100 years of Social Justice Movement: Why it remains unique, and why it transformed Tamil Nadu

The SILF was led by Dr C Natesa Mudaliar, T M Nair, P Theagaraya Chetty, and Alamelu Mangai Thayarammal. The enactment introduced respective reforms to level the playing tract for non-Brahmins and marginalised communities, including the historical Communal Government Order (GO) of 1921, which was yet passed successful 1928, that ensured proportional practice for each communities successful authorities employment and education. It remained successful effect till the Constitution of India came into effect successful 1950.

Dravidian politics adept Prof A Karunanandham said the Social Justice Movement was ne'er an anti-Brahmin question but a non-Brahmin one. “Its aboriginal leaders, but Nair, were not atheists but leaders who continued practising section customs. They agreed against the systematic monopolisation of powerfulness by Brahmins successful offices, education, and spiritual practice. They viewed it arsenic a deliberate program and their demands focused connected societal reforms, a secular effort to reset the societal bid dissimilar successful bluish India, wherever reforms were spiritual successful nature,” helium said.

Unlike bluish India and Bengal, wherever societal betterment movements remained confined to elites, successful Tamil Nadu, leaders specified arsenic Vaikunda Swamy and Ramalinga Vallalar connected with the masses, astir importantly with the non-Brahmin majority. While the Brahmo Samaj of Raja Ram Mohan Roy retained its spiritual character, Tamil Nadu’s non-Brahmin question was mostly secular.

“The Justice Party believed that spiritual reforms unsocial would not suffice; applicable reforms that included power-sharing among each sections of nine were necessary,” Karunanandham said.

Periyar’s introduction and reforms

The question took a extremist caller magnitude with the introduction of E V Ramasamy, amended known arsenic Periyar, who launched the Self-Respect Movement successful 1925 aft resigning from the Congress.

Periyar’s imaginativeness expanded the Justice Party’s goals. He believed that governmental movements and preservation unsocial were insufficient and that people’s mindsets besides needed to change. He introduced reforms specified arsenic caste-less, priest-less, and ritual-less marriages, which were revolutionary astatine a clip erstwhile marrying extracurricular one’s caste was a punishable offence.

Periyar fought for women’s rights, demanding adjacent inheritance, education, and jobs. He championed household planning, insisting women determine whether to person children, rather a extremist presumption for the 1930s. He abolished caste surnames and caste markers and the Self-Respect Movement pushed for a shared societal identity. At Congress conferences, helium introduced non-Brahmin and Dalit cooks, forcing bluish Congress leaders to bring their ain Brahmin cooks to the South.

The Justice Party’s reforms ended segregation successful nationalist spaces specified arsenic railway stations, canteens, and nationalist transport. Justice Party leaders warned transport owners of licence revocations if they continued specified discrimination.

They besides reformed assemblage admissions, expanding the fig of non-Brahmin students. A Labour Department was created for “Shudras and Panchamas”, arsenic defined by Manu, leaving retired caste names. The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1925 took distant temple power from precocious castes. The abolition of the Devadasi strategy successful October 1947 triggered a backlash from nationalists, who saw it arsenic taste destruction. “All these were secular reforms, not atheistic ones,” Karunanandham said.

The movement’s legacy

The Social Justice Movement stands retired for being grounded successful self-respect, a conception cardinal to its ideology.

“Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement is considered unsocial successful satellite history. Unlike the Soviet Revolution oregon the French Revolution, which emphasised governmental independence, liberty oregon fraternity, the self-respect question focused connected quality dignity, an indispensable contented successful India’s caste-based society,” said Dr Gopalan Ravindran, who teaches media and communications astatine the Central University of Tamil Nadu successful Thiruvarur, astir 310 km from Chennai.

Dr Ravindran pointed retired that Periyar advocating for women’s power implicit reproductive choices was an thought not mainstream adjacent among Western feminists astatine the time.

“Unfortunately, the nationalist cognition of the question has often been reduced to its anti-God, anti-North Indian rhetoric. The movement’s archetypal intent shifted arsenic it grew and adapted to caller societal and governmental realities and it was lone aboriginal that the question evolved into what became known arsenic the Dravidian oregon Social Justice Movement,” helium said.

The governmental entities that subsequently sprang up from the movement, specified arsenic the DMK and the AIADMK, came to beryllium mistaken for it. Periyar had criticised C N Annadurai’s displacement toward politics. Still, Annadurai was committed to carrying Periyar’s ideals forward. Despite tensions, helium sought to instrumentality Periyar’s wishes and aft coming to powerfulness declared his authorities would enactment to fulfil the reformer’s vision. “This included legalising self-respect marriages and renaming the authorities Tamil Nadu, some seen arsenic victories for the Self-Respect Movement,” Ravindran said.

From the beginning, the question was not lone a Tamil Nadu phenomenon. It besides agreed radical crossed southbound India, including Telugu people, Kannadigas, and Malayalis, with leaders specified arsenic Nair playing a pivotal relation successful this pan-South unity.

All India Federation of Other Backward Classes Employees’ Welfare Associations’ wide caput G Karunanidhy said, “After the Justice Party captured powerfulness successful 1920, they started implementing their important reforms that laid the instauration of everything that we spot today. One of the archetypal important steps towards women’s empowerment was the instauration of women’s franchise successful 1921. The Communal GO introduced preservation for assorted communities, a important measurement successful ensuring that preservation for OBCs and different marginalised groups successful acquisition and nationalist employment.”

On the bequest and interaction of the movement, Karunanidhy said, “Today, Tamil Nadu’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) successful higher acquisition is astir 50%, a people for India by 2035. The state’s doctor-patient ratio stands astatine 250:1, acold amended than the nationalist mean of 1000:1. Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze property Tamil Nadu’s occurrence to the information of underprivileged communities, particularly successful agrarian areas, whereas ascendant castes typically clasp sway successful the north. The question has notably improved the state’s socioeconomic standing.”