Usoltseva M. Social reform movement in Telugu and Tamil-speaking areas of Madras presidency in colonial India (1860-1930).

The thesis is devoted to the study of the nature and peculiarities of the social reform movement in the Madras Presidency in 1860-1930s as the most large-scale manifestation of reform process in the South of colonial India. The author managed to carry out a comprehensive study of the reform movement in the Madras presidency during the period of study, taking into account the socio-economic, geographical, cultural, political and ideological aspects of the South Indian reform process. The complex study is based on the position of the inclusion of the reform movement into the wider context of formation of the societies of modern type, which was a result of changes in social consciousness of Indians under the influence of Western intellectual paradigms and socio-cultural changes that have occurred in the XIX century colonial India. According to the A. J. Toynbee's concept of "Challenge and Response" the social reform movement is considered in the present study as the part of the complex intellectual response of (mostly Western-educated) Indians to the West. The national and regional movements are considered here as the coherent processes to the social reform movement. Thus, the formation of the reform movement in Madras is studied in its relationship with the regional revival (renaissance of the Dravidian culture) and the origin of nationalistic consciousness in a specific South Indian situation, taking into consideration the effect of the popular nationalist concepts in all-Indian scale (which arrived to Madras from Bengal and North-Western regions) as well as the alternative (local) notions of the nation.