Outlook Magazine - 100 Years of The Dravidian Movement - 11 December 2025 Issue

A 100 years ago, when the RSS first began to imagine India as Hindu Rashtra, in the South, the Self-Respect Movement was started by E.V. Ramasamy ‘Periyar’ and S. Ramanathan in 1925. With the Tamil Nadu elections ahead, will Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement be able to fight the forces of Hindutva? Outlook’s December 11 issue, 'Dravida', captures these tensions that shape the state at the crossroads of past and future of Dravidian politics. Anand Teltumbde examines how caste continues to unsettle India’s social justice movements. In ‘The Dignity in Self-Respect’, S.V. Rajadurai explains how the movement continues to shape the social realms of the state. Perumal Murugan takes the story to the villages, revealing how the movement reshaped rural imaginations. In 'The Flow of Thirukkural', Snigdhendu Bhattacharya follows the evolution of these movements across decades, while P.A. Krishnan revisits the imprisonment of Periyar and its political impact. In 'The Outpost', Mohammad Ali studies the Hindutva challenge to the Dravidian model, while Fozia Yasin turns to one of Tamil society’s deepest wounds — the Devadasi system. Read these and more in Outlook's latest issue.