‘Periyar had hatred towards the Brahmins and preached violence against them.’ ‘Periyar favoured the powerful among the non-Brahmin castes.’ ‘Periyar sidelined the Dalits.’ These are the three main accusations against Periyar by his critics on the issue of caste. In an earlier paper (Manoharan, 2020), I have questioned the last two criticisms. In this chapter, I will address the first. Periyar was opposed to casteism in all its forms. In India, he identified the dominant form of casteism to be Brahminism, a ritual birth-based social hierarchy that derived legitimacy from scriptures, practices, traditions, and values associated with Hinduism and had material consequences. This led Periyar to be vehement in his criticism of the castes that were scripturally considered the highest, the Brahmins, and most sympathetic to the castes that were considered to be the lowest, the ‘untouchables’. He understood that caste had a secular–material dimension as well, which was interconnected to the ideological–ritual dimension.

Working in the historical context that he did in Tamil Nadu, Periyar's approach to caste identified three broad social categories—the Brahmins, the Dalits,1 and the ‘Shudras’. His primary target of criticism was the first, the Brahmins. This led to counter-accusations that he was unfairly targeting only one community for casteism. But as I have discussed earlier (Manoharan, 2022), he often challenged the non-Brahmins for internalizing casteism, for subscribing to notions of hierarchy over others, and for the lack of an egalitarian spirit.