 2026, these are some of the myriad questions that need to be addressed. Not to predict winners and losers, but just to understand why Tamil Nadu is the way it is.
In this new series, that is what Chennai-based senior journalist, TR Jawahar, will attempt to do. He will dig deep into history and heritage, arts and archaeology, language and literature, cinema and culture, kingdoms and conquests, castes and communities, religion and race and, of course, politics and pelf, to paint a picture of the state that might help you understand whatever happens when it happens.
I have not just been reading, researching, writing and speaking on Periyar from my early years, but in the process internalised and imbibed him impulsively, instinctively and now I fear, irrevocably. He has got under my skin and settled in my system so pervasively I almost feel I am growing a beard.
Indeed, he may be many things to many people, but for a
political student and journalist like me he is a delicious, sometimes
delirious, delight. And since the man is the message in Tamil Nadu's political theatre,
we will get to discuss Dravidian politics with him as the prime pivot – his
life a lens to view the movement's twists, triumphs and tangles.
Born Erode Venkata Ramasamy Naicker on September 17, 1879,
EVR entered a world where caste lines were as rigid as the iron in his father's
merchant business. His father, Venkatappa Naicker, was no mere shopkeeper; he
was a wealthy, influential trader in Erode whose warehouses dealt in everything
from groceries to gold.
A devout Vaishnava, Venkatappa’s life revolved around the
rhythmic chants of the temples he funded and the grand feasts he hosted for the
orthodox elite. To the outside world, the Naicker household was a bastion of
piety; to young EVR, it was a suffocating cocoon of orthodoxy.
His mother, Chinnathyee Muthammal, was the silent pillar of
this traditional edifice. EVR was the middle child in an environment that
breeds either a saint or a saboteur. He chose the latter early. Even as a
child, he developed the precision of a demolition expert, questioning why
certain guests were fed in the backyard while others sat in the inner sanctum.
The seeds of suspicion were planted not by radical
pamphlets, but by the very feasts his father funded, where he first noticed
that piety often wore the mask of privilege. He was the classic misfit in a
merchant's robe, more interested in the logic of the street than the lore of
the scriptures.
Formal schooling was a brief, failed experiment. EVR dropped
out after a mere five years, finding the rote learning of the classroom far
less engaging than the raw energy of the Erode marketplace. By his teens, he
was a natural-born haggler, diving into the family trade and mastering the
psychology of the common man. He realized that a well-placed word in the bazaar
carried more weight than a thousand mantras in the temple. He wasn't just
selling lentils; he was studying the anatomy of social interaction.
Curiously, while the world would later know him as the
"Dravidian" icon, EVR’s household roots were Kannada. In a
Tamil-centric theatre, this was a potential liability. However, he turned it
into a masterstroke of political branding. He adopted the "Dravida"
tag as an inclusive lifeboat, allowing him to float his non-Tamil origins in
Tamil waters without sinking. He didn't just speak Tamil; he weaponised it,
making it the verbal vessel for his turbulent career.
No other southern state clung to "Dravida" like he
did; it was his personal bridge to belonging, a clever cover that allowed him
to champion regional causes without the baggage of his ethnic roots. He
understood that to lead the South, one had to speak to the heart of the Tamil
with the fervour of a native, regardless of the language spoken behind his own
closed doors. Today’s Tamil nationalists see it as devious double-tongue; EVR
deemed it a definition.
At 19, EVR was tethered to Nagammai, or 'vice' - versa, in a
classic arranged union. But even then, his erratic edges were sharp enough to
draw blood from social norms. He was a man of radical honesty, admitting to
youthful excesses that would send his present patrons and his political progeny
into permanent hiding. He spoke openly of frequenting brothels—a lifestyle he
seemingly didn't hide from his wife or the world.
In his own memoirs, he didn't mince words about his
nocturnal wanderings, presenting himself as a man who had seen the
"unvarnished truth" of the streets. It was an anti-hypocrisy stance
that made him bulletproof; you couldn't blackmail a man who had already
confessed to the choir and cloistered clergy.
Tales of his riverside raves are local legend. He would host drinking parties for his friends and, with a dash of patriarchal audacity, ask Nagammai to serve food and drinks to the revellers. (Some biographers claim that he made that ‘God-forsaken’ lady come to the pleasure houses too with dinner or whatever). These weren't just parties; they were mini-rebellions against merchant-class Puritanism.
EVR’s brutal transparency suggested a mind that had already
rejected the "hypocrisy of the holy." He was a sinner by his own
admission, making him more dangerous to the "saints" he would later
confront. He eventually became a town councillor and temple committee head, but
exposure to caste discrimination in those very temples lit the final fuse.
He saw that the deities were guarded by a clerical machinery
that excluded the very people who built the shrines. 'We build the temples, but
we are not allowed inside': ‘‘Aalayam seivom, adhil anumadhi illai’, Poet
Kannadasan would write in a later Leftist movie. An early EVR-ism amplified on
tinsel.
The definitive pivot—the Kashi Click—came in the early
1900s. Seeking a break from family friction, EVR travelled to Varanasi (Kashi),
the spiritual heart of the subcontinental "system." What he found was
not enlightenment, but an epiphany of exclusion. To secure food in a
Brahmin-managed choultry (rest house), EVR was forced to pose as a Brahmin,
donning the sacred thread and religious markings.
The false pilgrim witnessed the farce from the inside. While
he sat among the "twice born," fed sumptuously, he saw the reality of
the streets: non-Brahmins were shunned or served scraps. Legend has it he was
eventually discovered and literally kicked out, left to scavenge for leftovers
in the gutters. "I saw the farce of faith," he would later recount,
his voice dripping with deep disdain.
It wasn't just a religious rejection; it was a realization
that the gatekeepers of the rigged game were the ones holding the ladles. The
Kashi kitchen was the birthplace of EVR’s rationalist roar. He returned to
Erode realizing the gods in the temples were merely tools to keep the low, low.
This experience turned a curious trader into a crusading trailblazer, deciding
his lifelong war on superstition and the Brahminical monopoly on access to the
divine, which in any case he rejected.
By the late 1910s, EVR was a civic titan. He held no fewer
than 29 public positions simultaneously, including Chairman of the Erode
Municipality. He was a man of action who believed that social reform required
institutional muscle. He modernized water supplies, implemented aggressive
sanitation drives, and managed temple committees with an administrative rigour
that left his peers breathless. He was the "Efficiency Expert of Erode,"
out to prove that a non-Brahmin could manage the machinery of the state better
than any hereditary ‘clerk’.
Inspired by the freedom struggle, EVR joined the Indian
National Congress. Despite his riverside past, he became a fierce advocate for
teetotalism, organizing pickets against liquor shops with such vigour that he even cut down 500 coconut trees in
his own grove to stop toddy production. This was a less known bright side of
the maverick: a man who could apply a social scalpel to his own profits for a
cause.
His friend Rajaji brought him into the fold, beginning a
lifelong "frenemy" relationship. EVR saw the Congress as a potential
vehicle for caste reform, a hope that would soon be tested in the fires of
regional protest. He was the "Chairman of Change" who expected the
national movement to match his local pace.
The real awakening hit in 1924 with the Vaikom Satyagraha in
Kerala. Dalits were prohibited from even walking on the roads surrounding the
Vaikom temple. When the local leaders were arrested, they sent for the
firebrand from Erode. EVR arrived and transformed a local skirmish into a
continental cause. He led protests, defied bans, and was jailed twice, famously
refusing to buckle even when the British and the orthodox local kings tried to
silence him.
He didn't just demand temple entry; he demanded "humanity
entry." He emerged as the "Vaikom Veerar" (Hero of Vaikom),
proving his words could uplift the oppressed while destroying dogmas. "Why
should a man be untouchable because of birth?" he thundered.
This triumph gave him the national stature he needed to challenge
the Congress leadership back home. It was the moment the reformer officially
transitioned into a radical, realizing that the national unity preached by
Congress was often a cloak for maintaining the internal status quo.
As his fame soared, so did his visceral venom. EVR popularized "Paarppan" as a derisive currency for Brahmins. Derived from paar (to see), it was a mocking jab at their priestly "seer" status—portraying them as invasive outsiders who "saw" into lives they had no business governing. "These paarppans came as beggars, now they rule as gods," he quipped. His hatred was vengeful, born from seeing the Brahmin monopoly in education and jobs.
But he was wont to go overboard: his tirades often blurred
the line between attacking an ideology and attacking a community. The infamous
quote—"If you see a Brahmin and a snake, kill the Brahmin
first"—showed a tongue that could sting without restraint.
This "Paarppan-poking" became the ultimate
Dravidian sport, a punchy phrase that rallied non-Brahmins but risked fanning
the flames of a division that would haunt the state for a century. It was the
birth of a rhetoric that used linguistic roots to target perceived racial
"overlords," a move that remains to date as a point of deep debate in
the Tamil psyche.
EVR’s orbit was filled with titans. His bond with C.
Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) was the ultimate paradox: a Salem conservative and an
Erode atheist in a lifelong friendship. They shared a level of intellectual
sparring that modern politics has forgotten. "We oppose each other, but
respect endures," they would say.
He found an ally in Bharathidasan, the Dravidian bard who
gave a rationalist rhythm to EVR’s fireworks. He crossed paths with a young
Kamaraj, both warriors against superstition. Looming on the horizon were
Muthuramalinga Thevar and K.A.P. Viswanatham, whose future clashes over
"Tamil vs Dravida" identity would provide the friction for the
movement's next phase.
By the late 1920s, the ‘merchant of Erode’ was the
"maverick of the South." While he wouldn't be officially crowned
"Periyar" until 1938, the seeds were blooming. Admirers hailed his
push for women's rights—a crusade ironically birthed in the riverside raves
where he first saw the necessity of gender reform. He began to argue that
women’s enslavement was the foundation of the caste system, and without their
liberation, no true reform was possible.
This early phase provided the Legacy Launchpad. From the
Justice Party's drawing-room stirrings to EVR’s street-level protests, the
rationalist roar was growing. The highs were undeniable: Vaikom and the
challenge to the "Kashi farce." The lows were equally evident: the
rabid tongue and erratic behaviours hinting at contradictions to come. He was a
trader who had experienced an epiphany, ready to turn personal gripes into a
public revolution.
The Bearded Oracle was beginning to speak, and the Software
of the South was about to be rebooted. He was no longer just a man from Erode;
he was becoming an iconoclast whose shadow would eventually cover the entire
peninsula.
Next | Alliances & Animosities: Political Ping-Pong & Punching Bags
We don't support landscape mode yet. Please go back to portrait mode for the best experience
