Periyar at the Temple Gate: What the Kandiyur Order Leaves Unanswered

By Vinay Nalwa

On October 30, 2026, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court ordered the removal of a statue of E.V. Ramasamy, known as Periyar, from the land of the Brahmasirakandeeswarar temple in Kandiyur, Thanjavur district. Justices P. Velmurugan and K.K. Ramakrishnan gave the District Collector four weeks to place it at another suitable site, a period that ends around November 27. The Collector's own status report found the statue on temple land, not on government poramboke land. The Bench held that it was installed without permission from the temple authority, the Collector or any competent authority. By the petitioner's account, the statue stands within five feet of the temple, with a Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) flag beside it and an inscription from a Periyar speech declaring that there is no God.

The petitioner, Rama Ravikumar, says the DK put it there around 1990. He went to court the lawful way, with a Right to Information application and then a writ petition, and he relied on a recommendation by the Thanjavur Joint Commissioner of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department, the state body that administers temples. According to him, the department's reply showed no permission was given. If 1990 is the year, devotees of Hindu dharma walked past that statue for thirty-six years before a court looked at it.

Kandiyur is not a one-off, and the DK's own General Secretary K. Veeramani said so. On December 16, 2006, after unveiling a bronze Periyar at Srirangam, he told a public meeting that earlier statues stood near temples at Chidambaram and Patteeswaram, among other places. Palani was cited too. With Srirangam and Kandiyur, that makes five temple towns on the record. No count of the rest has come to light. Veeramani announced 128 more statues for 2007 and did not say how many would stand beside temples.

Tamil Nadu has open land in every town. The choice of a temple gate needs explaining, and the Srirangam history points to a deliberate choice. The DK's Tiruchi unit resolved on July 20, 1969 to press the municipality for permission. A plot of 144 square feet opposite the police station, right in front of the temple, was cleared in 1971. Veeramani laid a foundation stone in 1996. The bronze statue was unveiled in 2006. That is thirty-seven years from the first resolution, by this writer's count, and a site pursued that long is a site chosen. The reason Veeramani gave was a right: atheists may install statues of Periyar just as believers install images of their gods.

Periyar's attitude to the Hindu gods is on record in his own movement's publications. In 1953 he led a campaign to break images of Ganesha. In his statement in Viduthalai, dated May 7, 1953, he said “There is nothing to feel surprised or hesitant about breaking Pillayar idol”. The DK's journal Modern Rationalist reproduces the statement. It also records his stated aim, which was to attack caste hierarchy and the gods he held responsible for it. On May 27 he broke an image of Ganesha at the Town Hall grounds in Tiruchi. A Saivite, S. Veerabadran Chettiar, complained that Periyar had said beforehand that he meant to insult the feelings of the Hindu community. The Supreme Court recorded that allegation in 1958 and held that the lower courts had read “object held sacred” too narrowly. It did not order a prosecution.

Salem, in 1971, is the second documented episode, and its details are disputed. At a DK conference on January 24, a Salem correspondent reported obscene tableaux in the procession and a wooden cut-out of Rama burnt at its end. Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, whose party grew out of Periyar's movement, said publicly that he regretted the obscenity and the police permission. The charge that Rama and Sita were paraded naked, garlanded with slippers, rests on the magazine Thuglak, whose 1971 caption mentions a garland of chappals. The DK denies the nudity and the garland. Its leaders have said, by Outlook's account, that a slipper thrown by protesters was used by a DK cadre to strike the images.

The Srirangam pedestal carries what the DK presents as his teaching. The plaque reads “There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all”. It goes on to call whoever invented God a fool, whoever preaches God a scoundrel, and whoever worships God a barbarian. A devotee walking toward the Rajagopuram, the temple's gateway tower, passes a plaque that calls his worship barbaric. K. Annamalai has asked why such words right outside the temple should greet people who have come as believers. A devotee should be able to approach his temple without being told his worship is barbaric. Annamalai's demand and the Kandiyur order both ask for relocation, which leaves Periyar his place in public life.

Hindu objection is as old as the statue. Opposition from Hindu organisations halted the Srirangam work in 1996. In 2006 it did not, and the Madurai Bench declined to stay the unveiling. When a cement statue was damaged that December, thirty-eight people were arrested, and the law applied as it should. At Kandiyur, the petitioner used the law from the start. Article 26 of the Constitution gives each religious denomination the right to manage its affairs in matters of religion and to own and administer property according to law. A devotee can fairly ask what that right means when the symbol of a rival ideology stands on temple land, as the Collector's report found, with no permission on record. The court has not answered that question. Its written order is awaited.

The Collector has until late November, and his order moves one statue off temple land. The DK's own list still stands: Srirangam, Chidambaram, Patteeswaram and Palani, with Kandiyur now added. Devotees at each can ask who installed the statue, in which year, and on whose land.

(The writer is an author and columnist)