Social ReformBritish Crown rule
Iyothee Thass declares Dalits are not Hindus
· Chennai
Anti-caste activist Iyothee Thass declared that the depressed classes were not Hindus, a stand he later carried into the Dravida Mahajana Sabha and the 1891 census.
C. Iyothee Thass was a Siddha physician and anti-caste activist in Madras who had organised the Todas and other Nilgiri tribes in the 1870s. In 1886 he issued a declaration that the depressed castes were not Hindus. In 1891 he founded the Dravida Mahajana Sabha and urged members of these castes to record themselves in that year's census as casteless Dravidians. He later converted to Buddhism and in 1907 launched the Tamil weekly Oru Paisa Tamizhan.
