A 17-year-old Dalit student Chinnadurai, and his 14-year-old sister were attacked with sickles, at 10:30 pm on August 9 at his house, by six minors in Nanguneri in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district. When his younger sister came to save him, she too was hacked. Both victims were undergoing treatment at the Nanguneri government hospital. When the neighbours gathered, the assailants reportedly fled the place. The police nabbed them on August 11.
Chinnadurai is a class 12 student, in a government-aided school in Valliyoor, while his sister 13-year-old Chandraselvi is a class 7 student. The family belongs to the Paraiyar community (Scheduled Caste). Both siblings were hacked with sickles by seven minors who belong to the dominant Maravar community, a sub-caste of Thevar (Backward Class); Thevar elite, entrenched in the polity, are among those who wield power in Tamilnadu.
According to reports, people from Chinnadurai’s village protested along with his family and during this protest, his grandfather collapsed and died on the spot.
Initial police investigation revealed that Chinnadurai had complained of casteist harassment to his parents and had refused to attend school a week before he was attacked. His mother Ambika took him to school and informed his teacher what happened. The teacher then called the students who were harassing Chinnadurai and let them off with a warning not to repeat such behaviour. Angered by this, the boys confronted Chinnadurai on his way home and threatened him. On the same night, the students entered his house with sickles and attacked him.
The police have arrested the minors who hacked the siblings and those who helped them flee to Tenkasi. Among the arrested, four are 17-year-olds and two are 16-year- old students. A seventh accused, who had been on the run, was reportedly arrested in the morning of August 12.
All the six accused have been booked under sections 294(b) (sings, recites or utters any obscene song in public), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (causing hurt by dangerous weapons), 352 (assault), 452 (house-trespass), 506(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 3(1)(r) , 3(1)(s), and 3(2)(va) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) (SC/ST(PoA)) Act.
The names of the accused have been withheld as The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 mandates that details of minors (children) in conflict with the law should not be disclosed.
‘Harassment going on for past 4 years’, says the mother
Ambikapathi, the mother, says she was mistaken and had believed her children were safe in the school they went to in Valliyoor, outside their locality in Nanguneri in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. For years, she was unaware of the casteist harassment and abuse that her son had to endure at school. When she got an inkling, the single- mother said, “I was afraid that one day it would happen to our children. ”
The attack on the Dalit siblings points to the deeply entrenched casteism in the state. That school-level students have taken up arms against their co-students reveals the extent of the degeneration.
The week before the attack, Chinnadurai stopped going to school for almost 10 days. “My son told me that he wanted to discontinue studies and relocate to Chennai.
When I asked him why, he said it was nothing,” Ambikapathi recalls. “On August 8, I called his class teacher to ask if she knew whether something was bothering him. It was then he told the teacher that he was subjected to caste-based harassment and abuse by four students who belong to the Maravar community. “It was only then that
I came to know of the harassment and abuses that he had regularly endured for the last four years,” she said.
On August 9, a day after the phone call with the teacher, Chinnadurai went to school accompanied by his mother and submitted a written complaint. Following this, the teacher warned the students who harassed him. This set off a series of events that led to the hacking that evening.
“Around 4.30 in the evening, the students who harassed him came to our house and questioned why Chinnadurai complained to the teacher. They had a bitter argument with him and left after some time. Later, the parents of one of the students came home, asked him the same questions, and left. There was no way we could predict what was about to happen,” says Sumathi, Chinnadurai’s aunt, detailing the incidents that ended in the attack.
Around 10 pm on the same night, the dominant caste students came back to Chinnadurai’s house and hacked him multiple times with a sickle. After waiting for over an hour for an ambulance to arrive, the neighbours took them to the hospital on a motorbike.
The siblings were taken to the Nanguneri Government Hospital where they got first aid. Later, they were admitted to the Tirunelveli Government Hospital.(photo courtesy TNM)
Detailing the extent of the abuse, Sumathi says that the Maravar students harassed her nephew because he was a bright student. “They didn’t want him to study,” she says. The Maravar students, who are residents of Peruntheru where Chinnadurai too lives, used to harass him by asking him to buy them snacks and cigarettes, carry their bags, and pay their bus fare. “They forced him to skip classes, disrupt classes, and name-call the teachers, so that the teachers would get a poor impression of him. If he failed to do so, they would beat him. He faced such harassment for a long time,” Sumathi reveals.
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The law will do its duty, said the CM
Chief Minister MK Stalin (DMK), expressing concern over the incident, merely said that the law will do its duty. Terming the incident as shocking, he stated that it shows how the poison of caste is deep-rooted in students. “Individuals cannot see their fellow humans as equal but identify them based on their caste, hate them, and express the hatred violently.
“It is intolerable that this trend continues,” the CM said, while also requesting the teachers to inculcate social harmony among the students to stop such incidents from taking place in the future.
On August 12, Tamil Nadu Minister Thangam Thennarasu, accompanied by Assembly Speaker Appavu and Nanguneri MLA Ruby Manoharan (Congress) visited the Dalit victims, at the Tirunelveli Government Hospital.
According to Thennarasu, CM Stalin promised that the government would stand by the victims, offer better treatment, and ensure that their education is uninterrupted.
Stalin on August 12 ordered the setting up of a one-man committee under retired High Court judge Justice K Chandru to recommend suggestions to prevent caste discrimination among school and college students in the state.
But all these formal and minimalist gestures are futile as in Tamilnadu, ruled by Periyarist parties from 1967 till date without interruption, platitudes are not in short supply. Social justice, anti-Brahminism, and self-respect movements are bandied about even as brazen casteist electoral politics have been pursued by almost all election parties.
Here is a rare party PMK led by ‘doctor’ Ramadas that openly calls for a ban of inter-caste marriages with dalits, akin to Hindutva politics of ‘love jihad’. Not only BJP but Periyarist parties (now AIADMK, and DMK earlier) too have been allies with PMK! It is rank opportunism on the part of all the parties in Tamilnadu, Periyarist and Ambedkarite, that swear by the Constitution and Ambedkar.
Unique distinction of Periyarist Tamilnadu
Perhaps no other state has a parliamentary party that openly calls for a ban on inter- caste marriages. That is the unique distinction of Tamilnadu, where Periyarist politics have been dominating the Tamilnadu polity for a century now:
Non-Brahmin leaders of Justice Party led the then Madras province as Chief Ministers for 13 out of 17 years between 1920-37. Post-1947 Madras (Tamilnadu), after some years of Brahmin Rajaji’s leadership, saw non-Brahmin Kamaraj as the Chief Minister for a decade from 1954 to 1963, followed by another non-Brahmin CM Bhaktavatsalam. From 1967 till date, it was Periyarist parties (DMK, AIADMK) who headed the state without interruption (except brief stints of President’S Rule.
Have the Constitution and the Courts any role in tackling this cateist irony in a state that is celebrated as a model by votaries of eternal caste-reservation, that too opposing the creamy-layer concept?
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Another shocking incident on August 17, Parents’ complicity
Even as this case was in the news, in another shocking incident, Hari Prasad, a Class 11 student from the Pallar (SC) community, in Kalugumalai, Tuticorin was attacked by 10 students on Thursday, August 17. He was sub jected to casteist harassment at school when he tried to stop a fight between two other students in which his friend Hemanth was involved. Later that day, a group of ten students travelled to Lakshmipuram and attacked, castigated and threatened to kill him before they fled. Later, he was admitted to the Government Hospital in Kovilpatti for treatment.
Sumathi however voiced her suspicions regarding the involvement of the accused’s parents in the crime. One of the parents had visited the family in the evening and scolded the victim. “They must have planned it this way as the case would not be strong if it is minors who committed the crime. Sooner or later, they would be discharged. But it is our children who need to live in the fear of being discriminated against and attacked,” she says.
Sumathi said her sister Ambikapathi is a cook in a government school at Peruntheru, Nanguneri. “To afford a better education for her children, she works as a house help in her free time. That’s how she raised her children.”
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Caste atrocities and ‘caste threads’ in schools for decades
It is not as if it is a rare and unforeseen incident. Kathir, the founder of the NGO Evidence, says that in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, schools see violent expressions of caste hatred. The proliferation of caste atrocities inside Tamil Nadu’s schools have now become more obvious than ever before. Urging the government to form a committee to monitor caste-based discrimination in schools and colleges, Kathir demands a study on caste discrimination prevailing inside education institutions.
Colour-coded threads have been used as caste-markers in Tamil Nadu over the past few years.
A 2015-report in Indian Express ( Arun Janardhanan, November 5, 2015 ) details the practice from a school in Tirunelveli, a southern district in Tamil Nadu. Express reporters visited “schools across the country where lessons in caste differences start early.”
“ In the schools of Tirunelveli, about 650 km south of Chennai, caste comes in shades of red, yellow, green and saffron. It’s what students wear on their wrists, on their foreheads, around their necks, under their shirts. It’s who they are.
At the Government Higher Secondary School in Tirunelveli town, a Class X student extends his hand to display his green-and-red kayaru, a wrist band of interwoven threads. “The upper castes have yellow-red bands, so we have these,” he said.
Thevars, Nadars, Yadavs are socially dominant communities in south Tamil Nadu. These communities also have considerable political clout in the region.
“ While threads in yellow-red combination are worn by students from the Thevar community, Nadar students wear blue-yellow threads. Yadavs wear saffron-coloured thread.
“ Students from the Dalit communities wear green-red or green-black-white threads on their wrists. This enables students to identify who they can mingle with and who they cannot.
“ Similarly, the tilaks that students wear on their foreheads are also indicators of caste, says the report. While Thevars and Nadars have their own style of wearing tilaks, Dalits don’t wear them, the report adds.”
Teachers allege rampant use of ‘caste threads’ in schools even as govt denies practice.
While teachers say that the practice of wearing caste markers has come into sharp focus only over the last decade, anti-caste activist Kathir from the NGO Evidence says it dates back to half a century ago. It refers to the period DMK for the frist time came to power in late 1960s.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/wearing-caste-on-my-wrist- green-for-dalits-red-for-thevars/
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Threads and tilaks, tell tales of caste, are “related to Hinduism”, asserted BJP, an ally of AIADMK
Now Periyarists of Tamilnadu joined hands and formally allied with Hindutva politics, an explosive mixture.
Students are frequently engaged in scuffles over ‘caste threads’, discrimination, and abuses. With the latest incident, students have gone from wearing ‘caste bands’ on their wrists to wielding sickles.
The issue of caste threads had been further politicized in Tamilnadu. Megha Kaveri for TNM had reported it on August 16, 2019:
“ Caste discrimination is a reality in several schools in Tamil Nadu, there have been reports on students being made to wear colour-coded threads on their wrists and tilaks on their foreheads to identify their caste. In an effort to crack the whip on such a caste-based discrimination, a circular was issued by the Tamil Nadu’s School Education Department warning of stringent action against those institutes that continue the discriminatory practice.
“But instead of stamping out such caste-based discrimination and issuing a warning, the Tamil Nadu School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan (AIADMK) has denied that the practice exists. What’s more, Sengottaiyan chose to blame the media for reporting such caste discrimination. He asserted: “There is no such discrimination going on..”
Sengottaiyan also reemphasized that schools will function as they did before the circular was issued, a move that will enable such caste-based discrimination to continue. “As far as we are concerned, the activities related to schools will continue as it is now,” he said.
It all began on August 2 (2019) when the School Education Department issued a circular to all the District Education Officers directing them to take action against schools which permit students to wear caste-markers like coloured threads, rings and tilaks on their foreheads.
The circular came in response to a representation submitted to the department by a group of officer trainees of the IAS 2018 batch.
“These practices, supposedly, are being used for sports team selection, reassembling during class and lunch intervals. Allegedly these practices are enforced by students themselves and supported by influential caste persons and teachers,” read the circular.
‘What caste discrimination?’ the TN Minister rejected the circular stopping caste bands in schools.
The circular was vehemently opposed by BJP National Secretary H Raja, who condemned the circular strongly. He, an AIADMK’s ally, had asked for the circular to be withdrawn and said that tying threads on wrists and wearing tilaks on foreheads are related to Hinduism.
“Banning these in schools is a blatant anti-Hindu action. Does the School Education Director have the courage to ban the symbols of other religions? This circular must be withdrawn immediately,” he tweeted.
Though the Tirunelveli district administration had issued directions to the Education Department to take strict action against such practices, it was only an oral direction. The circular issued on August 2 , 2019, was perhaps one of the first written directions issued in this regard by the government of Tamil Nadu.
Following KA Sengottaiyan’s statement that the circular was issued without his knowledge, H Raja also demanded that action be taken against the Director of School Education, who issued the circular.
However, one of BJP’s allies in Tamil Nadu, the Puthiya Thamizhagam, a Dalit party, has come out in support of the directive.
Shyam Krishnasamy, son of Puthiya Thamizhagam’s founder K Krishnasamy, countered H Raja stating that though tying threads and wearing tilaks are markers of caste, the students are not adapting them as religious identities.
“…Especially in southern districts, it is seen as caste identities only. It creates caste divide among the students. Tamil Nadu government’s action is acceptable and must be implemented,” he tweeted.
DMK is aware of and complicit in all this. They can’t blame it on AIADMK and BJP alliance alone, as it is a very old malaise, almost 50-years old, in Tamilnadu.
“People from each caste will discuss and adopt one particular combination of colours for them to wear. These are caste identifiers and are done to organize themselves based on caste,” Kathir explained. Clarifying that religious beliefs are different and that a student can wear a cross or a pendant of Lord Muruga, which are not the crux of the circular here, Kathir said, “The colour threads are tied with an intention to organize themselves based on caste. This practice must be abolished.”
( Priyanka Thirumurthy, TNM, AUGUST 19, 2019)
“The practice is rampant irrespective of caste, be it – Thevars, Gounders or Vanniyar. People from Dalit castes too have this practice of wearing threads, but this is in response to other castes assembling against them. Dalits tend to wear blue or red sometimes depending on where they live,” says Kathir.
“ It was in 2008 that Bhavani (name changed), then a teacher at a government school in Tiruvannamalai, first noticed the coloured threads on the hands of her students…as time went by, she noticed that students who wore threads of one colour formed clusters in class and stuck to the same groups outside it.
“After months of observing students, I realised that children wearing yellow belonged to the Vanniyar community and the ones wearing blue were from Dalit communities,” she tells TNM.
In the decade since she learned this, Bhavani has been transferred three schools and has now become a headmistress at a government school in Vellore. What hasn’t changed however is the proliferation of caste markers within schools in the state. “It has become very prevalent now. At least 10% of the students wear these caste markers and the practice has also spread to the girls,” she said.
Bhavani points out that in her current school in Vellore, Vanniyars and Mudhaliyars are the dominant castes, and there are also Dalit students. She says that black, yellow and red are common colours in the playground.
“And that is not all. These students even write their caste names on the walls of the school. This includes messages like – ‘Vanniyar Perumai’ (Vanniyar Pride) or ‘Parayan da’ (I am a Parayan),” she says, “I have noticed girls writing caste slogans in their books. This includes phrases like – ‘Sethalum, Vanniyar dhaan gethu’ (Even if we die, Vanniyar is best).”
Even after school hours, these students form groups and get into petty fights, say teachers. These tussles are likely to take on caste dimensions and turn ugly as parents also allegedly get involved.
“Now, there are even fights between children from different dominant communities of two different villages. They fight over who is ‘better’ or ‘stronger’,” says Bhavani, “And they are no doubt merely replaying the caste sentiment they see in their houses.”
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/teachers-allege-rampant-use-caste- threads-schools-even-govt-denies-practice-107441
Caste markers in cosmoploitan Chennai, internet facilitates
The caste markers are also not restricted to villages.
“With internet accessibility now coming into the picture, ideas of caste pride have seeped into the classroom early and this is further dividing students. Poisonous thoughts are too easily available and encouraged,” says Uma Maheshwari, a teacher from a government school at Chrompet in Chennai, “Here in the city, since we have students from several castes, you have colours including red, black, yellow and blue in terms of threads and chains. It is very apparent that students from one community are friends and will not mingle with the others.”
While teachers say that the practice of wearing caste markers has come into sharp focus only over the last decade, anti-caste activist Kathir from the NGO Evidence says it dates back to half a century ago.
“We can’t point out the exact origin of this practice exactly but what we can infer is that it stems from the fact that every caste has its own flag, emblem, and common colour. For example, Vanniyars exceedingly use yellow, and Thevars red. Similarly they have different gods and icons for a caste and create symbols around this god,” explains Kathir.
Expanding on this narrative, Bhavani says students visit these temples and return with markers of the particular caste they belong to.
And because these threads are tied at places of worship, teachers and heads of schools fear questioning students.
Caste discrimination taught from school days
“If we ask them, they will say it is related to religious beliefs and then we can’t interfere in the matter,” says Bhavani, “But this is just the beginning of a lifetime of discrimination on the basis of caste for the children. It starts with these threads but soon they stop socialising with boys wearing threads of different colours. Then they will refuse to visit even a neighbour from a different caste to get school notes.
Parents knowingly or unknowingly ingrain the idea of caste into the children and leave indelible reminders of the existing divisions in society,” she adds.
In 2015, when these threads were found to be used in Tirunelveli district to identify students belonging to a particular caste and attack them, efforts were made to identify a solution to the issue. However, a similar question of hurting religious sentiments stopped district authorities from placing a ban on the threads.
Kathir, too, agrees that schools must talk to students on social equity in order to bring about change in society.
“But instead, the government is in denial because admitting to the practice would mean acknowledging that untouchability still exists in the state. Article 17 of the Constitution clearly states that untouchability is abolished and its practice is forbidden,” Kathir says, “And now it would be too embarrassing to admit that the state has not paid heed to the Constitution.”
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Casteist ‘lion of Kongunadu’ convicted but Caste frenzy reigns Tamilnadu!
The caste frenzy in Tamilnadu can palpably be felt in this photo of 2015: Yuvaraj, the leader of the caste outfit Dheeran Chinnamalai Peravai, being welcomed as a hero who had given the slip to the police for 109 days. He was ‘shown’ by police as absconding, even as he had appeared in TV interviews, and openly supported his caste killings. (Photo courtesy: The News Minute.)
Yuvaraj was leading a “ Educated Caste Hindu Youth Campaign Against Inter Caste Marriages,” as captioned by The Hindu, July, 16, 2012. He had set up a forum for that, developed an intelligence-gathering system for such marriages, and addressed meetings in colleges in Kongunadu region.
“ As a person who reflected the caste majoritarian psyche in this region, Yuvaraj gained acceptance as a caste mafia and someone who could keep their caste pride intact…”
Sporting slogans like ‘Kongunadu singam (lion) and yuvaraj army’, on cars, youth freely roamed about the streets..wearing tea shirts with Dheeran vaarisu (successor) printed on them…
After much drama and manipulation by his gang and supporters, Yuvaraj and nine others were at last convicted (on June 2, 2023) by Madurai High court, and given imprisonm ent for life, for muder in 2015 of Gokulraj, dalit Engineering student, at Namakkal, merely under suspicion that he was in love with Swathi, a woman from the dominant Gounder community. She, a prime witness, turned hostile, “made a mockery of law”, lied before the Court, and was charged for perjury. The convict himself seems to have no remorse for the murder he committed and is always seen smiling in the videos.
The prosecution presented it as a “caste bigotry murder”. The Court (Judges MS Ramesh and N. Anand Venkatesh), upholding the Trial Court’s verdict, itself said:
“ There was no personal enmity.. The accused in this case were under the influence of a demon called caste..tried to manipulate the case using media.. we remain conscious of the fact that moral conviction has no place in criminal jurisprudence…”
He was being described as a ‘warrior’, ‘king’, and ‘lion of Kongunadu (western Tamil Nadu)’… the Instagram fan page with almost 2,250 followers declared that “our people” must be ready to be involved in “field work” with Yuvaraj …And despite two judges of the High Court cautioning of pressures, these fan pages have not been reigned in by the Tamil Nadu police.
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/fan-pages-celebrate-caste-murder- convict-yuvaraj-hc-hears-appeals-170627
“ One Yuvaraj convicted , but thousands of Yuvarajs are outside,” warned a BJP social media in-charge, of a proud digital india of Amritkal period.
Despite Court verdicts and punishments, criminals, now increasingly in politics and power, get big media coverage and political mileage. They go to Supreme Court where often it takes decades, after which many are acquitted!
One month after the conviction, what is brewing? See this report of July 6:
Yuvaraj’s supporters said the judiciary had “failed the Gounder community”.
Esakki Muthu, the BJP’s social media in-charge in Tiruchendur, took it a step further and tweeted, “If 100 Gukulrajs (victim) are rejoicing that one Yuvaraj has been arrested (convicted), thousands of Yuvarajs are outside.”
“Muthu’s tweet is just one of many other posts on social media warning that the government may have convicted one Yuvaraj, but many more like him will rise.
“ Pages valourising Yuvaraj cropped up after his party – the Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai – began fanning casteist flames in the Kongu belt of Tamil Nadu. The pages initially amplified his opinions but, over time, produced a volume of posts, stories and videos that encouraged others to emulate the acts of a man convicted of murder. “
“We will always follow your path…” said one. The social media page has over 6,000 followers. It contains several posts praising Yuvaraj and calling the courts “biased against him because of his caste”… Like kongu_samugam (community), the page has consistently been posting videos and pictures in open support of the murder convict…they valorise popular caste leaders like Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar and ‘Kaduvetti’ Guru,who had promoted caste holocausts.
“There has been a significant rise in the number of these (caste and sub-caste) associations in the last 25 years or so. These associations travel to various districts that have a large population of their caste and teach caste pride to the young children there,”an activist said. “ Since these children have access to the internet, they share what they were taught, and that is how these caste pages are formed.”
“Sometimes, pictures of people who had inter-caste marriages are shared on these groups and they are subject to abuse,” a victim said. “This can put the couple in danger because their contact details and residence might also be shared on these groups.”
Muthu of course was arrested and released on conditional bail. The party state vice- president Narayan Thirupathi said the BJP cannot take responsibility for an individual’s post..
https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/06/a-dalit-man-was-murdered-in-tn-his- killer-became-a-hero-for-caste-pride-online
That is how the amoeba of Modi-led BJP and the Sangh parivar work, amid such disclaimers, and thrive under Periyarist rulers, who hobnob with them.They join hands, dare not ostracize the PMK and the like who indulge in brazen casteism as different from their own brand of it. It is like the dubious choice between soft and hard Hindutva.It is part of politics of appeasement that is ignored.
Casteism in India’s backward regions and states is no big news. But it is equally bad if not worse in Periyarist Tamilnadu, a cancer hidden and covered up in a progressive garb.
The Ambedkarites and the Left are content with a few legislature seats thrown in, also by the Periyarist rulers. Such is india’s dance of democracy the news media celebrates 24×7. And the ‘Vishwa guru’ is an ally of world’s greatest and richest democracies, we are assured, soon to be among the world’s top three in GDP.
Challenging such primordial and base politics, amid deceptive economics, is the need of the hour.
(Caste oppression in Periyarist Tamilnadu was covered earlier in a series of articles by Ramakrishnan, in countercurrents.org. 09/04/2022 etc.)
‘Honour killings’ in the land of ‘self-respect movement’ , 06/12/2021
https://countercurrents.org/2021/12/honour-killings-in-the-land-of-self-respect-movement-part-1/
Social Justice in words, Brazen Casteism And Slavery in Practice , in Tamil Nadu
07/01/2022
Tamilnadu’s Caste mafia has deep roots and thrives by patronage of ruling parties , 26/03/2022
(The author is a political observer who frequently wrote for countercurrents.org.)
