Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the Self-Respect journals that emerged in response to the need felt for a “non-Brahmin public sphere” to disseminate the Self-Respect movement’s radical views on caste and gender in late colonial South India.

Paper long abstract:

The discourse of 'Brahmin vs. non-Brahmin' formed the bedrock of the politics of the Dravidian movement and its various strands in the Madras presidency in late colonial South India. As the most radical strand of the Dravidian movement, the Self-Respect movement articulated a radical politics of caste and gender that foregrounded gender as an inalienable component in its larger critique of caste. While its counterparts in the Dravidian movement - the Justice Party and the Pure Tamil movement - manifested, respectively, the political and cultural aspects of non-Brahmin identity, the Self-Respect movement focused on the social effects of caste and gender inequalities.

For the Self-Respect movement, caste, in its contemporary configuration, transcended the original model of 'division of labor' to become a hegemonic system of oppression that comprised hierarchical social relations as well as the precepts and rules that informed, sustained, and justified this oppression. The oppression and subjugation of women was a crucial element in this configuration. The Movement embarked on a radical reform of Hindu society to rectify the inequities of the caste system - an endeavor that had little hope of reaching the wider public in view of Brahmin domination of the press in early twentieth century South India. The need for a "non-Brahmin public sphere" was apparent. The Self-Respect journals that emerged in response to this need provided an effective public platform for articulating the ideological differences between the nationalist movement and the Dravidian movement, and the Brahmins and non-Brahmins.