Dear reader,The latest issue of Frontline is in your hands today. In it, we talk about the lasting legacy of E.V. Ramasamy Periyar, or Thanthai Periyar as he was affectionately called, and the Self-Respect Movement that triggered the Dravidian revolution.But before we talk about “Thanthai” (father), I feel we must talk about the “Bro” of social reforms in south India—Kerala’s Sahodaran Ayyappan. All the more because he remains little known outside his home State, despite his mammoth contributions.Brotherhood, as a word, has travelled far and gathered many meanings. In the late 18th century, abolitionists in Britain carried medallions inscribed with a kneeling enslaved man and the plea, “Am I not a man and a brother?”, an early moral appeal. A century later, Christian reformers on both sides of the Atlantic turned “brotherhood” into a code for social duty, forming the Brotherhood of the Kingdom to link ethics with equality.In Africa, it became a metaphor for Pan-Africanism and the dream of political selfhood beyond colonial borders. Across the Atlantic, the hip-hop movement that rose from the Bronx carried the same current in a new key: Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation called itself a brotherhood against street violence and racial hierarchy. In each of these moments—abolitionist, religious, artistic—“brotherhood” meant an act of choosing kinship across imposed lines, of saying we belong together, even when history says we shouldn’t.That lineage—of making fraternity real and not rhetorical—ran parallel to the intellectual currents that formed in early 20th-century India. The French Revolution’s fraternité had long been an emblem of equality in European thought, but its practical translation in caste-bound societies like ours was still waiting to happen.Kerala, at the time, was alive with reformist ferment—Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, Kumaran Asan—each proposing different routes to dignity. It was into this conversation that Sahodaran Ayyappan stepped in, taking the word brother and making it a social fact.If the Malayalam word sahodaran means “brother,” what might it have meant for someone in 1917 Kerala to declare himself “Brother Ayyappan” with intent, not irony? Born in August 1889, into the Kumpalath Parampil family of Cherai on Vypin Island (near Kochi), he was the youngest of nine children. His father, Kochavu Vaidyar, died when he was just two, and his older brother Achuthan raised him, moulding much of his early sensibility.Even as a boy in Paravoor English High School, he felt the sting of caste, barred, shamed, and othered. After schooling in Kozhikode (Malabar Christian College) and Thiruvananthapuram (Maharaja’s College), where he befriended poet and social reformer Kumaran Asan and came into contact with spiritual leader Sree Narayana Guru, Ayyappan returned to Cherai to teach at a local school, becoming “Ayyappan Mash” to students and parents—beloved, outspoken, restive.Then came May 29, 1917. Ayyappan was 28 when he organised Misra Bhojanam (also called Panthibhojanam) at Cherai, seating people of all castes, including Dalits, under one roof to share food. That was not a symbolic gesture alone. Around 200 people attended, including Pulayas.Orthodoxy recoiled. The dominant castes saw it as a ritual crime. Many opposed it forcefully; some even initiated a social boycott of Ayyappan. But Narayana Guru intervened, giving the moral backing that allowed Ayyappan to move ahead. Following that first one, he held similar meals at Sringapuram, Moothakunnam, and Chendamangalam in Kerala.That first feast grew into a stronger, deeper intellectual commitment. Ayyappan, though influenced by Guru’s spiritual egalitarianism, began to push beyond it. Guru’s motto was “One Caste, One Religion, One God for Humanity,” but Ayyappan rephrased it as Jati Venda, Matham Venda, Daivam Venda, Manushyanu—“No Caste, No Religion, No God, Only Humanity”—akin to Periyar. When Guru composed Daiva Dasakam, Ayyappan responded with Science Dasakam, composing 10 verses to science, reason, and truth, even as he maintained his respect and friendship with Guru. He did not become rigidly anti-religious, but attempted to fight superstition and weave rationalism into the texture of public life, again like Periyar.He founded the Sahodara Sangham in 1917 to sustain the cause of mixed marriages, inter-dining, and social equality. He launched the Malayalam weekly Sahodaran in September 1917 as a platform to carry rational critique into homes. Over time, Sahodaran grew—from monthly to bimonthly to weekly—and supported causes like labour, intermarriage, temple entry, socialist critique, and rationalist thought. In 1929, he also helped launch Yukthivadi (The Rationalist), the first Malayalam rationalist journal, which sought to critique irrational faith and propagate reason as an attitude rather than a doctrine.Ayyappan did not remain on the margins. In 1928, he was elected to the Cochin Legislative Council and held the seat for two decades. He became a Minister in the Council in 1947. When Travancore and Kochi merged, he continued in ministerial roles, though he resigned when austerity measures began to hurt lower-level employees. Later, he joined the Ministry under Ikkanda Warrier and Paravoor T.K. Narayana Pillai, but again stepped down when ministerial duties interfered with his reformist commitments—an unthinkable act today.His poetry and essays carried the same tension. In poems like “Curing Caste”, he compared caste to a disease: external cures (legal reform, ritual change) may faintly palliate, but unless inner healing happens—in people’s minds—the disease returns. He adapted folk forms and ballads, reworking the popular Onam song “Maveli Naadu Vaanidum Kaalam” (the go-to song for Keralites every Onam!) to reclaim cultural terrain. He argued that caste could hide in gossip, in habit, even in nationalist rhetoric that assumes one culture’s hegemony.His work shows the tension between two pulls: the desire to dwell in community—among temples, festivals, rituals—but to strip away ritual’s coercion. He cared about culture but refused to let culture sanctify inequality. He wanted laws changed, but also habits transformed. He believed public institutions mattered, but so did inner habits. That tension sometimes made his alliances fragile.He lived like a true product of Enlightenment, in a world where fraternity—that older European idea born of the French Revolution, that brothers are equal not by birth but by shared humanity—was often invoked in lofty political tracts but rarely practised in society.In the 19th century, Indian reformers often spoke of brotherhood, but “Bro” Ayyappan translated that into daily life: shared meals, mixed families, dialogues across difference. In his days, his generation was perhaps the “Gen Z” of Kerala—restless, impatient, convinced that inherited rituals would not carry them forward.Today, a hundred years and a decade later, many of those fences continue. Caste inequities remain in land distribution, access to elite jobs, and cultural recognition. Even the idea of eating together is still controversial in parts of the country. In 2017, Kerala’s government recreated a Misra Bhojanam to mark the centenary of Ayyappan’s original feast. That revival had symbolic power, even if everyday practice still lags behind.So, I thought that before you read the essays marking the centenary of the Self-Respect Movement, you should begin by reading about Brother Ayyappan. Tamil Nadu’s Periyar used fiery rhetoric, mass protest, and political mobilisation to fight for self-respect and the abolition of caste. In Kerala, Ayyappan’s path was subtler, uneven, and meshed with spiritual reforms and entry into institutions. Their two paths complement, contrast, converse. In fact, Periyar and Sahodaran shared many a stage, including during the famous Vaikom Satyagraha.In remembering the Brother and the Father of two powerful social justice movements, we remember that social reform is never a wholesale rupture alone—it is also a slow transformation in everyday gestures. We remember that reason must meet friendship, that critique must live in conversation, that fraternity must live in meals, in neighbourhoods, in institutions.Today, with social reformers rare and public life more about showmanship and performance than about struggle and action, Sahodaran Ayyappan’s life invites us to reconsider what rebellion looks like: small acts, deep commitment, intellectual daring.The edition of Frontline you hold in your hand today (or the homepage you see) carries forward that genealogy of risk, of thoughtfulness, of belonging across difference. We believe Ayyappan’s spirit, and Periyar’s, lingers in the margins we refuse, in the questions we ask, in the shared tables we set.Welcoming you to read the thought-provoking essays by Karthick Ram Manoharan, B. Jeyamohan, and A. Arulmozhi in this issue,Jinoy Jose P.Digital Editor, FrontlineWe hope you’ve been enjoying our newsletters featuring a selection of articles that we believe will be of interest to a cross-section of our readers. Tell us if you like what you read. And also, what you don’t like! Mail us at frontline@thehindu.co.inCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS