The years leading up to Periyar's break from the Indian National Congress and the founding of the Self-Respect Movement (SRM) were marked by two significant events. The first was the controversy over discrimination in the Cheranmadevi Gurukulam, a nationalist school, of which the centenary history of The Hindu says: ‘The controversy was one of the contributing factors for E. V. Ramaswami Naicker drifting away from Congress and later forming an organisation of his own whose avowed objective was to eliminate Brahmins and Brahmin influence in Tamil Nad which it wanted to secede from India’ (Parthasarathy, 1978, p. 337).

The bitterness caused by the Cheranmadevi Gurukulam controversy was accentuated by the Vaikom Satyagraha, which Periyar for the most part led during 1924–1925. If the nationalist gurukulam in Cheranmadevi provided separate seating for Brahmins and non-Brahmins in the dining hall, in the temple town of Vaikom in Kerala, Ezhavas and other Depressed Classes were not even permitted entry into the streets surrounding the Mahadeva (Siva) Temple, not to speak of entry into the temple precincts. The Vaikom experience gave Periyar a fuller understanding of nationalist politics and left an indelible imprint on his future career. Periyar returned to these experiences in his speeches and writings all through his life.

These two struggles and the campaign for communal representation (equitable share of seats for non-Brahmins in representative political bodies and in employment and education) were what led Periyar to leave the Congress, of which he had been a part from around the time of the First World War.

The popes of the first decretal age addressed uncertainties about baptism, but left long loose ends for popes of the second decretal age to tie up.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

How did ideologies of war and peace become visible in modern European cities and how did the effects of war manifest themselves in the daily lives of people during times of war? This chapter addresses the role of war (and peace) in the context of European urbanisation from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Starting with the revolutionary wars of the early nineteenth century to the wars of colonial expansion and national unification all the way to the era of the world wars and the subsequent Cold War into the present, the chapter traces the changing engagement between political/military institutions and urban populations/environments. The complex interrelationship between war and European cities was marked by strategic changes in the practice of warfare itself – from battles fought by opposing military forces to practices of total war that increasingly included warfare against civilians (in cities).

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.