Periyar Ramasami

Periyar was a very popular politician. The British India was broadly divided into the Bengal, the Bombay & the Madras presidincies. The britishers had come up with the fancy theory of aryan invasion in the subcontinent, which implied that the dravid people of the Madras presidency were the people whom the Aryans had defeated. The theory also implied that the Dravid people were inferior to the aryans of the north India. Periyar made himself a messiah of the dravid people of the Madras Presidiency & advocated the Abrahamic sect of hinduism in its extreme to  garner the votes. He founded a party called the Dravida Muneetra Kazagam, which advcated the supremecy of the Abrahamic people & faith & backed it up by opposition to all things north Indian. He became very popular in the United Madras Presidency, but after independence, there were fractures in his popularity in South India as the princely states of Hyderabad, Mysore & some others also joined India. Now these states were also Dravid as per the Aryan invasion theory, but had  different languages from the ones Periyar was trying to promote. These new states were also more populous. Further the reorganisation of states in india made a new stat called tamilnadu, which largely fulfilled his demand for a separate state. All this resulted in a gradual decline of the  popularity of his doctrine, although DMK, with a different set of beliefs still prospers & presently rules the state of tamilnadu.