26 Facts About Iyothee Thass

Iyothee Thass was an Indian anti-caste activist and a practitioner of Siddha medicine.

Iyothee Thass famously converted to Buddhism and called upon the Paraiyars to do the same, arguing that this was their original religion.

Iyothee Thass founded the Panchamar Mahajana Sabha in 1891 along with Rettamalai Srinivasan.

Iyothee Thass possessed deep knowledge in Tamil, Siddha medicine and philosophy, and literary knowledge in languages such as English, Sanskrit and Pali.

Iyothee Thass was born Kathavarayan on 20 May 1845 in Thousand Lights, a neighbourhood in Madras, and later migrated to the Nilgiris district.

Iyothee Thass's family followed Vaishnavism and on that basis he named his children Madhavaram, Pattabhiraman, Janaki, Raman and Rasaram.

Iyothee Thass's grandfather worked for George Harrington in Ootacamund and little Kathavarayan profited immensely from this association.

In 1870, Iyothee Thass founded Adhvaidhananda Sabha, considered one of his early institution-building activities.

Iyothee Thass actively engaged with the colonial census and sought recognition for the Depressed Classes as Adi-Tamilar, distinct from Hinduism.

In 1876, Thass established the Advaidananda Sabha and launched a magazine called Dravida Pandian in collaboration with Rev John Rathinam.

In 1886, Iyothee Thass issued a revolutionary declaration that Scheduled caste people were not Hindus.

Iyothee Thass's activities served as an inspiration to Sri Lanka's Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala.

On returning, Iyothee Thass established the Sakya Buddhist Society in Madras with branches all over South India.

Iyothee Thass's efforts aimed at constructing a casteless identity for Dalits.

Iyothee Thass emphasized the need to record Buddhism as their religion in the census, challenging the established caste hierarchy.

On 19 June 1907, Iyothee Thass launched a weekly Tamil newspaper called Oru Paisa Tamizhan or One Paise Tamilian and Dravidia Pandian, later known simply as The Tamilan, which he ran until his death in 1914.

Iyothee Thass fought with the Madras Mahajana Sabha for the right of Parayars to enter Vishnu and Shiva temples, traditionally denied to Dalit communities, and advocated with the British for free education up to the fourth grade and allocation of unused lands to oppressed Parayars.

Iyothee Thass died on 5 May 1914, just two weeks before his 69th birthday.

Iyothee Thass claimed that his grandfather Kandappan worked as a butler of George Harrington, a European Civil Servant possibly in Madurai district.

Iyothee Thass noted that Ellis' omissions about Valluvar's possible parentage as the son of a brahmin father and a pariah mother contributed to historical distortion and "co-opting Thiruvalluvar and his work into the Brahminical Hindu value system".

Iyothee Thass proposed that the publication of Thirukkural by Ellis likely alerted the brahmanas to the existence of an ethical text authored by a valluvan, a sub-sect of the pariahs.

Iyothee Thass argued that these stories, often inconsistent and absurd, aimed to distance Thiruvalluvar from his Buddhist origins and integrate him into the Brahminical Hindu value system.

Iyothee Thass remains the first recognized anti-caste leader of the Madras Presidency.

Iyothee Thass was the first notable Scheduled Caste leader to embrace Buddhism.

However, Iyothee Thass was largely forgotten until recent times when the Dalit Sahitya Academy, a publishing house owned by Dalit Ezhilmalai, published his writings.

Iyothee Thass's works are nationalized and solatium was given to their legal heirs in 2008.