An attack on Dalits by members of the Vanniyar community on Independence Day in a village in Villipuram district in northern Tamil Nadu highlights how caste divisions are increasingly being politically exploited in a state that was once at the forefront of progressive struggles for social equality.
Although no one died in the attack in Seshasamudram village, around 200 people torched 15 Dalit houses, the community’s car used for temple processions and the village transformer, according to eyewitnesses. Several batches of Vaniyars came into the village from other areas to participate in the violence, while many Dalit families fled, they said.
The village has 2,000 Vaniyar families and 75 families of Dalit Paraiyars. Vaniyars officially have ‘most backward class’ status, a sub-category of the broader ‘other backward classes’, or OBC, group.
In the stone-pelting and petrol bomb attacks, Villipuram’s superintendent of police, Narendra Nair, who was present in the village that day, was injured, villagers said. The attackers also set his car on fire and broke the legs of his guard, Saravanan, they said. The attackers were not deterred by the presence of 25 other police personnel in the village, who eventually retreated.
“There were just too many people,” one woman police constable who did not wish to be named, told social worker Thiruvarul, who lives near Seshasamudram. “I knew no police force could stop them.”
Nearly ten days later, neither the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or the main opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has condemned the attack, indicating the larger political forces arrayed against the state’s Dalits, in addition to village-level animosities.
Fear and loathing on I-Day
The attack took place between 6 pm and 10 pm on August 15, the day before the Dalits were to take their deity, Mariamman, in a procession through the village in the temple car, for which they had obtained permission from the Villipuram collector, M Lakshmi.
She had issued a circular in early August stating that the procession would take place on August 16, with police protection if necessary. But the police clearly completely misjudged the potential for violence.
Moreover, a lunar eclipse on August 15 enabled the attackers to wreak violence under the cover of darkness. They first set fire to the house of an inter-caste couple who had married against the wishes of the Vaniyars: Mahendran, a Dalit, and Lavanya, a Vaniyar. Dressed in her nightwear, Lavanya ran out of the village fearing for her life, said eyewitnesses.
The attackers beat up another inter-caste couple, Karumalayan, a Dalit, and Meena, from a backward caste. Azhagammal, a Dalit whose daughter had delivered a week ago, also ran out of her house fearing for her life. Several heads of cattle have gone missing.
Vaniyar-Dalit relations
Vaniyars, who constitute 12% of Tamil Nadu’s population, have a history of clashing with Pariayars. Roughly half of Vaniyars are agricultural labourers, while Pariayars are weavers and farmers. The two groups are more or less on a par economically, but socially, Vaniyars, have a higher status.
The current attack has its roots in a dispute that goes back to 2012. In the run-up to panchayat elections that year, one of the candidates, a Vaniyar named Subramanian, in a bid to woo the Dalit vote, promised to help the community buy a temple car for their annual procession of the Mariamman temple deity, according to police reports and villagers. After he won, he was true to his word, helping them buy the car by raising Rs 3 lakh and using Rs 1.5 lakh that the Dalits had raised.
But this caused heartburn in the Vanniyar community, which since then has been resisting allowing Dalits to hold the procession, saying that the chariot cannot pass by Vanniyar homes. Local authorities were not able to get the two sides to sort the issue out in several so-called “peace talks”, and had therefore for the past three years denied permission for the procession.
But unable to delay permission indefinitely, the district collector granted the Dalits permission. The Vaniyars immediately sprung into action, and requested the tehsildar on August 12 to postpone the procession. But the tehsildar declined, telling them that they had had several years to resolve the issue.
The Vaniyars were undeterred. On August 15 evening, they held a meeting in the village and said that they would stop the procession at all costs, according to some villagers. The superintendent of police, Nair, was present at this meeting and even addressed the crowds, according to eyewitnesses. He sought the cooperation of people, while reiterating that the government order clearly stated that the procession would take place.
On the same day, Subramanian, the panchayat president, visited the local police station and told officials that violence would follow if the Dalit procession took place, according to villagers. He then led the violence, according to eye-witnesses, and subsequently disappeared. The police are still looking for him.
Role of authorities
As of August 25, the police have arrested 86 people and have named 400 people in their first information report, according to villagers.
But the sequence of events before the attack raises several questions. Why did the police not act on repeated warnings about an impending onslaught of violence? Why did they not call for additional help once the attack had begun?
The morning following the attack, the police administration imposed section 144 on the area, which prohibits the unlawful assembly of three or more people. Why did the authorities not take this pre-emptive step before the attack rather than afterwards, when the damage had already been done?
The state government has announced a compensation of Rs 50,000 for each police official injured in the attack, but no one seems to have thought of how to undertake the mammoth task of restoring the shattered faith of a terrorised community.
A single attack of this nature can cause years of damage, marginalising the targeted community and altering the power balance in the village. By torching Dalit houses and the temple car, yet refraining from killing anyone, the Vanniyars have succeeded in their twin objectives of preventing the temple procession and aggressively asserting their power.
Since 1956, 13 judicial committees have been appointed in Tamil Nadu to look into the major violence against Dalits in the state. None of them have found anyone guilty.
But only the meaningful delivery of justice, namely by punishing the guilty, rehabilitating victims, and measures to bring communities together can help reverse the further marginalisation of Dalits.
Vote-bank politics
With elections in Tamil Nadu due in May 2016, one cannot help suspecting that vote-bank politics was also at play at the expense of the poorest and weakest caste groups.
In this incident, for instance, a rally of the Pattali Makkal Katchi, led by its head A Ramadoss, took place in Kallakurichi, 18 km from Seshasamudram, on August 14 afternoon. Founded in 1989, the party has strong roots in the Vanniyar Sangam, a social organisation for Vaniyars, who dominate the party, although it does have support from other communities as well.
After the rally ended at 3 pm on August 14, many Vaniyars who had come from far away stayed back in villages near Seshasamudram, instead of going home.
These party members participated in violence that ensued the following day, according to eye-witnesses, who said they could not recognise many of the attackers because they were outsiders.
With just one seat in the Lok Sabha and three in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, the Pattali Makkal Katchi has lost political ground over the past decade and has been desperately trying to reassert itself. Its members have been known to take staunch positions against inter-caste marriage and aggressive anti-Dalit stances.
Since the late 1970s, since the formation of the Vanniyar Sangam, the party’s ideological parent, the Vaniyars have also been organising and agitating for the benefits of reservation to reach their community. Many of their agitations have turned violent.
“Nearly every major agitation by the Vanniyars has had one outcome: violence against Dalits,” said Professor Lakshmanan, of the Madras Institute of Development Studies.
After a prolonged agitation by Vaniyars, in January 1989, the government gave them a new sub-category called ‘most backward class’ within the ‘other backward classes’, which had 50% reservation. The government gave this new sub-category 20% overall reservation, which translates to 40% of the reservation within the overall ‘other backward classes category’, a huge share for any single caste group.
Vulnerable target
Brahmins have been the traditional target of Dravidian parties, which openly attack the community and its historic monopoly over economic, political and social power. But more insidiously, Dalits, at the other end of the caste spectrum, have also become scapegoats of political parties and other vested interests, who turn a blind eye to or actually encourage violence against this most vulnerable of social groups.
Seshasamudram’s panchayat president, Subramanian, for instance, had clearly appealed to caste sentiments to win votes in 2012 but then did nothing to protect the Dalits. On the contrary, he participated in the violence, according to the villagers, and has now gone missing. The Pattali Makkal Katchi, for its part, far from calming down the situation, supplied people for the attack.
In Villipuram district, a third of all households are Dalits, higher than the national average of slightly more than 18%. If this is the extent of violence against Dalits in a place where they have a significant presence, they are surely more vulnerable in areas where they constitute a smaller minority.
Besides the need for judicial action, civil society must therefore also expose and condemn any attempts to deepen caste divisions for electoral gain.
Janani Sridharan works with the Pension Parishad Tamil Nadu campaign and with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.
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Although no one died in the attack in Seshasamudram village, around 200 people torched 15 Dalit houses, the community’s car used for temple processions and the village transformer, according to eyewitnesses. Several batches of Vaniyars came into the village from other areas to participate in the violence, while many Dalit families fled, they said.
The village has 2,000 Vaniyar families and 75 families of Dalit Paraiyars. Vaniyars officially have ‘most backward class’ status, a sub-category of the broader ‘other backward classes’, or OBC, group.
In the stone-pelting and petrol bomb attacks, Villipuram’s superintendent of police, Narendra Nair, who was present in the village that day, was injured, villagers said. The attackers also set his car on fire and broke the legs of his guard, Saravanan, they said. The attackers were not deterred by the presence of 25 other police personnel in the village, who eventually retreated.
“There were just too many people,” one woman police constable who did not wish to be named, told social worker Thiruvarul, who lives near Seshasamudram. “I knew no police force could stop them.”
Nearly ten days later, neither the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or the main opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has condemned the attack, indicating the larger political forces arrayed against the state’s Dalits, in addition to village-level animosities.
Fear and loathing on I-Day
The attack took place between 6 pm and 10 pm on August 15, the day before the Dalits were to take their deity, Mariamman, in a procession through the village in the temple car, for which they had obtained permission from the Villipuram collector, M Lakshmi.
She had issued a circular in early August stating that the procession would take place on August 16, with police protection if necessary. But the police clearly completely misjudged the potential for violence.
Moreover, a lunar eclipse on August 15 enabled the attackers to wreak violence under the cover of darkness. They first set fire to the house of an inter-caste couple who had married against the wishes of the Vaniyars: Mahendran, a Dalit, and Lavanya, a Vaniyar. Dressed in her nightwear, Lavanya ran out of the village fearing for her life, said eyewitnesses.
The attackers beat up another inter-caste couple, Karumalayan, a Dalit, and Meena, from a backward caste. Azhagammal, a Dalit whose daughter had delivered a week ago, also ran out of her house fearing for her life. Several heads of cattle have gone missing.
Vaniyar-Dalit relations
Vaniyars, who constitute 12% of Tamil Nadu’s population, have a history of clashing with Pariayars. Roughly half of Vaniyars are agricultural labourers, while Pariayars are weavers and farmers. The two groups are more or less on a par economically, but socially, Vaniyars, have a higher status.
The current attack has its roots in a dispute that goes back to 2012. In the run-up to panchayat elections that year, one of the candidates, a Vaniyar named Subramanian, in a bid to woo the Dalit vote, promised to help the community buy a temple car for their annual procession of the Mariamman temple deity, according to police reports and villagers. After he won, he was true to his word, helping them buy the car by raising Rs 3 lakh and using Rs 1.5 lakh that the Dalits had raised.
But this caused heartburn in the Vanniyar community, which since then has been resisting allowing Dalits to hold the procession, saying that the chariot cannot pass by Vanniyar homes. Local authorities were not able to get the two sides to sort the issue out in several so-called “peace talks”, and had therefore for the past three years denied permission for the procession.
But unable to delay permission indefinitely, the district collector granted the Dalits permission. The Vaniyars immediately sprung into action, and requested the tehsildar on August 12 to postpone the procession. But the tehsildar declined, telling them that they had had several years to resolve the issue.
The Vaniyars were undeterred. On August 15 evening, they held a meeting in the village and said that they would stop the procession at all costs, according to some villagers. The superintendent of police, Nair, was present at this meeting and even addressed the crowds, according to eyewitnesses. He sought the cooperation of people, while reiterating that the government order clearly stated that the procession would take place.
On the same day, Subramanian, the panchayat president, visited the local police station and told officials that violence would follow if the Dalit procession took place, according to villagers. He then led the violence, according to eye-witnesses, and subsequently disappeared. The police are still looking for him.
Role of authorities
As of August 25, the police have arrested 86 people and have named 400 people in their first information report, according to villagers.
But the sequence of events before the attack raises several questions. Why did the police not act on repeated warnings about an impending onslaught of violence? Why did they not call for additional help once the attack had begun?
The morning following the attack, the police administration imposed section 144 on the area, which prohibits the unlawful assembly of three or more people. Why did the authorities not take this pre-emptive step before the attack rather than afterwards, when the damage had already been done?
The state government has announced a compensation of Rs 50,000 for each police official injured in the attack, but no one seems to have thought of how to undertake the mammoth task of restoring the shattered faith of a terrorised community.
A single attack of this nature can cause years of damage, marginalising the targeted community and altering the power balance in the village. By torching Dalit houses and the temple car, yet refraining from killing anyone, the Vanniyars have succeeded in their twin objectives of preventing the temple procession and aggressively asserting their power.
Since 1956, 13 judicial committees have been appointed in Tamil Nadu to look into the major violence against Dalits in the state. None of them have found anyone guilty.
But only the meaningful delivery of justice, namely by punishing the guilty, rehabilitating victims, and measures to bring communities together can help reverse the further marginalisation of Dalits.
Vote-bank politics
With elections in Tamil Nadu due in May 2016, one cannot help suspecting that vote-bank politics was also at play at the expense of the poorest and weakest caste groups.
In this incident, for instance, a rally of the Pattali Makkal Katchi, led by its head A Ramadoss, took place in Kallakurichi, 18 km from Seshasamudram, on August 14 afternoon. Founded in 1989, the party has strong roots in the Vanniyar Sangam, a social organisation for Vaniyars, who dominate the party, although it does have support from other communities as well.
After the rally ended at 3 pm on August 14, many Vaniyars who had come from far away stayed back in villages near Seshasamudram, instead of going home.
These party members participated in violence that ensued the following day, according to eye-witnesses, who said they could not recognise many of the attackers because they were outsiders.
With just one seat in the Lok Sabha and three in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, the Pattali Makkal Katchi has lost political ground over the past decade and has been desperately trying to reassert itself. Its members have been known to take staunch positions against inter-caste marriage and aggressive anti-Dalit stances.
Since the late 1970s, since the formation of the Vanniyar Sangam, the party’s ideological parent, the Vaniyars have also been organising and agitating for the benefits of reservation to reach their community. Many of their agitations have turned violent.
“Nearly every major agitation by the Vanniyars has had one outcome: violence against Dalits,” said Professor Lakshmanan, of the Madras Institute of Development Studies.
After a prolonged agitation by Vaniyars, in January 1989, the government gave them a new sub-category called ‘most backward class’ within the ‘other backward classes’, which had 50% reservation. The government gave this new sub-category 20% overall reservation, which translates to 40% of the reservation within the overall ‘other backward classes category’, a huge share for any single caste group.
Vulnerable target
Brahmins have been the traditional target of Dravidian parties, which openly attack the community and its historic monopoly over economic, political and social power. But more insidiously, Dalits, at the other end of the caste spectrum, have also become scapegoats of political parties and other vested interests, who turn a blind eye to or actually encourage violence against this most vulnerable of social groups.
Seshasamudram’s panchayat president, Subramanian, for instance, had clearly appealed to caste sentiments to win votes in 2012 but then did nothing to protect the Dalits. On the contrary, he participated in the violence, according to the villagers, and has now gone missing. The Pattali Makkal Katchi, for its part, far from calming down the situation, supplied people for the attack.
In Villipuram district, a third of all households are Dalits, higher than the national average of slightly more than 18%. If this is the extent of violence against Dalits in a place where they have a significant presence, they are surely more vulnerable in areas where they constitute a smaller minority.
Besides the need for judicial action, civil society must therefore also expose and condemn any attempts to deepen caste divisions for electoral gain.
Janani Sridharan works with the Pension Parishad Tamil Nadu campaign and with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.
