Iyothee Thass Pandithar:
The Tamil Nadu government installed a statue of Dalit rights and anti-caste activist Iyothee Thass Pandithar at Gandhi Mandapam in Chennai.
- Iyothee Thass Pandithar was born on 20 May 1845 in Madras presidency.
- He was a prominent anti-caste activist and a practitioner of Siddha medicine.
- In the 1870s, Iyothee Thass organised the Todas and other tribes of the Nilgiri Hills into a formidable force for the freedom movement.
- In 1876, Thass established the Advaidananda Sabha and launched a magazine called Dravida Pandian in collaboration with Rev. John Rathina.
- He established the “Dravida Mahajana Sabha ” in 1891 along with Rettamalai Srinivasan.
- He established the Sakya Buddhist Society in Madras, with branches all over South India.
- The Sakya Buddhist Society, also known as the Indian Buddhist Association, was established in 1898.
- To manage and coordinate the functioning of society, he began a weekly magazine, Tamizhan, in 1907
