Lectures and Presentations

The Icon and The Iconoclast

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The Icon and The Iconoclast, a short film directed by Vilasini Ramani, premiered at the Being Human Festival (BHF) on 16 November 2021. The short film is based on a conversation that reportedly happened between Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and Mahatma Gandhi in the year 1927. Over this conversation, Periyar, a rationalist anti-caste leader from South India and the key figure of the Dravidian Movement, and Mahatma Gandhi, the well-known pacifist leader of the Indian Independence Movement, discuss their views on religion and caste.

The Icon and The Iconoclast features Kishore as Periyar, Salmin Sheriff as Gandhi and Swami as S. Ramanathan, a close associate of Periyar. Kishore is a widely acclaimed actor in the Indian film industry. He is most known for his collaborations with the award-winning director Vetrimaaran, Pa Ranjith and he will be playing a key role in Mani Ratnam’s upcoming historical epic Ponniyin Selvan. Kanti, Polladhavan, Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu, Aadukalam, Haridass, Visaranai, Vada Chennai are some of the many films where his performance was greatly lauded. Salmin Sheriff is a playwright who has been involved in theatre for over 25 years and is a founding member of the theatre group Playpen. A well-known and much celebrated artist from Bengaluru, he has also acted in films, most notably Nirmal Anand ki Puppy and The Sky is Pink. Swami is a theatre artist based in Chennai, who has acted in the plays of renowned playwrights like Indira Parthasarathy and others, and The Icon and The Iconoclast is his film debut.

This is the second film for the director Vilasini, who is also a freelance publisher and translator. Her first film No Means No, which is a part of a trilogy titled Are You Divorced Yet?, is currently in post-production. The screening of The Icon and The Iconoclast at the BHF was well attended. The historical background to conversation between Periyar and Gandhi shown in the film was introduced by Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan, Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton, and the project consultant for the film. The event concluded with a spirited interactive session with the director, the actors and the attendees.

Within a month of its premiere, The Icon and The Iconoclast made it to the official selection of several international film festivals, winning awards and honorable mentions at a few.

Excerpt from Manoharan’s introduction below:

“I do think that this interaction throws good light on the approaches of these two leaders to caste and religion. Most importantly, it shows how these thinkers, with significantly different views on religion could nevertheless have a respectful dialogue with each other. Issues of religion involve difficult conversations, but they also need these difficult conversations. Of course, Periyar is greatly attractive to atheists and anti-casteists in India. But what about believers? To those who feel that their religion and caste is threatened, the views of Periyar might appear offensive and blasphemous. To those who are firm of faith, but are open to alternative viewpoints, they might find something humorous and perhaps even something to reflect on in this conversation between Periyar and Gandhi. The lead character of Umberto Eco’s The Name of The Rose says that the mission of those who love humanity is to make people laugh at divinely held truths. I hope our viewers today can laugh and learn from The Icon and The Iconoclast.“

Online Meeting on ‘Rethinking Social Justice’

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The Dravidian Professionals Forum organized a meeting on 17 March 2021 to discuss the volume Rethinking Social Justice (Orient BlackSwan 2020). According to the publisher’s website Rethinking Social Justice, co-edited by S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan, M. Vijayabaskar and A. Kalaiyarasan, offers a more transdisciplinary approach to envisioning a just society that encompasses the intersecting issues of caste, capital, nationalism, gender, region, urban planning and visual representation.

Anandhi, Vijayabaskar and Karthick spoke at the event which largely involved a politically informed activist audience. Anandhi spoke about the key ideas behind and the current significance of the volume. She highlighted the academic interventions of M.S.S. Pandian to whom the book was a homage and whose works were critically engaged and built upon by the contributors to the volume. Speaking about her own chapter and ongoing work, she stressed the need to have more critical attention to the politics of gender in the Dravidian movement.

Vijayabaskar spoke about the political economy under the successive Dravidian parties, highlighting the inclusive model of growth and responding to certain general criticisms of the Dravidian rule. He noted how patterns of growth, industrialization, land reforms, public distribution system, and welfare schemes contributed to the gradual empowerment of marginalized sections of the population. The Dravidian Model, a book authored by Kalaiyarasan and Vijayabaskar, that deals with these topics in greater detail will be published by Cambridge University Press this year.

Based on his ongoing research, Karthick spoke about contributions of the Dravidian Movement and Periyar to the democratic culture and the pluralist ethos of Tamil Nadu’s politics. He noted how at a time of ethnic and religious fundamentalism, the Periyarist legacy eschewed all forms of chauvinism and imagined an idea of ‘Dravidian’ based on shared solidarity than ethnic, religious or caste markers. He used the Laclauian concept of ‘floating signifier’ to explain how ‘Dravidian’ was conceived as an inclusive identity. 

The presentations were bilingual (Tamil and English) and in a manner that was easily accessible to a non-specialist audience. An interactive session followed the presentations. There was an engaged discussion on how marginalized groups like the Dalits can lay claim to the Dravidian movement, the challenge of Tamil nationalism in a time of neo-liberalism, and other issues related to contemporary Tamil politics.

The recording of the event is available on Facebook and has been seen by over 1000 viewers as on 19 March 2021.

Confronting Caste: Panel Discussion at KCL

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Panelists and Titles:

Karthick Ram Manoharan (University of Wolverhampton): The Black Shirt Challenge: Periyar contra Aryanism.

Meena Dhanda (University of Wolverhampton): The Concurrence of Anti-racism and Anti-casteism.

Hugo Gorringe (University of Edinburgh): Changing Caste Cultures.

The panel was moderated by Srilata Sircar and Vignesh Rajahmani.

Talk on ‘Radical Freedom: Periyar and Gender’, University of Wolverhampton

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Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan spoke about Radical Freedom: Periyar and Gender at the CTTR public lecture hosted by Prof. Meena Dhanda on 18 February 2021. This event was hosted online by the University of Wolverhampton research group Language Power and Society. This talk looked at South Indian social reformer and anti-caste radical Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s approach to the women’s question. Periyar was not just an advocate of social and economic equality between the sexes but espoused a radical concept of sexual freedom for women, which is central to his concept of liberty as such. While the anti-colonialists of his period defended native traditions and customs, Periyar welcomed modernity and saw it laden with possibilities for the emancipation of women. Likewise, where other social reformers addressed the women’s question within the ambit of the nation and/or the family, Periyar saw both nation and family as institutions that limited the liberties of women. The talk explored Periyar’s booklet Women Enslaved in detail and engaged with lesser known, new primary material of Periyar on the women’s question, concluding with a discussion of his perspective of the West.

The talk was attended by 63 viewers from 12 countries.

Video to the lecture below

Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan’s lecture on “Radical Freedom: Periyar and Gender.”