The Book
What if India were imagined not as a monolithic, Sanskritic civilisation, but as a richly plural, evolving, and contested political community? Dravidianism offers a powerful challenge to dominant narratives that define India through Brahminical Hinduism or the political theology of Hindutva. Drawing on more than a century of political, intellectual, and social history in Tamil Nadu, it reclaims Dravidianism as one of the most vital democratic traditions of modern India and offers a radically inclusive way of reimagining the nation—one that has never been more urgent or necessary.
This collection of incisive essays by leading scholars demonstrates that Dravidianism emerged as an internal critique of caste hierarchy and Brahminical privilege, seeking to democratise Indian society while preserving its cultural and religious diversity. From the Justice Party and Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement to the rise of the DMK and AIADMK, it traces the evolution of a movement that transformed Tamil Nadu through constitutional politics, social reform, linguistic assertion, and democratic mobilisation.
Spanning the Aryan–Dravidian debate, anti-caste struggles, language politics, federalism, cinema, sovereignty, and post-independence state formation, the essays reveal how Dravidianism evolved into a counter-hegemonic tradition that has consistently resisted hierarchy without embracing violence or majoritarian nationalism, nurturing instead an enduring ethos of pluralism, social justice, and state autonomy within the Indian Union.
At a time when divisive visions of India dominate public discourse, this volume invites readers to imagine an alternative nation—one strengthened not by uniformity, but by difference, diversity, and democratic coexistence. A must-read for everyone invested in India’s future as a secular, inclusive polity.
The Author(s)
The editors
Rajan Kurai Krishnan is Associate Professor, School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Trained in semeiotic anthropology at Columbia University, he writes on cinema, culture and politics under the broad canopy of philosophical anthropology in both Tamil and English. He is the co-author of Rule of the Commoner: The DMK and Formations of the Political in Tamil Nadu, 1949–1967 (2022).
Ravindran Sriramachandran is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, Sonepat. Trained as an anthropologist at Columbia University, his research spans
political anthropology, semiotics, South Asian politics, folklore, and cultural studies. He is the co-author of Rule of the Commoner: The DMK and Formations of the Political in Tamil Nadu, 1949–1967 (2022), and has translated and authored works on nationalism, populism, and the Dravidian movement.
Table of Contents
Publishers’ Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
List of Tables
What is Dravidianism? Notes on the Discursive Production of a Political Signpost
RAJAN KURAI KRISHNAN and RAVINDRAN SRIRAMACHANDRAN
Fuzzy Boundaries
1. Making India Federal: An Innovative Response
A. S. PANNEERSELVAN
2. Indian Federalism as a Double Articulation of Sovereignty
RAJAN KURAI KRISHNAN
3. Dravidian Tamil: Pluralisation of Political Identity
RAVINDRAN SRIRAMACHANDRAN
Conceptual Genealogies
4. Demythologising Minds: Dravidian Deconstruction of the Mythic and Reshaping of the Public Sphere
SUNDAR KAALI
5. Periyar and Modernity: An Ideological Passage from Sudhrarhood to Self-Respect
G. ALOYSIUS
6. ‘Self-Respect’ as Dravidian Nationalism or Non-Brahmin Internationalism? EVR, Gandhi, and Translation in Interwar Subcontinental Political Theory
MATTHEW H. BAXTER
Historical Phases
7. Periyar’s Self-Respect and Socialism
VIJAYASANKAR RAMACHANDRAN
8. Recast(e)ing Elementary Education: Kula Kalvi Thittam and Dravidian Resistance in Madras State, 1953–1954
ANANDHI SHANMUGASUNDARAM
Developmental Ethos
9. How Subnationalism Leads to Social Welfare: Tamil Subnationalism, Social Policy and Development
PRERNA SINGH
10. Mobility and Structural Transformation: A Dravidian Legacy
M. VIJAYABASKAR
The Contributors
Index
Experts Say
Fiendish attempts are underway to turn India into a narrowly-defined ‘nation-state’ and make a specific religious-linguistic-cultural group its politically dominant and rightful resident. The need to reimagine India as a ‘state-nation’ that has room for everyone within its borders to cohabit and thrive thus acquires urgency. This volume addresses that need by undertaking a most comprehensive examination of Dravidianism—a must-read for anyone who believes in a federal, plural India.
Parakala Prabhakar, author of
The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis
A volume that is both timely and will also stand the test of time, Dravidianism is outstanding in the quality, richness and salience of its essays. Spanning federalism; pluralism; structural and socio-economic change in Tamil Nadu; the politics and idiom of a revolt against a caste-based order and its enduring legacies for the Indian polity, leading scholars assess the political, cultural, social and economic dimensions of the Dravidian movement that has shaped Tamil Nadu as a decisive force for six decades, to emerge as a pivotal moment in the inter-war period. It is a pleasure and privilege to commend this book to scholars and the wider public alike.
Mahesh Rangarajan, author of
Nature and Nation: Essays on Environmental History