PERIYAR: Sovereign Selves
Tuesday | 17 March 2026 | 3.30pm UK | 9pm India
ONLINE only
E V Ramasamy Naicker 'Periyar' (the 'Revered One') remains one of the most dynamic thinkers of modern India. His relentless, iconoclastic thought and writings, his charge of the 'Self Respect Movement' (1920s), are central to realising the sovereignty of the self. This panel discussion will focus on the myriad ways and forms of these selves.
SPEAKERS: Sarah Hodges is Professor of Global Health & Social Medicine at King's College London with research interests in Tamil Nadu, and author of Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India, 1920-1940 (2008); Dr Karthick Ram Manoharan (@KRManoharan) is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, currently Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at University of Cambridge, and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Periyar (2025); Swarnavel Eswaran, an accomplished filmmaker, is Professor of English and Journalism at Michigan State University, and author most recently of 'Periyar, Art and Cinema' (2025); Dr Vignesh Rajahmani (@krvtweets) is Research Affiliate at King's India Institute, King's College London, and author of The Dravidian Pathway: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Politics of Transition in South India (2025); V M S Subagunarajan (@agampuram) is an independent researcher based in Chennai, and editor of Caste and the Crisis of Dignity: Periyar E. V. Ramasamy Speaks (2025).
CHAIR: Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE).
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Please e-mail southasiacentre@lse.ac.uk to register free for this event; the livestream link will be sent to all registered attendees on the day of the event.
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Image used under the Creative Commons License for academic, non-commercial purposes.
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