page_title: Dravidian parties
section_title: Early Dravidian politics
hierarchical_section_title: Dravidian parties / Rise of Dravidian politics / Early Dravidian politics
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Sir Pitti Theagaraya Chetty KCSI (April 27, 1852 - April 28, 1925)
context_page_description: Dravidian parties include an array of regional political parties in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, which trace their origins and ideologies either directly or indirectly to the Dravidian movement of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy.
  The Dravidian movement was based on the linguistic divide in India,
  where most of the Northern Indian, Eastern Indian and Western Indian languages are classified as Indo-Aryan, whereas the South Indian languages are classified as Dravidian.
  Dravidian politics has developed by associating itself to the Dravidian community. The original goal of Dravidian politics was to achieve social equality, but it later championed the cause of ending the domination of North India over the politics and economy of the South Indian province known as Madras Presidency.
  Most Dravidian parties are offshoots of Dravidar Kazhagam. There are also a few other parties in Tamil Nadu that did not arise from DK directly.
context_section_description: An early pioneer in Dravidian politics was Iyothee Thass in the late 19th century. His efforts brought together the lower caste Dravidians with the establishment of  the Dravida Mahajana Sabha organisation in 1891. A major leap in Dravidian politics was the formation of the Madras United League by non-Brahmin intellectuals, who considered the dominance of Brahmins in civil administration a threat to the non-Brahmin majority.
  The League was initially started as a workgroup that helped non-Brahmin students in Madras with accommodation by Dr C. Natesan. It later grew into a political party under the efforts of leaders like C Natesa Mudaliar,  Sir Pitti Theagaroya Chetty and Dr. T. M. Nair. The party was named South Indian Liberal Federation (S. I. L. F.) – popularly known as the Justice party.
caption: Sir P. Theagaroya Chetty was one of the founders of Justice Party in 1916.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "299", "Image ImageLength": "366", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:08:12 10:51:28", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "374", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6583", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "150", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "183"}