Caste and Violence - A Case Study OF Tamil Nadu - Part V

E. Violence Against Dalit Women During the Southern District Clashes

On January 25, 1998, the Dalit colony of Veludavur village in Villapuram district was attacked by members of seven caste Hindu villages. The attack was allegedly perpetrated by the Vanniya caste and instigated by the Naidars (both backward castes). Tensions began with a government auction of common properties in the village, such as ponds and tamarind trees; the Dalits were demanding their right to participate. The same evening, Vanniyas entered and destroyed 400 Dalit huts. Many of the young Dalit men were in Andhra Pradesh at the time, cultivating sugarcane. Only women, children and the elderly were left in the village, and the women were particularly targeted. A social worker in the village claimed that there were “sexual attempts on many women, but they don’t want to talk about it. Many are unmarried or their husbands are away. They fear the consequences if these things are revealed.” Over 700 families were displaced as a result of the attack. They took shelter in neighboring villages. 

Burnad Fatima of the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum (TNWF) explained the number of cases TNWF had come across in which women were targets of caste clashes: Any time any caste riots take place, there is immediate action against women and immediate raping. During last year’s riots, a forty-year-old woman was gang raped. A seventy-year-old was dragged out of her house and stripped. In Anchipet a handicapped girl was thrown from her wheelchair which was then damaged. Innocent women are butchered, raped, and killed even though they are not directly responsible for any of the riots. TNWF and People’s Watch members went on to describe another attack during the southern district clashes, and the lack of press attention to such cases:In Nammakal [district] a girl was gang raped, murdered, and then butchered. She belonged to the scavengers community. The men belonged to the weaving community. They cut off her hand and leg and shaved her head. They then cut her head and put a stick into her private parts and then hung her head with the stick. Why are they driven to this extent? Because for them Dalits are nothing. They give more respect to their animals... The papers are censored, they don’t name the community, and they don’t report the figures.

A representative of the Rural Center for Women’s Development in Tirunelveli district spoke to Human Rights Watch of instances of rape by landlords, other upper castes, and the police, “who always support the landlords... [W]omen never say anything because they are afraid and need employment. Also society would blame them. Even their husband would separate from them. I see it daily.” Punduthai, a forty-five-year-old widow and mother of two, told Human Rights Watch that she had to leave her village to protect herself and her daughter from sexual abuse by Thevar men during the clashes.

In the village, the Thevars entered the house and had sexual intercourse with the Dalit women. They used force and committed rape. My husband died, so if I had stayed then the same things would happen to me. My daughter is also a mature girl. She is twenty years old. I was also worried about my daughter. I can’t arrange her marriage. I left all the lands. This is the regular lot of the dominated persons. If there are any riots then all of them jointly rape; they gang rape. I hid in the hills at the time of the riots. We were afraid of these things, so we left.  In November 1997 a twenty-two-year-old Dalit woman spoke up against the debt bondage of her husband and his family (Thevars are the dominant moneylenders and Dalits their primary borrowers). As a result she was brutally beaten and sexually abused by a Vanniya landlord: Her husband and father-in-law did not go to work for two days. The landlord came and asked why. He threatened and insulted her, and she said, “We are not living here under your mercy.” The landlord went wild. He started beating her, he tore her blouse to pieces, touched her breast, hit her in the vagina and rolled her on the ground. There was no one to stop him. 

Due to disinterest, ignorance of proper procedure, or their own caste biases, the police failed to register or properly investigate many cases of attacks against women during the clashes. Only with pressure from organized women’s and human rights groups has the issue been placed before national commissions. The recommendations of these commissions, however, are not binding under statutory law. 

F. Police torture of women/custodial violence

 

In addition to attacks by members of the upper castes, women are attacked by the police, security forces, and private militias or armies hired by Thevars. Human Rights Watch spoke to many government officials, activists, and villagers in the Tamil Nadu region about police torture and custodial violence against women. C. V. Shankar, director for the Adi Dravida Tribal Welfare Department, of the state government of Tamil Nadu, explained:We found that women are put in front in both communities and act as a buffer. This has resulted in police action against women. They are taken far away from their homes. Unless they were directly involved in violence, they should not be arrested. In some cases we felt that the arrests could have been avoided. 

H. Hanumanthappa, then-chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, added:Once the police start raiding, the menfolk run away. Then they [police] make women the victims. The procedure they adopt is to take the child or wife so that the men come back. They feel that they are the masters of the situation. It has resulted in mass rapes.

The police practice of taking family members as hostages in order to force their relatives to turn themselves in is a common occurrence in Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country. Specific incidents of hostage-taking and custodial violence against women are described below.

Guruswamy Guruammal, a twenty-six-year-old agricultural laborer, suffered a miscarriage as a result of brutal beatings during a police raid on December 2, 1997. She is a resident of Chilaumbotti village of the southern district of Theni andearns Rs. 20 a day (US$0.50). The raid had preceded a planned visited by Dr. Krishanaswamy; posters had been distributed to announce his arrival. On December 2, one such poster was burned by Thevars in the district which led to a Pallar protest and road block. Police raided the village in response to the protests and assaulted many Dalits with their lathis. 

At 9:00 a.m. the police lathi-charged the villagers. Superintendent of Police Rajesh Das called me a pallachi, which is a caste name for prostitute. He then opened his pant zip. Sub-Inspector Arivanandam, who is from same community as me, was also there. Rajesh Das said, “Please stand, do not go,” and other police scolded me. At 11:00 a.m. the sub-collector came. I told the collector that the superintendent of police had opened his zip and used a vulgar word. I also told him that they had broken my silver pot. The sub-collector said, “You go, I will deal with him.” Das was angry that I had pointed him out. 

The police, numbering in the hundreds, returned early the next morning and again lathi-charged the village. They broke all the doors and arrested all the men in the village. Arivanandam and Rajesh Das said, “Where is Guruammal’s house?” My husband hid under the cot. My mother was with me at the time. I was in my night clothes. The police started calling me a prostitute. I replied, “Your wife is a prostitute.” They beat me. I was four months pregnant at the time. He pulled me naked on the road for one hundred feet. I got injuries on my legs. There were two elderly witnesses, a woman and my grandfather. The police also beat the woman when she asked them to stop dragging me. She is sixty years old; her hand was fractured. There were two men police and two lady police. They brought me to the police van and took me to the office of the Theni superintendent of police. Fifty-three men had been arrested. One of them took off his lungi [wrap-around cloth] and gave it to me to cover myself. He was only wearing shorts after that.

Guruammal begged the police at the station to help her. She explained that she was pregnant and in need of medical attention. In response, they called her names and mocked her for making such bold statements the day before. Eventually, Guruammal was transferred to the Trichi jail hospital, where she remained for twenty-five days. After ten days, she had a miscarriage. At the time of the interview, and as a result of being dragged and beaten by the police fists and guns, Guruammal was still visibly scarred on her neck, arms, legs, and abdomen. She claimed that the police told her to testify that the raid on her village was in search of the illicit brewing of arrack (illicit liquor): 

They said if you accept the fact that the raid was for arrack, then you will be released. They said, “If you don’t say arrack, we will file charges against you.” So these are the cases that were filed against me and the fifty-three men. Although Guruammal was attacked as punishment for speaking up against the police, many other women are punished for alleged crimes committed by their male relatives. Activists from People’s Watch and the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum explained the tactics employed by the police: The police enter houses and attack the women even though they should never search when the women are alone. The police are arresting women if either the husband or son is absconding. They take them into custody and rape them. Three years ago, in a slum nearby, a forty-three-year-old woman lost her husband. Her son was involved in a murder case. She was arrested along with her daughter and daughter-in-law. They were taken to the police station where the police raped the mother in front of the other women. They then brought her home and burned her in her hut. 

The activists also described a new tactic employed by the police of removing women’s clothes and beating them from their knees to their shoulders, “because they know that women will not show others these parts.” At a Madras conference on women’s rights, held on April 28 and 29, 1995, dozens of Dalit and tribal women publicly came forward to testify about their experiences of custodial rape at the hands of Tamil Nadu police. The conference was sponsored by the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum and Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law and Development. In many of the statements, women claimed that the police were searching for their male relatives when they first came upon them. Pursuant to Section 160 of the Criminal Procedure Code, police conducting investigations are prohibited from questioning female witnesses at any place other than their residence. Women are often unaware of these laws, and their ignorance is exploited by the police. As she stated at the women’s rights conference, Rangammal of Orathanadu village came into contact with the police when her husband was repeatedly arrested for selling arrack. One night, the police came to her house and forcibly took her to the police station.

They said I should not be going home at that time and dragged me into the room, and three of them raped me repeatedly. I lost consciousness. In the morning they allowed me to go with a warning that I should not reveal anything. Due to fear I remained silent. Vijaya from Coimbatore was approached by the police late in the night: When I demanded to know where I was being taken, the police answered that I was providing food for [my brother] Vellaiyan... Since Vellaiyan was related to us the police caught hold [of] us like that... Later, one after another, five of them raped me repeatedly. I was unable to bear the pain since I was also a small girl... [T]he policemen said that I was pretending pain and I would even bear with another ten persons. 

The police had also taken Vijaya’s parents into custody. “The police said if I promised not to reveal anything to anyone, they would release my parents, and I agreed to it.” Together with her aunt and mother, Vijaya arrived at the Anathapuram police station the next day. The Sub-Inspector on duty was Krishnamoorthy. He said at least the Pondicherry police had raped and left [me] alive, if he telephoned the Dharmapuri police [they] would rape me and throw me [in] the canal... When we pleaded that we were uneducated and without any jobs, mostly engaged in manual works and needed justice, the Sub-Inspector threatened that he would have us beaten up if we further spoke. We had no other alternative but to return to the village. 

With the help of civil liberties groups, Vijaya approached the police again. After some days, she added, “women police took me to a doctor. They explained to the doctor that I was of low character, a prostitute, that I was spreading rumours to prevent the arrest of my brothers, etc. They then advised the doctor not to take my case serious[ly].” Vijaya’s family was soon approached by the police and offered Rs. 150,000 (US$3,750) to drop the case. She did not accept the money. The police charged Vijaya’s father with theft and took him into custody for ten days. He claimed that he was tortured, while the police claimed that Vijaya was threatening the police with a false case of rape so that her father would be released. Because none of the villagers were willing to step forward as witnesses, Vijaya was unable to pursue her case. 

In the village of Muthaandikuppam, South Arcot district, a husband filed a complaint against his wife, Vasantha, after a misunderstanding between the couple. On the night of March 21, 1994, Vasantha was forced to spend the night in the police station under the pretext that there were no women police available to escort her home. She was “gang raped by four constables and a sub-inspector of the same police station and [then] murdered. They attempted to dispose [of] the body but could not succeed. They spread a rumour that Vasantha committed suicide by hanging from the fan at the police rest room in the police station.” Community members, civil liberties groups, and political parties demanded appropriate, severesanctions against the perpetrators. The Tamil Nadu government responded by temporarily suspending the constables involved. 

On February 21, 1995, twenty-year-old Poonkothai witnessed the rape and murder of her forty-eight-year-old mother by police who were searching for her brother. The incident took place around 7:00 a.m. when police arrived at Poonkothai’s house looking for her brother Murthy: “They blamed my mother [for] hiding the whereabouts of my brother, who is suspected in a murder of a person found dead_ near his house.” Despite her mother’s repeated denials, the police took both of them, along with Poonkothai’s one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, to the Vannarapettai police station. We were beaten up severely and were tortured with abusive words and brutal attacks... One of the senior personnel ordered the others to use the “Punjab method” to elicit facts from my mother. They stripped my mother in front of me and took her inside_ I repeatedly heard my mother groaning and pleading them not to torture her_ With tears she was telling me that four men gang raped her and tortured her by inserting the lathi in the vagina and beat[ing] her in her private parts. 

The police later brought her mother home, stuffed a piece of cloth in her mouth, poured petrol over her, and set her on fire. They left the scene soon thereafter. A neighbor intervened and took the mother to the hospital, where she later died. When Poonkothai’s husband approached the police station to file a case, the police registered the death as a suicide. After many NGO protests, the police filed a First Information Report (FIR). Poonkothai’s two neighbors, whose sons were also police suspects, and her two sisters-in-law were also taken into custody for several days and similarly tortured. One sister-in-law had just delivered a child. A report produced by the women’s conference stated: “The drama usually played by police is just this. They come in search of the offenders and finding them absconding, whisk away the womenfolk to the police station and outrage theirmodesty.” The conference also concluded that atrocities committed on women by the police were increasing. 

G. Renewed Clashes

From October to December 1998, violent confrontations in the districts of Ramanathapuram, Pudukkottai, Perambalur, and Cuddalore signaled that caste clashes had not only continued but had spread to once-peaceful districts. In Ramanathapuram district, Thevars responded to a state-wide Dalit conference by organizing a rally on October 4, 1998. That afternoon, streams of lorries carrying Thevar youths were seen heading toward Ramanathapuram. On the way, several vehicles stopped at roadside villages and Thevars entered Dalit and Muslim hamlets throwing petrol bombs and ransacking houses. Two women were killed. Thevar youths claimed that they were provoked, allegedly by Dalits placing barriers on the road. As news of the attacks spread, Dalits retaliated. Despite all the violence, Koottamaippu—the Thevar coalition sponsoring the rally—was allowed to hold it. Among its demands: the repeal of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. 

Dalits and journalists throughout the affected areas have blamed the police and district administration for their failure to effectively respond to increasing tensions in the district arising from publicity for the conference. According to Frontline, a bi-monthly news magazine, “The police presence was minimal and vehicles were not being checked for weapons. This was in contrast to the intensive searches carried out by the police when Puthiya Tamalingam [a Dalit organization] held its rally on September 11.” 

The situation remained volatile in the district for days afterwards. Police were given shoot-on-sight orders for arsonists, while a large contingent of the striking police force was rushed in. Both sides also alleged harassment and torture by the police conducting raids under the pretext of searching for criminals and weapons. According to People’s Watch, the death toll on both sides reached fifteen. On October 7, 1998, three days after the incident, state Governor Fathima Beevi called for an overhauling of the police system to prevent “police excess.” The director general of the Bureau of Police Research and Development urged implementation of the National Police Commission recommendations, while the chairperson of the State Human Rights Commission recommended that police personnel should be made to undergo human rights awareness training every six months. None of these recommendations had been implemented as of February 1999. 

Just over a month after the violence in Ramanathapuram, caste tensions erupted in Thirunallur village in nearby Pudukkottai district. On November 19, 1998, three Dalit youths were stripped, tied to a tree, and beaten through the night. According to a press report, their “heads were tonsured, and they were also made to roll around the village temple in the presence of a large gathering which included their kith and kin. The next morning they were asked to leave the village.” The attack was part of a judgment handed down by twelve members of the all-caste Hindu local village council: the young men were being punished for marrying non-Dalit Hindu girls. Tensions remained high in the village for weeks following the beatings. Not until a month later were the culprits charged and the victims givenpart of their compensation, under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities)Act,    1989.

On December 1, 1998, in a massive operation reminiscent of the 1995 police raid on Kodiyankulum village, 300 armed policemen entered the Dalit colony at Ogalur village in Perambalur district. Under the pretext of rounding up “anti-social elements,” police reportedly entered over 1,000 homes and, using lathis and iron rods, attacked the residents. After causing extensive damage to their homes and property, police arrested sixty-nine Dalits. Among them were thirty-four women, some with babies in their arms and a few who were pregnant. The reported background to the attack was a dispute between the Dalits and the caste Hindus over a piece of temple land and the attempted sexual assault of a Dalit woman by a caste Hindu man in the village; the man accompanied the police during their attack. As of January 1999, the Dalit laborers were still unable to work in the caste Hindu fields and their children were unable to go to school. 

Another incident, reported by the news magazine Frontline, took place on December 16, 1998. In Puliyur village, Cuddalore district, a mob of caste Hindus (Vanniyas) numbering about 300 raided a Dalit settlement and attacked its residents with sticks and iron rods. Approximately 500 houses were ransacked and thirteen Dalits seriously injured. The day before the attack, a Dalit funeral procession was stopped as it passed a Vanniya house. “In the melee that followed, the caste-Hindu resident was reportedly assaulted by a Dalit, who, it is said, had been slapped a day earlier for smoking in the presence of the caste-Hindu resident.” In this case, smoking was a luxury to which the Dalits were not entitled in the presence of a caste Hindu. 

H. Tamil Nadu Government-Appointed Commissions

State governments in India share a common history of appointing judicial commissions of inquiry to quell public outcries against police excesses during large-scale communal and caste clashes. Although these commissions do serve a political function, their findings, if and when released to the public, are frequently in favor of the state. The Tamil Nadu experience is no exception to this rule. As of December 1998 the state was one of five to have established a state human rights commission (SHRC). The commission’s investigations into human rights abuses by the police and caste Hindus are, however, blocked if the state first appoints its own judicial commission of inquiry. Like the National Human Rights Commission, state human rights commissions are denied jurisdiction over an investigation if the matter is pending before “any commission duly constituted under any law for the time-being [sic] in force.” The state government of Tamil Nadu has exploited this provision by appointing its own commissions of inquiry before state human rights commission investigations get underway. States have little control over the investigations of statutory (human rights) commissions. Conversely, government-appointed commissions almost invariably find in favor of the state and the police. Those findings that go against the state are rarely implemented or made public.

A Tamil Nadu government official explained that judicial commissions’ findings “do not become public unless the government tables it with the legislature; findings that are against the state are often not tabled... By appointing its own commissions, the state government does not permit the State Human Rights Commission to do the investigation. It literally ties its hands.” The appointment of judicial commissions has become almost routine following caste clashes. The Justice Mohan Commission, for example, was appointed by the state government in July 1997 to look into recurring caste clashes and suggest measures to prevent them, but only “after the state government knew that the State Human Rights Commission was on the job.” The Justice Mohan Commission submitted its report in September 1998. In October 1998, Chief Minister Karunanidhi announced that not all the recommendations could     be      accepted. 

In another large-scale clash in Coimbatore in November 1997, Muslims shops and houses were burned down by Hindus, reportedly with support from the police. Before the SHRC could take up the investigation, the state appointed the JusticeGokulakrishna Commission, and “[a]gain their hands were tied.” During the southern district clashes of April to December 1997, police opened fire in two villages and attacked Dalit women in a third. Three commissions headed by three district judges were immediately appointed. The director of People’s Watch contends that “it has been the history of Dalit people that every commission of inquiry has gone against their interests.” Another activist added that “the retired judges who are appointed always toe the line of the government.”

Given proper resources, state human rights commissions stand to play an important role in the protection of human rights. Because their investigations enjoy greater independence from the state than judicial commission investigations, the statutes under which they are formed need to be amended to ensure that judicial commissions cannot be appointed as a means of undermining their powers. Moreover, the mandates of human rights commissions themselves need to be strengthened to ensure that their recommendations are binding and their findings are made public.