Adyar Ananda Bhavan (A2B) whose owner glorified Dravidianist ideologue EV Ramasamy (EVR) and peddled canards against Brahmins in 2023 is back in the spotlight again with an EVR link.
This time, to celebrate the birth anniversary of EVR, A2B has collaborated with Periyar Maniammai University and is going to give sweetboxes for the occasion.
A flyer is being circulated on social media asking people to register via a Google form for the sweet boxes.
The promotional material invites people to pre-book the special boxes to distribute among relatives and friends as part of the birth anniversary celebrations. The boxes are available in denominations of ₹100, ₹200, ₹300 and ₹500 and are described as containing high-quality sweets and snacks prepared by A2B.
The promotional material also states that the boxes will come in special packaging carrying the message “Periyar Birthday Wishes”, along with the branding “Periyar148.” The last date for pre-booking has been specified as 10 September 2026.
The associated Google Form being used for pre-booking provides further details about the initiative. Apart from collecting the person’s basic details, the form asks for their Dravidar Kazhagam-related organisational affiliation and district, before proceeding to the order details for the different denominations of the Periyar sweet boxes.
The form allows participants to indicate the number of boxes they wish to order in the ₹100, ₹200, ₹300 and ₹500 denominations, effectively serving as the booking mechanism for the special Periyar-themed boxes.
The initiative has also brought renewed attention to A2B’s earlier glorification of Periyarist ideology. In 2023, a video of an interview between actor and writer Chitra Lakshmanan and A2B Managing Director K.T. Srinivasa Raja circulated widely on social media.
During the interview, Raja attributed the change in the vegetarian restaurant industry, which he described as having traditionally been dominated by Iyers, to Periyar’s influence. He said Periyar had brought about a change in hereditary occupations by promoting the idea that people could pursue professions outside their traditional community occupations.
Raja also recalled that his father had learnt the trade of cooking and making sweets from a Brahmin cook. He referred to several established food businesses, including Haldiram, Agarwal Bhavan, Sri Krishna Sweets, Sangeetha, Woodlands, Annapoorna, Saravana Bhavan, Vasantha Bhavan and Dasaprakash, as businesses his family had looked up to during its early years.
The remarks triggered criticism on social media, with users questioning the historical framing of the comments and pointing out that Periyar died in 1973, while A2B’s origins as a sweet shop date to the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Some users also challenged the suggestion that vegetarian food businesses had been exclusively dominated by Iyers and questioned the attribution of the subsequent growth of the restaurant industry to Periyar.
The 2023 controversy also saw sections of social media users call for a boycott of A2B, while others criticised what they perceived as the company’s political association with Periyarist ideology.
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