'Four makes society': Women's organisation,Dravidian nationalism and women's interpretation of caste,gender and change in South India

Abstract

The proliferation of women's organisations, particularly those attached to larger social movements or state initiatives, necessitates ethnographically situated examinations of the way women's issues and gendered experiences are constituted and understood within specific cultural contexts. This article examines a women's organisation in South India, which is linked to a Dravidian social movement. I explore the way the movement repro duces and challenges the social terrain on which some women are expected to participate in reforming Tamil society. The reformist character of the movement evokes ambivalent responses by women to key elements of its ideology, which calls for the dismantling of caste, and an end to Hindu hegemony characterised by religious dogmatism and Brah minical superiority. The incorporation of feminist discourse into their ideology signals the transnational character of regionally based movements, and provokes further con sideration of the way feminist discourse itself is deployed cross-culturally, and its effect in challenging social inequalities and/or maintaining social and economic differences.