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Arguably, the Self-Respect Movement founded in 1925 by E.V.Ramasamy Periyar was one of the most radical social movements in India, which had launched a sustained critique of caste and gender in Tamil Society. For nearly a century, the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu has articulated a distinct politics of Tamil modernity through its critique of Hinduism, caste and patriarchy. The Practice of Self-Respect marriage is the case in point. Scholars researching the Dravidian movement, including myself have offered nuanced critique of the movement's distinct articulation of women’s liberation and anti-caste politics; alongside its possibilities and limitations. However, such accounts continue to remain at the border of articulation of feminisms and modernity in India. Therefore the Dravidian discourse on marriage and conjugality as a critique of Hindu marriage reforms initiated by the Indian National Congress and All India Women’s organisations is missing.
Today, we are at a crucial moment when there is a renewed articulation of Hindu identity and legal reforms for women, which demand for Uniform Civil Code without a critical review of existing personal laws for women. In my view, the Dravidian movement has critically interrogated Hindu traditions and customs that upheld brahmanical patriarchy and thus made a distinct contribution to the debates on Hindu marriage reforms which are hitherto not discussed within the mainstream debates and in the feminists’, debates on marriage and conjugality. However, these debates on marriage reforms contributed significantly to the making of what I would call as Dravidian feminism in South India.
This presentation will particularly focus on the Dravidian movement’s critical interventions in the making of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 leading to the regional amendment known as The Hindu Marriage (Tamil Nadu) (Amendment) Act, 1967 which rendered self-respect marriages and other reform marriages valid and legal under the Hindu law.
Presenter
Dr S. Anandhi is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. She is a historian with research interests in gender and political and social processes in colonial and contemporary Tamilnadu. She has contributed several articles on caste, gender, sexual politics in Dravidian movement and Dalit women's movements in South India. She has also coordinated several research projects related to women workers in the informal sector work with special reference to their occupational and sexual health as well as on caste masculinity in the context of women’s participation in the informal sector work. Her research works have been published in the leading academic-political journal Economic and Political Weekly and in the edited volumes on Gender and History. She has published two monographs on Dalit Rights : 'Contending Identities : Dalits in Madras Slums' (1995) and 'Land to Dalits: The Panchama Land Struggle' (2000) and co-edited three books , Dalit women as Vanguard of Alternative Politics (Routledge, 2017 and 2019) and Rethinking Social Justice (Orient Blackswan, 2020) and M.S.S. Pandian’s Strangeness of Tamil Nadu (Permanent Black 2020).
Discussant
Dr Carole Spary is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. She has a PhD in Politics from the University of Bristol. Dr Spary's research and teaching focuses on aspects of democratic politics and development, particularly gender, development, political representation and political institutions, and specialises in politics and policy in India. She is currently the Deputy Director of the University of Nottingham's Asia Research Institute. She is the former convenor (2008-2016) of the Politics of South Asia Specialist Group of the UK's Political Studies Association.
For queries, please contact the seminar coordinator by email: vignesh.rajahmani@kcl.ac.uk