Overview

• Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin will address the Self-Respect Movement and its Legacies Conference 2025 at the University of Oxford on September 4.
• He will unveil Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s portrait on campus and release two volumes marking the movement’s hundred-year journey and current relevance.
• The two-day conference on September 4–5, co-hosted by St Antony’s College and Balliol College, brings together scholars to examine self-respect as a political and ethical principle with global reach.
• Stalin cast the event as placing Periyar’s anti-caste, rationalist and gender-equality ideals in conversation with worldwide struggles for dignity, equality and freedom.
• The centenary looks back to 1925, when Periyar launched the weekly Kudi Arasu and parted ways with the Indian National Congress, setting the movement’s reform agenda in motion.