Dalit Women And Gender Justice: The Lasting Impact Of Periyar In Tamil Nadu

When N. Aathirai first realised something was wrong in her home in Tiruchirappalli, she did not yet know the word “patriarchy”. She was only a child, but the imbalance was clear. “I just saw the difference in how men and women were treated,” says the 25-year-old psychologist. Years later, living with her in-laws, she understood it more sharply while watching her mother, a history graduate who became a housewife, repeatedly dismissed in her own home. “So much of it came from women having no autonomy,” she says.

Her first real attempt to make sense of it came in college, when she picked up Pen Yen Adimai Aan? The title alone startled her, pushing her to confront questions she had only sensed growing up. After graduation, she worked with Pa. Ranjith’s Neelam Social, where conversations on caste and Periyar deepened her thinking. His emphasis on self-respect resonated the most. “Women are taught to value ourselves only in relation to men, how we adjust, how we behave,” she says. “Reading Periyar helped me understand why we were treated the way we were.”

Lawyer Mathivadhani, now 29, arrived at these ideas from the opposite direction, through immersion rather than discovery. “My father was a Dravida Kazhakam state spokesperson, so I grew up in the Dravidian movement from the age of three,” she says. Her father handed her Pen Yen Adimai Aanen? at fourteen, insisting she would understand the meaning as she grew older. When he died the next year, the family refused orthodox rituals and honoured him according to Dravidar Kazhagam customs. “That taught me to stand by my principles.”

Many of Periyar’s century-old positions now feel embedded in everyday life. Inter-caste marriage is more accepted, dowry is publicly challenged, and women’s education has expanded dramatically. Tamil Nadu’s high female school enrolment and the rise of first-generation women learners reflect Periyar’s insistence that educating a woman transforms society.

According to the School Education Department, 74 per cent of Class 12 students enrolled in colleges in the 2023–24 academic year, an increase driven by the Pudhumai Penn scheme for girls and the Tamil Pudhalvan scheme for boys introduced in 2024. Over five academic years from 2017–18 to 2021–22, Tamil Nadu consistently maintained the highest Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher education, reaching 47 per cent, compared with the all-India average of 28.4 per cent.

Mathivadhani shares the example of A. Rajeshwari, a student at the Government Tribal Residential Higher Secondary School in Karumandurai. She cleared the JEE (Advanced) 2025, securing a place at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), becoming the first person from her tribal village to do so. “Where else do you hear of such examples?” Mathivadhani asks. She credits Periyar’s ideology and his insistence on educating women for paving the way.

Scholar V. Geetha argues that understanding Periyar requires returning to the late 1920s, when the Madras Presidency was alive with debates on women’s rights—from the Devadasi Abolition Bill to raising the age of consent, and the uproar over Katherine Mayo’s Mother India. Periyar entered this turbulent landscape and pushed each debate further.

On the Devadasi question, he amplified anti-Brahminical criticism but went further, attacking the very ideal of chastity. By elevating chastity as the defining marker of womanhood, he argued, society bound women to unhappy marriages and curtailed their emotional and sexual autonomy. Former Devadasis, some defending their artistic traditions, others condemning the system, were central to the debate. Periyar’s description of chastity as “a form of slavery” provoked argument for years.

His rejection of early marriage emerged from the same concern for autonomy. Witnesses in the Madras Presidency demanded higher marriage ages than elsewhere in India, and Periyar pressed further: marriage, he insisted, must be a choice, not a woman’s destiny. By the 1940s, he was urging women to postpone marriage entirely and enter public life. Here he differed even from Phule and Ambedkar, seeing patriarchy not only as an extension of caste and property but as embedded in intimate relationships.

He was equally blunt about compulsory motherhood, dismissing childbirth as a sacred duty. After visiting the Soviet Union in 1931, he praised communal kitchens and childcare centres as models for a more equal family structure. These ideas reshaped how women in the Self-Respect Movement saw themselves. Activist Neelavati famously declared women “the oldest working class”, highlighting the labour performed at home, in factories, fields, and along coasts.

Yet translating these ideals into daily life was challenging. Inter-caste couples had little legal protection and relied on movement support. Still, it was through these struggles, Geetha notes, that Periyar’s ideas were tested, interpreted, and expanded by women such as Neelavati and Annapurni.

Education was central to this transformation. R. Ovia, founder of the cultural organisation Puthiya Kural, explains Periyar’s approach on two levels: immediate access to schooling, and a deeper liberation from the mindset shaped by religious structures, particularly Hindu traditions. “Education should root women in rationalism and self-respect,” she says. She also emphasises that Periyar’s ideas are dynamic. “They always allow space for growth.”

Ovia highlights another critical dimension: it is mostly Dalit men and women who have owned, defended, and expanded Periyar’s ideas, translating them from text to practice. Leaders like Annai Meenambal Sivaraj and Annai Sathyavani Muthu brought Dalit voices into Periyarist movements, nurturing women as leaders. Today, Dalit women are prominent in the Dravidar Kazhagam and other Periyarist platforms. “Only when Dalit women—and equally Dalit men—consider Periyar’s movement as their own can they build a truly effective, rights-based platform,” she says.

She stresses that Periyar’s ideas are inseparable. “Women’s liberation, caste abolition, atheism—they are all linked. You cannot pick one part and ignore the rest. To approach Periyar as a women’s liberationist is to see the whole chain.” Ovia also underlines the need to interrogate family structures, motherhood, and gendered expectations of masculinity to create new, equitable social structures.

For Aathirai, these lessons are personal. “I have more control over my body and choices than my mother ever did. Patriarchy still pulls us down, just differently. Education, meeting empowered women, and engaging with Periyar and Ambedkar helped us push back.”

Vignesh Karthik KR, author of The Dravidian Pathway, explains why Periyar remains relevant. He saw domesticity, sexuality, and reproduction as central to how caste power is reproduced—making gender equality inseparable from anti-caste politics. In today’s online world, filled with misogyny and nostalgic celebrations of “traditional femininity”, Karthik sees Periyar as a corrective. “Women’s agency and self-respect were non-negotiable for him,” he says.

He notes three contemporary responses: rediscovery, embrace, and resistance. Young people drawn to inter-caste love, contraception, or the right to leave oppressive marriages often find clarity in his writings. Others adopt his legacy unconsciously, through female education, demands for gender quotas, and the growth of women’s and queer collectives online. Yet resistance persists, especially among caste elites and communities anxious about changing gender norms. This tension, Karthik argues, keeps Periyar disruptive.

Karthick Ram Manoharan of the National Law School of India University adds that Periyar’s most radical ideas, particularly on marriage and personal freedom, still unsettle society. “Self-Respect marriages remain exceptions, not the rule,” he says. “But the fact that a man in such a conservative society articulated these ideas is itself significant.”

For Aathirai, Mathivadhani, and many others, Periyar is not just a historical figure but a lens for understanding the present and the inequalities that persist within everyday homes. “Patriarchy still pulls us down, just differently,” Aathirai says. “But knowing where these ideas come from helps us push back.”