• V. ARUNA

The late 19th and 20th Centuries witnessed the rise of several leaders who took up the cause of the Scheduled Castes and worked for their elevation, with fervor and devotion. These leaders came from all walks of life and from all castes and creeds. They led exemplary lives and practiced what they preached. They all pleaded for more educational facilities and better living conditions for the Subaltern People. They aimed at their elevation, without preaching hatred of any community. They tried to improve their conditions by exhorting the scheduled caste to follow cleanliness, good habits and obtain education and by trying to break down the social barriers by propagating and educating the masses about the inhumanity of untouchability. The efforts of these individual leaders went a long way in improving the condition and status of the depressed classes. The Tamil Subaltern leader, Iyodhi Doss, not only founded his own Buddhist movement but he also identified Dalits with Buddhists by arguing that the Tamil Paraiyas were not only Buddhists but also descendents of the Buddha’s own clan, the Sakyas. By the 1920s, this identification with early Buddhists was an underlying theme among many Dalit movements, especially in south India, and it was seen in the context of theories about Aryan conquest of an equalitarian, non-Aryan indigenous society. In this interpretation acceptance of Buddhism by Dalits (and in some versions, by non-Brahmans as well) would not really be ‘conversion’ to a new religion, but liberation and a return to their original identity.

"IYOTHI DOSS AND HIS IDEOLOGY TO THE POLITICAL IDENTITY OF SUBALTERN PEOPLE", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 11, page no.337-340, November-2018, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1811852.pdf

"IYOTHI DOSS AND HIS IDEOLOGY TO THE POLITICAL IDENTITY OF SUBALTERN PEOPLE", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 11, page no. pp337-340, November-2018, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1811852.pdf