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

Modern Tamil society with its multi dimensional character and multi-layered structure attracted the attention of many social scientists.  Along with the intense social reform movements and Dravidian ideology, Tamil society has been equally known for the caste conflicts especially for their intensity and political ramifications.  There have been scores of social scientists who worked extensively on the caste issue, paid attention only to understand the character of caste per se; certainly not to unfold the dynamics of caste especially when it is in conflict with other caste.  Caste conflict is something that social scientists cannot remain indifferent to.  Similarly, it is not merely an offshoot of the mismanaged administrative issue or a law-order problem.  Therefore a full-length study is required to comprehensively unearth the entire dynamics of caste conflict.  Above all, it is necessary and pertinent for social scientists to seek a comprehensive framework for conflict resolution for caste confrontations.  Therefore a full-length study combining both the character of caste conflicts and conflict resolution are relevant and important.

The present study seeks to analyse the character of caste conflict, intensity of the conflict, intervals of recurrence and conflict resolution.  It aims to identity two conflict-ridden zones of Tamil Nadu one in northern Tamil Nadu and other in southern Tamil Nadu. Northern TN witnessed conflict between Vanniyar – one of the dominant communities, and Dalits. Vanniyars who have recently gained unprecedented political supremacy by an intense mobilization in the name of Vanniyar Sangam later as Pattali Makkal Katchi (Party of the Toiling Masses).  Similarly, the Dalits – the new political terminology to refer to the so-called lower castes are in sizeable numbers, began to assert themselves as a cohesive political group under a political outfit Dalit Panthers’ of India.  This zone has witnessed several confrontations between Vanniyar and Dalits at regular intervals with varying degree.

Therefore, to study the nature of conflict, the present work intends to identify three villages or semi urban locale, which has witnessed conflicts at varying degree i.e. place of worst hit, less affected and moderately affected. This identification would help us understand the nature of conflict. Identification would be based on news reports published in both English and vernacular newspapers, magazines along with the data available from the State Crime Records Bureau. The same methodology would be adopted to understand the caste confrontation in southern TN also.  As far as the south TN is concerned the confrontation has been between one of the dominant communities the Thevars and the Dalits. The confrontation between these two communities is relatively older in the sense, its been there since the early 1950s. However, having decided to concentrate only the post-independent socio-political scenario, it would be relevant only to focus on the confrontation after 1950s. At the same time, character and the understanding of the confrontations emanating from 1950s would certainly enhance our understanding while studying the caste conflict from 1980 – 2005 since political mobilisation started from this period onwards.

a)The Situation of Caste Conflict:

In Ramanathapuram district in southern Tamil Nadu, just two days after the nation celebrated the 129th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, caste-related violence rocked the villages and towns on either side of the national highway that links this economically backward district with Madurai city. Eleven persons were killed and several were injured in the violence and the police action that followed. Six of the dead were Dalits; the five others belonged to the Thevar community, a most backward caste group. All the victims were from among the economically weaker sections. Scores of houses were torched and hundreds of people rendered homeless. 

The immediate cause of the violence was provided by a district-level rally at Ramanathapuram, organised by the Thevarkula Koottamaippu (Thevar Federation). According to a senior politician from a neighbouring district, the Koottamaippu is "a conglomeration of unnorganised groups of young Thevar extremists who have joined the power struggle in the Tamil Nadu Thevar Peravai." The Thevar Peravai was said to be behind the many instances of violence involving Thevars and Dalits that racked the southern districts in the past five years. Its leadership, perceived to be close to All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general secretary and former Chief Minister Jayalalitha, is now caught up in litigation and has been rendered inactive. 

The Koottamaippu conference was convened as a confrontationist response to a State-level conference organised three weeks earlier at Ramanathapuram by Puthiya Tamilagam, a political organisation led by Dr. K. Krishnasamy. A member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, Krishnasamy has emerged in recent years as the most articulate Dalit leader in the State and a rallying point for different sections of Dalits. A rally organised by Puthiya Tamilagam at that time passed off peacefully, although Krishnasamy made an allegedly provocative speech.

Shops in Ramanathapuram main bazaar that were damaged in violence:

A WEEK-LONG mobilisation effort by Shanmugaiah Pandian, the maverick president of the Thevarkula Koottamaippu, preceded the district conference. Posters and wall writings inviting people to the meet came up in Madurai and all along the highway. According to a roadside lottery ticket-seller at Paramakudi, a small town on the highway, streams of lorries carrying large numbers of people from neighbouring districts were seen heading for Ramanathapuram from the afternoon of October 4. 

Some vehicles stopped at roadside villages and hamlets such as Saraswati-puram, Vananganenthal, Chatrakudi and Muhammadiapuram, and armed men from lorries allegedly entered Dalit settlements (easily identifiable by the presence of Puthiya Tamilagam flags or statues of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar) and some Muslim hamlets and went on the rampage, throwing "petrol bombs", attacking the residents and ransacking houses.

Two women were killed and several others injured in these incidents. Some of the Dalits, mostly marginal farmers, agricultural workers or coolies, lost all their belongings. Even five days after the attacks they were in the grip of fear. Dalits alleged that police protection was inadequate and even the few policemen who were present did not act when the mayhem was on. Thevar youth, however, complained that the provocation came from Dalits, who, they said, blocked vehicles by placing barriers on the road. 

As news of the attacks spread, Dalits retaliated. Thevar villages were targeted and houses damaged. At Lanthai, close to Ramanathapuram, two of those who came in lorries were allegedly pulled out and murdered. This led to a free-for-all for two hours.

In the police firing that followed, three persons, all of whom belonged to the Thevar community, were killed. Earlier, two Dalits, one of them a woman, were killed when police opened fire "to contain a mob that was confronting a mob of the rival caste". Dalits, however, said that they were only demanding the removal of a provocative painting put up on a panchayat building wall in connection with the Koottamaippu conference. A number of persons from both sides and a few police personnel were hospitalised. 

Even as a small police force controlled the violence at the entrance of Ramanathapuram town, Thevar mobs went on the rampage in the town, breaking open shops, looting valuables and making a bonfire of articles that could not be carried away. Three shops were burnt down. Muslim businessmen were the worst sufferers. At Paramakudi, several shops were looted. M.A. Dhanabalan, president of the District Chamber of Commerce, estimates the total loss suffered by business establishments in the district at Rs. 3.5 crores. In all, about 300 shops were damaged. Some State-owned buses were also damaged and over a hundred street lamps smashed.

Even after all this, the Koottamaippu was allowed to hold the rally. Among the provocative demands made at the rally was one calling for the repeal of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. 

The police force, led by Additional Director-General of Police S. Kumarasamy, contained the violence. Reinforcements from neighbouring districts and personnel from the Tamil Nadu Special Police, the Central Reserve Police Force and the Swift Action Force helped prevent the violence from spreading to sensitive neighbouring districts. The district administration stepped in with prompt relief measures. Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi deputed four Ministers - M. Tamizh kudimagan, T. Krishnan, A. Rahman Khan (who is also the local MLA) and Samayanallur Selvaraj. They camped in the district for five days, visited the affected persons and supervised relief operations. Near-normalcy was restored within days. Although there were complaints about the inadequacy of relief measures, including the compensation amount, the Government's intervention was prompt, in marked contrast to its responses to earlier instances of violence.

A cross-section of people in the affected areas criticised the police and the district administration for their failure to anticipate trouble in view of the publicity blitzkrieg that preceded the conference. Had prompt steps been taken, violence could have been prevented, said an observer who made a pointed reference to the absence on leave of the Superintendent of Police and of the District Collector (who was away until October 4). 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 Tamilagam held its rally on September 11.

There were also allegations by both groups of harassment and even torture by the police under the pretext of conducting "raids in search of criminals and weapons". In several areas, menfolk went underground fearing police violence. Even a week later, many persons were reported missing. 

Several factors set apart the October 4 incidents in Ramanathapuram from earlier instances of caste-related violence in other centres in the southern districts of the State. First, there were no local level disputes between Thevars and Dalits in the Ramanathapuram region. In almost all the affected places, Dalits and Thevars said that they had been living in amity for decades. Highways Minister T. Krishnan, who hails from the neighbouring Sivaganga district, recalled that even during the worst days of caste clashes in Mudukulathur in the undivided Ramnad district in 1957 the area that forms the present Ramanathapuram district was relatively calm. In his view the disturbances were caused by "outsiders". "It was a fire sparked by somebody somewhere," said the DMK Minister. 

And, unusually in such caste related violence, there was evidence of the involvement of some political parties. Karunanidhi, who saw a political motive behind the incidents, said that he knew the "forces" that were behind the attempt to de-stabilize his Government. He said that the clashes were preceded "by the arrival of some persons from Ramanathapuram in Chennai and their return." (The reference is to a reported meeting between Shanmugaiah Pandian and Jayalalitha some time ago; in an interview to a Tamil periodical, the Thevar leader confirmed that the meeting did take place.) At several places flag posts of the DMK had been felled.

Outcome of the Ramanatha-puram incidents is the ban on posters inciting violence in the name of caste. Karunanidhi, who announced this decision after a Cabinet meeting on October 13, said that it had also been decided not to grant permission to processions and rallies if there was any hint that they would trigger violence.

Another related development is the launch of a political party, the Moovendar Munnetra Kazhagam, by the All India Thevar Peravai. The party's general secretary, Dr. N. Sethuraman, told Frontline that his party opposed untouchability and that he was opposed to the Koottamaippu's demand for the repeal of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. He said, however, that the Act was required "more in the northern States, not in Tamil Nadu, where untouchability is no longer practised." His party's aim, he claimed, was "to build bridges not only between Thevars and Dalits but between Thevars and other castes." 

Local police, drawn predominantly from the Thevar community, have conducted raids on Dalit villages, ostensibly to search for militant activists. During the raids they have assaulted residents, particularly women, and detained Dalits under preventive detention laws. With the tolerance or connivance of local officials, police have also forcibly displaced thousands of Dalit villagers. During one such raid, Guruswamy Guruammal, a pregnant, twenty-six-year-old Dalit agricultural laborer, was stripped, brutally beaten, and dragged through the streets naked before being thrown in jail. She told Human Rights Watch, “I begged the police officers at the jail to help me. I even told them I was pregnant. They mocked me for [having made] bold statements to the police the day before. I spent twenty-five days in jail. I miscarried my baby after ten days. Nothing has happened to the officers who did this to me.” 

Excessive use of force by the police is not limited to rural areas. Police abuse against the urban poor, slum dwellers, Dalits, and other minorities has included arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial executions and forced evictions. Although the acute social discrimination characteristic of rural areas is less pronounced in cities, Dalits in urban areas, who make up the majority of bonded laborers and street cleaners, do not escape it altogether. Many live in segregated colonies, which have been targets of police raids. This report documents a particularly egregious incident in a Dalit colony in Bombay in July 1997, when police opened fire without warning on a crowd of Dalits protesting the desecration of a statue of Dalit cultural and political hero Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. The firing killed ten and injured twenty-six. Dalits throughout the country also suffer in many instances from de facto disenfranchisement. During elections, those unpersuaded by typical electioneering are routinely threatened and beaten by political party strongmen in order to compel them to vote for certain candidates. Already under the thumb of local landlords and police officials, Dalit villagers who do not comply have been murdered.

Dalits who have contested political office in village councils and municipalities through seats that have been constitutionally “reserved” for them have been threatened with physical abuse and even death in order to get them to withdraw from the campaign. In the village of Melavalavu, Madurai district Tamil Nadu, following the election of a Dalit to the village council presidency, members of a higher-caste group murdered six Dalits in June 1997, including the elected council president, whom they beheaded. As told to Human Rights Watch by an eyewitness, the leader of the attack “instructed the Thevars [caste Hindus] to kill all the Pariahs [Dalits]... They pulled all six out of the bus and stabbed them on the road... Five Thevars joined together, put Murugesan [the Dalit president] on the ground outside the bus, and chopped off his head, then threw it in a well half a kilometer away... Some grabbed his hands, others grabbed his head, and one cut his head... They deliberately took the head and poured the blood on other dead bodies.” As of February 1999, the accused who had been voted out of their once secure elected positions had not been prosecuted. Those arrested were out on bail, while the person identified as the ringleader of the attack was still at large. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, enacted in 1989, provides a means to address many of the problems Dalits face in India. The act is designed to prevent abuses and punish those responsible, establish special courts for the trial of such offenses, and provide for victim relief and rehabilitation. A look at the offenses made punishable by the act provides a glimpse into the retaliatory or customarily degrading treatment Dalits may receive. The offenses include forcing members of a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe to drink or eat any inedible or obnoxious substance; dumping excreta, waste matter, carcasses or any other obnoxious substance in their premises or neighborhood; forcibly removing their clothes and parading them naked or with painted face or body; interfering with their rights to land; compelling a member of a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe into forms of forced or bonded labor; corrupting or fouling the water of any spring, reservoir or any other source ordinarily used by scheduled castes or scheduled tribes; denying right of passage to a place of public resort; and using a position of dominance to exploit a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe woman sexually.

The potential of the law to bring about social change has been hampered by police corruption and caste bias, with the result that many allegations are not entered in police books. Ignorance of procedures and a lack of knowledge of the act have also affected its implementation. Even when cases are registered, the absence of special courts to try them can delay prosecutions for up to three to four years. Some state governments dominated by higher castes have even attempted to repeal the legislation altogether.

Between 1994 and 1996, a total of 98,349 cases were registered with the police nationwide as crimes and atrocities against scheduled castes. Of these, 38,483 were registered under the Atrocities Act for the sorts of offenses enumerated above. A further 1,660 were for murder, 2,814 for rape, and 13,671 for hurt. Given that Dalits are both reluctant and unable (for lack of police cooperation) to report crimes against themselves, the actual number of abuses is presumably much higher. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has reported that these cases typically fall into one of three categories: cases relating to the practice of “untouchability” and attempts to defy the social order; cases relating to land disputes and demands for minimum wages; and cases of atrocities by police and forest officials.

Although this report focuses primarily on abuse against Dalit communities that have begun to assert themselves economically or organize themselves politically, it also examines the weakest sectors of the population: those with no political representation, living in the poorest of conditions, and made to perform the most degrading of tasks with little or no remuneration. To eke out a subsistence living, Dalits throughout the country, numbering in the tens of millions, are driven to bonded labor, manual scavenging, and forced prostitution under conditions that violate national law and their basic human rights.

An estimated forty million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded laborers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off a debt. A majority of them are Dalits. According to government statistics, an estimated one million Dalits are manual scavengers who clear feces from public and private latrines and dispose of dead animals; unofficial estimates are much higher. An activist working with scavengers in the state of Andhra Pradesh claimed, “In one toilet there can be as many as 400 seats which all have to be manually cleaned. This is the lowest occupation in the world, and it is done by the community that occupies the lowest status in the caste system.” In India’s southern states, thousands of girls are forced into prostitution before reaching the age of puberty. Devadasis, literally meaning “female servant of god,” usually belong to the Dalit community. Once dedicated, the girl is unable to marry, forced to become a prostitute for upper-caste community members, and eventually auctioned off to an urban brothel.

This report is about caste, but it is also about class, gender, poverty, labor, and land. For those at the bottom of its hierarchy, caste is a determinative factor for the attainment of social, political, civil, and economic rights. Most of the conflicts documented in this report take place within very narrow segments of the caste hierarchy, between the poor and the not-so-poor, the landless laborer and the small landowner. The differences lie in the considerable amount of leverage that the higher-caste Hindus or non-Dalits are able to wield over local police, district administrations, and even the state government.

Investigations by India’s National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the National Human Rights Commission, the National Police Commission, and numerous local nongovernmental organizations all concur that impunity is rampant. In cases investigated for this report, with the exception of a few transfers and suspensions, no action has been taken against police officers involved in violent raids or summary executions, or against those accused of colluding with private actors to carry out attacks on Dalit communities. Moreover, in many instances, repeated calls for protection by threatened Dalit communities have been ignored by police and district officials.

The “National Agenda for Governance,” the election manifesto for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power in the February 1998 elections, outlines a program of action for the “upliftment” of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. It promises to take steps to establish “a civilised, humane and just civil order... which does not discriminate on the grounds of caste, religion, class, colour, race or sex”; ensures the “economic and educational development of the minorities”; safeguards the interests of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backward classes by “appropriate legal, executive and societal efforts and by large scale education and empowerment”; provides “legal protection to existing percentages of reservation in educational institutions at the State level”; and removes “the last vestiges of untouchability.” However, to date, the Indian government has done little to fulfill its promises to Dalits.

A national campaign to highlight abuses against Dalits spearheaded by human rights groups in eight states began to focus national and international attention to the issue in 1998. The recommendations for this report were drafted in consultation with more than forty activists who have been working closely on the campaign. In publishing this report now, Human Rights Watch adds its voice to theirs in calling upon the Indian government to implement the recommendations outlined in this report, to fulfill the commitments made regarding scheduled castes in the National Agenda for Governance, and to take immediate steps to prevent and eliminate caste-based violence and discrimination. We further urge the international community to press the Indian government to bring its practices into compliance with national and international law.

 .........will continue ..........