A grand two-day convention was held at St Antony’s Faculty, Oxford College, on September 4 and 5, 2025, on “The Self-Respect Motion and Its Legacies”. Organised by the historian Faisal Devji and the Sanskrit scholar Jim Mallinson, the convention marked the centenary of the Self-Respect Motion. Collaborating within the convention, panelists from various disciplinary backgrounds spoke concerning the histories, concepts, theories, politics, personalities, and trajectories of the Self-Respect Motion and highlighted its modern significance to Indian in addition to worldwide conversations on social justice, federalism, and extra. The commemorative handle was given by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.Ok. Stalin, who praised the internationalisation of the concepts of the Self-Respect Motion.

On the occasion, Stalin launched two books: The Cambridge Companion to Periyar edited by A.R. Venkatachalapathy and this writer, and The Dravidian Pathway by Vignesh Rajahmani. In academia, that is certainly a high quality second to be engaged on Dravidianism, and the Oxford occasion highlighted the worldwide nature of the scholarship. There was an rising recognition of the significance of the Self-Respect Motion and Dravidian politics past the borders of Tamil Nadu. How does Tamil Nadu, with its magnificent temples and joyously celebrated festivals, stave off the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics from gaining a foothold? How are welfare measures being delivered to the individuals by means of an efficient public distribution system? Why is its gross enrolment ratio one of many highest within the nation? What’s the federalism that it defends so strongly? The place has Dravidian anti-caste thought come from and the way efficient has it been in apply? Who had been the important thing leaders and intellectuals who charted this course? Lecturers, journalists, and policymakers have taken renewed curiosity in these questions, and there was a growth in writing on Dravidian politics previously decade. The 2 dissidents from the Congress get together who began the motion a century in the past won’t have anticipated such an impression.

It is not uncommon data that the Self-Respect Motion was began by “Periyar” E.V. Ramasamy and S. Ramanathan in 1925 following their variations with the Congress get together, largely about its refusal to present due precedence to the issue of caste and its reluctance to assist proportional illustration. A weekly, Kudi Arasu, was launched in 1925 to articulate non-Brahmin politics. Political non-Brahminism already had a presence in Tamil Nadu since 1916 by means of the Justice Occasion. Even earlier than that, a variety of Tamil social and spiritual reformers had been advocating egalitarian anti-caste concepts. Figures like Ramalinga Vallalar, Athipakkam Venkatachala Naicker, members of the Madras Secular Society, Somasundara Naicker, M. Singaravelar, Iyothee Thass, Maraimalai Adigal, Lakshmi Narasu, Subramania Bharathi, and Thiru Vi Kalyanasundara Mudaliar contributed to a energetic surroundings of excited about caste, faith, language, and identification. They got here from totally different social backgrounds however all felt that a lot needed to be modified in society. In such fertile soil had been the seeds of self-respect sown.

Suyamariyadhai, or “self-respect”, was a novel idea. The time period itself may need been used earlier than however it gained significance as an idea solely after 1925. It sought to problem the most important political idea in colonial India, particularly swaraj, or “self-rule”. The latter was the mobilising time period of the anti-colonial nationalists. This was a conflict of what the post-Marxist thinker Ernesto Laclau would name “empty signifiers”. Very merely, empty signifiers are signifiers with out signifieds. The phrase “tree”, for instance, is the signifier, whereas the signified is the item related to the phrase, a botanical organism with a trunk, branches, leaves, and so forth. Alternatively, empty signifiers are phrases that wouldn’t have any particular object similar to them. Self-rule or self-respect doesn’t correspond to any particular factor. They’ll have totally different meanings in accordance with time and place. However such empty signifiers are essential to politics.

Empty signifiers should not achieved objectives; they’re utilized in politics to handle an inadequacy. If self-rule or self-respect are missing, political formations current their targets as addressing this lack. Laclau argues that what is claimed to be missing, what’s absent, turns into the empty signifier essential to that politics. To the nationalists within the Congress, India lacked self-rule and the struggle for that was paramount; for Periyar, Indians lacked self-respect, and suyamariyadhai for him took priority over swaraj. In an editorial in Kudi Arasu on January 24, 1926, he wrote: “To the individual with out self-respect, self-rule is ineffective. However even for an individual with out self-rule, self-respect is important. An individual with out self-respect is a corpse.” In his subsequent writings, he argued that caste, faith, and patriarchy disadvantaged the person of self-respect, and nationalism was an ideology that masked this.

Suyamariyathai punctured the concept of Kauravam

There was one other social notion that self-respect undermined, particularly, kauravam. Loosely understood, suyamariyathai and kauravam could look like pointing to the identical thought of dignity. However kauravam was dignity in status, one which could possibly be attained solely by establishing superiority over one other. In a caste society, kauravam was reserved for the elite landed and/or moneyed communities, which the others needed to concede. Suyamariyathai however punctured the concept of kauravam by lampooning caste-community delight and centring the self-respecting particular person.

The Self-Respect Motion and the Dravidian motion had important overlaps. The “Dravidian” thought took root in fashionable Tamil Nadu within the late nineteenth century, following the publication (in 1856) of Robert Caldwell’s A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Household of Languages. The time period “Dravidian” had no political salience or social significance in premodern Tamil Nadu. It was a perspective rooted in a selective studying and subversive misreading of historical past the place the “Aryan invaders” had been seen as oppressors and “Dravidian natives” a comparatively egalitarian lot. The “Dravidian” of the Dravidian motion was primarily the non-Brahmin of south India, though it was versatile sufficient to accommodate others too.

Periyar was a key chief of the Dravidian motion however not the one one. Others earlier than him and after him additionally formed the Dravidian narrative. It underwent many political adjustments, giving delivery to the assorted Dravidian events we see right this moment. However Periyar was the important thing chief of the Self-Respect Motion, which eschewed political energy and focussed on social change. Periyar strongly felt that an electoral political get together would finally compromise with caste.

Who was the topic of self-respect? Which was the “self” the Self-Respect Motion was addressing? Opposite to criticism, it was not restricted to the non-Brahmin non-Dalit castes. A person needed to transcend all caste and spiritual affiliations to realize self-respect. The Self-Respect Motion thus sought to create a civic physique of people who had reduce all ties with what was seen as non-modern communities. They had been to be bonded by dedication to sure progressive concepts and objectives. The Self-Respect Motion was anti-communitarian; this was each its energy and its weak point. Periyar, in describing himself, described the perfect self-respecter: “I’m a reformer of human society. I don’t care about nation, god, faith, language, or state. I’m solely involved concerning the welfare and development of human society” (Periyar Kalanjiyam 18, 95). In his life and after, Periyar remained disconnected from any neighborhood. The self-respect he promoted was a globally legitimate idea. Anybody combating for dignity in any society the place it was denied was a possible self-respecter.

Targets of the Self-Respect Motion

Jaathi ozhippu (annihilation of caste), penn viduthalai (liberation of girls), and samathuvam (equality) had been three key objectives of the Self-Respect Motion, which criticised the defence of Varnashrama Dharma by Hindu conservatives. They had been excited when Babasaheb Ambedkar revealed his Annihilation of Caste in 1936, which Kudi Arasu instantly translated and revealed on its pages. From its inception, the Self-Respect Motion attacked caste as such, and never simply untouchability, and on this it shared a lot in frequent with what Ambedkar propounded. The Motion gave unconditional assist to his demand for separate electorates.

The first focus of the Self-Respect Motion’s criticism was Brahmins. Brahmins weren’t solely on the apex of the caste system, sanctioned by faith, however their sociocultural energy pervaded the political area, in accordance with the Motion. This led to the Self-Respect Motion’s rhetoric getting labelled as anti-Brahmin. However it will be unfair, and ahistorical, to model it merely as being anti-Brahmin as a result of the Motion confronted hierarchies and notions of superiority inside the non-Brahmin castes as effectively. Periyar’s documented speeches at caste conferences of intermediate castes criticised notions of caste delight; he urged them to make frequent trigger with the Dalits to demolish the caste system. The Self-Respect Motion defended reservation for Dalits and backward castes and welcomed their energetic political participation. However annihilating caste would contain tackling different issues as effectively.

To the Motion, caste and patriarchy had been interlinked. Periyar, nevertheless, didn’t merely see the problem of girls’s oppression as a query of rights alone; he foregrounded social, financial, and sexual liberty for girls. His libertarian views on sexual relations had been unprecedented and proceed to evoke harsh reactions. The Self-Respect Motion challenged not solely the Hindu thought of pativrata (devotion to at least one’s husband) but in addition the Tamil thought of karpu (chastity). They noticed these concepts as reproducing caste purity. The Different Half of the Coconut (2003), edited and translated by Ok. Srilata, is an fascinating compilation of girls writers related to the Motion. The variety of writers and their considerations is noteworthy. The Self-Respecters platformed Muslim ladies writers resembling Alhaj Subako who had been essential of patriarchal oppression amongst Muslims. Ladies within the Soviet Union and Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey had been position fashions for the Self-Respect Motion. Arriving at samathuvam, an equal society, was not doable with out ladies’s liberation and the annihilation of caste.

Two different guiding ideas of the Motion had been samadharmam (socialism; Periyar’s utilization of this idea was mentioned by the writer within the October 6, 2023, challenge of Frontline) and pagutharivu (rationalism). The Self-Respect Motion at all times claimed dedication to socialistic beliefs, although it didn’t articulate a transparent concept of what this socialism was and the way it could possibly be carried out in apply. Samadharmam was seen as a path for attaining samathuvam, by abolishing various social hierarchies. What made the Motion’s pursuit of samadharmam totally different from different socialist teams within the nation was its method to pagutharivu.

The Self-Respect Motion usually and Periyar particularly had been ascribed appreciable notoriety of their instances, and later as effectively for his or her criticism of faith. Pagutharivu was incompatible with spiritual perception and devotion. Just like the Madras Secular Society earlier than it, the Self-Respect Motion subjected faith, notably Hinduism, to intensive criticism. Satires and parodies had been used liberally. Gods had been ridiculed and infrequently subjected to crude and vulgar humour. The Motion noticed faith as a pressure of evil that duped the lots and benefited a small elite. Its followers attacked the concept of bhakti—not solely devotion to god however to language, nation, literature, and even cinema stars. Whereas it was prepared to interact with Saivite reformers like Maraimalai Adigal or Kundrakudi Adigal and had been desirous to platform pro-Buddhist views, the propagation of atheism was an integral a part of this social motion, as this alone might successfully problem caste, which was intertwined with irrational spiritual beliefs.

Points persist

The concepts and objectives of the Self-Respect Motion present a helpful framework not solely to grasp its mental historical past but in addition to achieve an perception into how Dravidian politics fared in apply. Whereas one can admire the regular progress of Tamil Nadu in a number of socio-economic indicators, it’s a actuality that the lots of the points that the Self-Respect Motion sought to handle nonetheless persist. One constantly reads reviews of caste violence by members of some backward castes towards Dalits. There’s seen and risible delight in caste identification. Many castes, together with from among the many Different Backward Courses and Scheduled Castes, narrate superb histories for their very own communities, competing to indicate that it’s they who’re the unique, superior caste. Not less than a dozen castes declare that they’ve descended from the good Cholas. One sees nauseating sexism celebrated in cinema as effectively. How can we perceive the Self-Respect Motion’s core ideas—samathuvam (equality) and penn viduthalai (liberation of girls)— on this context? How can we view samadharma (socialism) in a State that takes delight in attracting overseas direct funding and is mostly capital-friendly?

Leaders of the Dravidian events in energy have typically scored effectively in defending measures for institutional social justice and welfare. Works on coverage resembling S. Narayan’s The Dravidian Years (2018) and on political financial system resembling A. Kalaiyarasan and M. Vijayabaskar’s The Dravidian Mannequin (2021) have mentioned the extent to which each the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have been efficient in delivering fascinating items and providers. There have been real makes an attempt to result in incremental change. As an example, M. Karunanidhi began the Samathuvapuram scheme in villages in Periyar’s honour, creating housing localities that may accommodate members of various castes. The thought was to create fraternity throughout castes in villages the place such divisions ran deep.

However “caste feeling” has held out far more strongly. And as soon as it grew to become a part of the aggressive electoral system, no get together might afford to take the kind of radical stand on caste, faith, or patriarchy that the Self-Respect Motion took. Few have proven the braveness to upset “neighborhood sentiment”. The Self-Respect Motion had no such concern when it ridiculed caste identification and delight. Its anti-communitarianism created dedicated cadres who disowned, and had been typically disowned by, their communities. However their attain had its limits. A self-respecter would readily help two lovers marry exterior their caste. However ought to violence observe, that they had little sources to problem it and must depend on the regulation. When the Motion averted the pursuit of political energy, its members additionally averted that important component of politics—the potential of bodily confrontation. It was a motion of concepts, and it fought within the realm of concepts. Its most potent weapon towards “irrational concepts” was humour and satire. However, as we all know, neighborhood sentiment is towards essential comedians.

The facility of communities stays robust in India, and it enormously influences politics. A caste, linguistic, or spiritual neighborhood interprets right into a ready-made vote financial institution. Likewise, in instances of gross financial inequalities, communities present social and psychological succour to many people. These fault traces can not simply be addressed by focussing on liberal values alone. Even the liberal West is witnessing new types of communitarianism, from majorities and minorities to nationwide, ethnic, and/or spiritual traces. The person is below menace from a number of forces; the honeymoon of the concept is over.

Concepts are contested as a result of they do have the facility to affect materials actuality. If caste, faith, and patriarchy can rework in accordance with the instances, there isn’t a purpose why the concepts of the Self-Respect Motion can not. At its centenary, the Self-Respect Motion has a lot to show the world but in addition a lot to study from international struggles for social, financial, and political justice. It’s good that it’s leaving the borders of Tamil Nadu and internationalising itself.

[Karthick Ram Manoharan is Assistant Professor of social sciences at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. He is the author of Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism (Orient BlackSwan, 2022). Courtesy: Frontline magazine, a fortnightly English language magazine published by The Hindu Group of publications headquartered in Chennai, India.]