In a statement issued on Tuesday (March 3), Shanmugam said Kanniyakumari district was once part of the erstwhile Travancore province, where oppressed and backward communities had faced severe caste discrimination. It was in this context that Swami Vivekananda had described the region as a "land of lunatics", he noted.

Against such entrenched social injustices, Ayya Vaikundar had spearheaded significant reform movements that later served as a precursor to Kerala's progressive social transformation, he said. Vaikundar had waged an ideological struggle against regressive practices such as untouchability, unapproachability and even the denial of visibility to certain communities.

To commemorate his contributions to social reform and to remind the present generation of the struggles endured in the past, the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala had, in its previous Budget, announced the construction of a memorial in his honour. Continuing that initiative, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan laid the foundation stone for the memorial on February 28, 2026.