Abstract:
In the scholarly work surrounding the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu, India, none
seems to focus on the particular experience of the upper-caste woman‘s. This paper attempts
to document this narrative. Based on the memories of five upper-caste women through a
series of telephonic interviews conducted between August - September 2015, the study
attempts to discover their remembered history, or rather, their ‗herstory‘ of the Movement,
and locate their understanding of it. Their narrative draws on their experiences between the
period of 1933 - 1967. Working with their memory is not simple, because: a) their memories
are constructed, not just through lived experience, but through the narrative and textual
experiences that they have engaged with afterwards; thus, the study attempts a symptomatic
reading of their memories. b) the researcher is a native Tamil-speaker.. The sample contains
the researchers relatives. Drawing on the framework of Pandiyan, Chakravarti, and V.
Geetha, the investigator looks at the existing history of the genesis of the Movement - the
creation of the Tamil identity through the framing of the Brahmin and the non-Brahmin, the
Aryan and the Dravidian identities. Then, contextualise this framing of identities in the
memories that were articulated by the interviewees, who broadly remembered the movement
along three lines - i) protests against Brahminical Hinduism; ii) language protests -
particularly, protests against Sanskrit; iii) the class struggle that they remember to have been
the underlying cause. Ultimately, their lived experiences and memories are framed by their
own identities, and thus, the study attempts to draw on their memories of growing up as
women, framed within V. Geetha‘s history of the inherent women‘s struggle in the
Movement.
