The years leading up to Periyar's break from the Indian National Congress and the founding of the Self-Respect Movement (SRM) were marked by two significant events. The first was the controversy over discrimination in the Cheranmadevi Gurukulam, a nationalist school, of which the centenary history of The Hindu says: ‘The controversy was one of the contributing factors for E. V. Ramaswami Naicker drifting away from Congress and later forming an organisation of his own whose avowed objective was to eliminate Brahmins and Brahmin influence in Tamil Nad which it wanted to secede from India’ (Parthasarathy, 1978, p. 337).

The bitterness caused by the Cheranmadevi Gurukulam controversy was accentuated by the Vaikom Satyagraha, which Periyar for the most part led during 1924–1925. If the nationalist gurukulam in Cheranmadevi provided separate seating for Brahmins and non-Brahmins in the dining hall, in the temple town of Vaikom in Kerala, Ezhavas and other Depressed Classes were not even permitted entry into the streets surrounding the Mahadeva (Siva) Temple, not to speak of entry into the temple precincts. The Vaikom experience gave Periyar a fuller understanding of nationalist politics and left an indelible imprint on his future career. Periyar returned to these experiences in his speeches and writings all through his life.

These two struggles and the campaign for communal representation (equitable share of seats for non-Brahmins in representative political bodies and in employment and education) were what led Periyar to leave the Congress, of which he had been a part from around the time of the First World War.