Self-Respect Movement and Its Legacies Conference
Thursday 4 & Friday 5 September 2025, Nissan Lecture Theatre, St Antony’s College
Thursday 4 September
10.00 -10.30 am – Opening remarks Faisal Devji & James Maillinson
10.30 am – 12.00pm – Politics
Chair: Alpa Shah (Oxford University)
The Transitive Dravidian: Periyarism as a Universality
Abhimanyu Arni (Oxford University)
Resisting Impositions and Inheritances: Periyar’s Ethic of Cultural Refusal
Ganeshwar (University of Hyderabad)
Self-Respect and the Party-State in the New Century
Shruti Kapila (Cambridge University)
12.00 -1.00pm Lunch Break
1.00 -2.45pm – Selfhood
Chair: Maria Misra (Oxford University)
The Self in Self-Respect
Sundar Sarukkai (Barefoot Philosophers)
Self-Respect Marriage: Reflections on the Dravidian Feminist Critique of Hindu Marriage Reforms in India S. Anandhi (Madras Institute of Development Studies)
The Self-Respect Movement and the Right to Live with Dignity
Kiruba Munusamy (Middlesex University)
Democratising Knowledge, Building Self-Respect: The DMK’s Reading Rooms in the 1950s–60s in South India
Vignesh Rajahmani (Kings College, London/ KITL V-Leiden)
2.45 – 3.15pm Tea/ Coffee Break – The Buttery
3.15 -4.45pm – Inheritance
Chair: TBC
Where did this Come From? The Predecessors of the Self-Respect Movement
Karthick Ram Manoharan (National Law School of India University)
Self-Respect Movement and its Legacies: Exploring the ideological foundations of the Dravidian Model Governance
J Jeyaranjan (Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission)
The Fraught Engagement: Periyar and Communism
A.R. Venkatachalapathy (Madras Institute of Development Studies)
4.45 – 5.30pm Tea/ Coffee Break – The Buttery
5.30 -7.00pm Commemorative Address by the Chief Minister of
Tamil Nadu MK Stalin
Friday 5 September
10.00- 10.15am Opening remarks Faisal Devji and James Mallinson
10.15 – 11.45am – Caste
Chair: Ruth Harris (Oxford University)
Dravidianism and Ambedkarism: two forms of ethnicisation of caste?
Christophe Jaffrelot (Science Po)
Caste in Colonial Elections: Evidence from the Madras Presidency
Pavithra Suryanarayan (London School of Economics)
Ideologies as Caste Towers Economic Independence, Cultural Politics and Social Respect Movement of Ambedkar
Suraj Yengde (Harvard University)
11.45am – 12.45pm Lunch break
12.45 -2.30pm – Memory
Chair: Mallica Kumbera Landrus (Oxford University)
Mutual Contempt: Periyar, Judges, and the Law as a Political Medium
Franics Cody (University of Toronto)
Periyar and the Secular Poetics of Grievance
Martha Ann Selby (Harvard University)
Where do we go to remember? Curating the archival past for a self-respecting present Sarah Hodges (King’s College London) and Mary R Rader (University of Texas at Austin)
Placing Periyar on a Pedestal
Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke University)
2.30 -3.00pm Tea/ Coffee Break – The Buttery
3.00-4.30pm – Expansion
Chair: David Gellner (Oxford University)
Self-Respect in Singapore: E.V.R Periyar’s Visits and their Enduring Legacies Darinee Alagirisamy (National University of Singapore)
The Ravanesan as Looking Glass? Paradoxes for thinking about Periyar’s Legacy for Anti-caste Politics in Sri Lanka
Kamala Visweswaran (Rice University)
Patal Lok, or the absent centre of Indian Politics Saroj Giri (Delhi University)
5.00-6.30pm Endnote Lecture:
Dravidian Geography and the History of Respect
Arjun Appadurai (New York University)
6.30pm Drinks reception and buffet – The Buttery
