Rettaimalai Srinivasan understood something that remains true today: if a community is denied the opportunity to speak, it must find a way to make itself heard.
PEOPLE · AIZA ORIGINAL
In 1893, long before a person could publish an opinion with a tap on a screen, a man in colonial Madras chose a different way to challenge the society around him. He started a newspaper.
His name was Rettaimalai Srinivasan. The publication he founded was called Paraiyan.
It was a small Tamil periodical, initially just four pages long. But its purpose extended far beyond those pages. At a time when caste determined how people were treated, where they could go and how much dignity society afforded them, Srinivasan wanted the concerns of his community to enter the public conversation.
He was not simply interested in publishing news. He wanted people who were routinely spoken about, judged and marginalised to have a platform from which they could speak for themselves.
More than a century later, that decision deserves another look.
A newspaper with a purpose
To understand why Srinivasan started Paraiyan, we must first understand the society in which he lived.
Caste discrimination shaped everyday life in colonial India. Communities subjected to untouchability faced barriers to education, public spaces, employment and social participation. Their experiences and demands did not receive equal attention in the institutions that shaped public life.
Srinivasan belonged to one of these oppressed communities. Rather than accept that its experiences would remain at the margins, he began organising for its rights.
In 1891, he established the Paraiyar Mahajana Sabha, an organisation intended to advance the interests of his community. Two years later, he founded Paraiyan, giving that work a printed platform.
The newspaper became another means of bringing community concerns into public view. It highlighted the struggles of oppressed people, addressed their social conditions and sought support for change.
According to Srinivasan’s autobiography, the publication began as a monthly periodical. He recorded that around 400 copies were sold in Chennai within two days of its launch. Within three months, it had become a weekly, and a printing press followed after two years.
These details offer a glimpse of the response it received. For a community whose concerns were frequently overlooked, a publication devoted to those concerns offered something important: a space in which its experiences could be discussed on its own terms.
Why would he choose that name?
Perhaps the most revealing part of this story is not that Srinivasan started a newspaper. It is the name he chose for it.
Paraiyan was a term associated with the caste identity of his community, carrying the stigma imposed upon it by the society around him. He did not choose a neutral title that concealed the identity of the people he wanted to represent.
Instead, he placed that identity at the centre of his publication.
In his autobiography, Srinivasan explained his reasoning in terms of openly acknowledging one’s caste identity rather than hiding from it in the pursuit of freedom and dignity. Naming the newspaper Paraiyan was part of that approach.
It was a deliberate challenge to the shame society attached to the name.
This is what makes his decision worth examining today. Oppression does not operate only through restrictions on what people can do. It can also operate through the labels placed upon them, the stories told about them and the assumptions others make in their name.
Srinivasan’s response was to make his community visible in print.
His approach should be understood in its historical context, rather than treated as a universal answer to the question of identity. But the principle behind it remains significant: people should have the dignity and agency to describe their own experiences instead of allowing others to define them entirely.
He did not stop at the newspaper
Srinivasan’s work extended well beyond journalism.
Organising, publishing and political advocacy were connected parts of his effort to improve the conditions of oppressed communities. He understood that making injustice visible was important, but visibility alone could not remove the structures that sustained it.
His work eventually took him into formal political representation.
In 1930 and 1931, he participated in the Round Table Conferences in London, representing the interests of the Depressed Classes alongside other leaders, including B. R. Ambedkar. The conferences addressed constitutional questions concerning India’s future, including the political representation of different communities.
Consider the distance between these two moments: a small Tamil publication established in 1893 and a place at discussions about the political future of India decades later.
They were different platforms, but they were connected by a common concern. Who would speak for communities that had long been denied an equal place in society?
Srinivasan’s newspaper was one part of a much larger effort to ensure that the people he represented were not merely subjects of decisions made by others.
He worked through community organisation, public communication and political institutions. His life shows how social change can require several approaches at once, especially when the problem extends beyond public awareness into laws, institutions and everyday practices.
What his story means in a world of social media
Today, almost anyone with an internet connection can publish an opinion, share a personal experience or draw attention to an injustice. A story can travel across the world in minutes.
It is tempting to think that having a platform is the same as having a voice.
But they are not necessarily the same.
A person may be able to speak and still not be heard. A community may be visible in the news and still have little control over how it is represented. A problem may attract widespread attention without producing any meaningful change.
Srinivasan’s story invites us to look beyond the medium and consider its purpose.
He did not create Paraiyan simply to participate in the world of publishing. He used it to bring the concerns of a marginalised community into public discussion. His work was directed towards representation, dignity and change.
That distinction matters today.
The question is not only whether we have the freedom to publish. It is also what we choose to bring into public view, whose experiences we make room for and whether our words contribute to a better understanding of the world around us.
A newspaper in nineteenth-century Madras and a social media account today are vastly different things. Yet both can raise a similar question: who gets to tell the story, and whose version of events becomes part of the public record?
Srinivasan’s life reminds us that communication becomes meaningful when it serves a purpose beyond the act of speaking itself.
The power of making room for another voice
Rettaimalai Srinivasan died in 1945. The world in which he had worked was very different from the one we inhabit today, and the struggles he confronted cannot be reduced to a modern lesson about content creation or online activism.
His contribution was rooted in a specific history of caste oppression and resistance.
Yet his story offers a lasting perspective on the relationship between communication and social change.
He recognised that a community needed more than sympathetic observers. It needed opportunities to articulate its own concerns, organise around them and participate in decisions that affected its future.
He used the tools available to him: a newspaper, an organisation and, later, political representation.
The newspaper was small. Its first edition had only four pages. But its significance did not depend on its size. It depended on the people it sought to serve and the conversation it attempted to create.
Perhaps that is the part of his story worth carrying forward.
We do not all need to start newspapers or enter politics to make a difference. But we can pay attention to whose stories are missing, question the narratives we inherit and make room for people to speak about their own lives.
Because sometimes, the first step towards changing how a society sees a community is to give that community the opportunity to be heard in its own words.
And sometimes, that opportunity begins with something as simple—and as consequential—as a newspaper.
Editorial note: This article is an original AIZA draft based on historical research, including Srinivasan’s autobiography as discussed in scholarly literature. It is not a claim that he founded the first Tamil newspaper. His distinctive contribution here is the use of Paraiyan as a platform for his community’s concerns and his wider work towards social and political representation.