Modern History · Anti-Caste & Lower-Caste Movements (Jyotiba Phule, SNDP)
UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 78
The concept being tested: Self-Respect Movement (Periyar, 1925).
Who among the following was the founder of the 'Self-Respect Movement'?
Options
- A'Periyar' E. V. Ramaswamy NaickerCorrect answer
- BDr. B. R. Ambedkar
- CBhaskarrao Jadhav
- DDinkarrao Javalkar
The answer: 'Periyar' E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker
The Self-Respect Movement was launched in 1925 in the Madras Presidency by 'Periyar' E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, after he broke away from the Indian National Congress over its unwillingness to press caste-based quotas and its Brahmin-dominated leadership. The movement rejected Brahminical ritualism, temple priesthood and the varna system outright, and promoted rationalism, atheism, and self-respect marriages conducted without a Brahmin priest or Sanskrit rites. Periyar built the movement through the Kudi Arasu journal and later fused it into the Justice Party's non-Brahmin politics, which eventually fed into the Dravidian movement. Because the question asks specifically for the founder of this named organisation, and Periyar is the person UPSC's own sources and NCERT modern history material credit with starting it in Tamil Nadu, 'Periyar' E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker is the only option that fits the exact founding attribution being tested.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC is testing whether aspirants can separate two parallel but distinct non-Brahmin reform currents of the 1920s: Periyar's Self-Respect Movement in the Tamil south versus the Satyashodhak-descended non-Brahmin politics of Jadhav and Javalkar in Maharashtra, with Ambedkar's separate Dalit movement thrown in as a further distractor.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 10 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.