Radicalism Tempered or Bolstered by Ambivalence? The Self-Respect Movement in Late Colonial South India

• In Event: Ambivalently Radical

Abstract

While the Self-Respect movement was the most radical strand of the Dravidian movement, its radicalism was also tinged with an ambivalence that is evident in both the rhetoric and actions of individual actors as well as in its differential engagement with the structures of power it sought to challenge. This paper examines the Movement’s brief but complex engagement with communism in the 1930s that underscores how some Movement actors enacted their discomfort with radical political action while at the same time professing deep commitment to radically challenging socio-religious power-structures. The Self-Respect movement’s propagation of socialist ideals points to a complex interweaving of a virulent anti-nationalism with an anti-imperialism that conflated class, caste, and foreign rule.

Upon his return to India in November 1932 from a six-month stay in Russia, E.V. Ramasamy, the founder and chief-ideologue of the Self-Respect movement, sought to invigorate the Movement through the propagation of socialist ideals. He tethered the Movement’s rationalist philosophy – that emerged primarily from its opposition to caste hierarchy and inequalities – to communism by allying with the emerging workers’ movement in the Madras presidency. The potent mixture of atheism, rationalism, anti-imperialism, class antagonism, anti-Brahminism, and anti-casteism that marked the discourse and activities of Ramasamy was received with a mixture of reserve and trepidation. This paper analyses the responses to Ramasamy’s call as an attempt by some Movement leaders to stake out a deeper and longer-term commitment to radical action than what they saw as possible through a premature and risky engagement with communism.

Author

• Uma Ganesen, Manchester University