The Meaning of Mariadhai

After a hundred years, what has happened to the idea of self-respect in contemporary Tamil society?

- Sundar Sarukkai

THIS year is celebrated as the 100th year of the Self-Respect Movement.

Self-respect is an important and essential component of Periyar's radical critique of caste society. Periyar's influence on the politics and society of his time cannot be underestimated. His formulation of self-respect (suyamariadhai) was a conceptual tool to produce social equality, for both for the non-Brahmins as well as women.

After a hundred years, what has happened to this idea of self-respect in contemporary Tamil society? As well as terms like non-Brahmin and Dravidian?

The idea of self in Periyar is most often related to the opposition between Brahmins and non-Brahmins. The category of non-Brahmins produces a self in opposition to the self of Brahmins. But this raises one fundamental question about this opposition. In such a structure, the Brahminical self becomes primary and the other selves are defined with respect to it. The Brahmin self remains an autonomous self that defines other selves in relation to itself.

Defining non-Brahmins in opposition to Brahmins produces a secondary sense of self. The self of non-Brahmins in this context is one whose reference is another self, not itself.

The political shift from the language of non-Brahmins to Dravidian is an important step in reclaiming the primacy of the non-Brahmin self, but whether such formulations escape the category 'non-Brahmin' remains an enduring problem. (A term that does not privilege the Brahmin self is ahinda, which is an acronym for minorities, backwards and Dalits, and has been powerfully used in Karnataka.)