Last month, as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was concluding a women's parliament in Kochi with declarations of making Kerala “women-friendly”, a Dalit woman autorickshaw driver in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, was recounting tales of suffering violence at the hands of party comrades.

Eramangalathu Chithralekha, who belongs to Pulaya caste, has been facing harassment from auto drivers belonging to the CPM-affiliated Centre for Indian Trade Unions since 2004, the year she joined their trade in Edatt, a village on the outskirts of Payyannur town in Kannur district.

From the outset, the male auto drivers despised her because she weaned away their women passengers, especially Muslim women. They first tried to force her away by shouting casteist slurs and running a smear campaign, claiming that she and her mother were prostitutes.

When that did not deter her, they resorted to physical harassment. The windscreen of her auto was smashed and its hood ripped out in 2005. As Chithralekha fought back, her auto was burnt and a poster campaign describing her as immoral and a drunkard was unleashed. The harassment continued after she returned to the Edatt stand in 2008 with an auto bought with the help of human rights activists.

For years, on many occasions, she and her husband were beaten up. Even her 10-year-old child wasn’t spared physical assaults. The family’s house was vandalised, and “false cases” of violence slapped against her and her husband, including a case of attempt to murder.

Unrealised promise

As life became insufferable, Chithralekha launched a dharna on October 25, 2014, in front of the Kannur district collectorate. A hundred and 22 days later, that small protest prompted Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to promise her five cents (around 2,200 sq ft) of land elsewhere to build a house.

That assurance never materialised, though. So, on January 5, Chithralekha, now 39, started another dharna in front of the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram to demand immediate fulfillment of the promise and withdrawal of all the “false cases registered against her and her husband“.

“I feel the government is dragging the matter due to misinformation,“ said Chithralekha. She says CITU men are spreading lies about her owning five acres of land in the district, which is why the administration hasn’t moved on the chief minister’s assurance. Senior CITU leaders in Kannur were not available for comment.

“If I did have these ‘acres of land’, I wouldn’t have had to strike either in front of the district collectorate for 122 days, or fight the CPI(M) for ten years,” Chithra said in a representation to the chief minister. “I would have been able to sell that land and live comfortably in a safe place.”

The immediate provocation for Chithralekha’s current agitation is a move to extern her husband from Kannur by including him in the goonda list. Already, the sub-collector has revoked his bail and issued a fresh arrest warrant against him. Chithralekha says the action is based on three counter-petitions filed against her and her husband by CITU men. “The people who launched casteist attacks on us and are forcing us to leave our native place are roaming freely and safely,” she said. “We are made to run. We cannot tolerate this injustice. We will fight till we get justice.”

'Fascist atmosphere'

A solidarity mission commissioned by Feminists Kerala Network, an umbrella group, to probe an attack on Chithralekha and her husband in January 2010 said the family’s persecution wasn’t motivated by business interests alone.

The mission – which included Professor Gail Omvedt, publisher and activist V Geetha, and Professor Nivedita Menon – concluded after a fact-finding visit to Payyannur that the intolerance towards the Dalit woman was a ritualistic part of the untouchability practiced in the region even today.

It revealed that the attack on Chithralekha was not isolated. Other Dalit women auto drivers in North Malabar, consisting of Kannur and Kasargod districts, had faced similar intimidation, sexual harassment, caste-related abuses, accusations of promiscuity and immorality. The autorickshaw of another Dalit woman in Kannur was burnt too, the mission said. That woman has now moved to Payyanur and takes care never to cross CITU on any matter. The mission also found that intimidation had led a Dalit Christian woman, who plied her auto in nearby Pazhayangadi, to the brink of suicide. The woman left the trade.

The mission said Chithralekha’s travails were the result of a fascist atmosphere created by the CPM in the area. “Once a party takes over a village, it enforces an extrajudicial power over all the people who live in that village,” its report said. “The CPI (M) exists and thrives in the region through the use of such power over entire villages. Anyone who questions the party or goes against its wishes is harassed, alienated, ostracized and sometimes even killed.”

By extension, the same power is wielded by trade unions such as CITU. Often such collectives are energised by Other Backward Classes youth who use violence to counter new assertions by Dalits and women. Chithralekha had to face unrelenting intimidation, the mission said, because she fought her tormentors by aligning with Dalit and feminist activists.

“Chithra was a smart, assertive and independent Dalit woman,” the report said. “The CITU apparently could not tolerate her stubborn courage and confidence. They always saw Chithra, who does not fit into the typical Malayalee imagination of the ‘good woman’, as an immoral and worthless woman.”

A hard life

Life has never been easy for Chithralekha.

Her father abandoned his wife when she was just five. Her mother reared the children and sent them to school by doing menial jobs. After Class X, Chithralekha enrolled for a short course on midwifery but couldn’t complete it due to financial inability. Despite the setback though, she managed to get a nursing job in a local nursing home. Years later, her first husband abandoned her with their two children.

“I soon found myself in a tight spot,” said Chithralekha. “As the nursing job involved night shifts, I could not take care of the children. I was forced to quit the job for the sake of the two kids. It was then that the idea of taking up the driving job cropped up in mind. As the working hours of an auto driver are flexible, I could look after the kids even while earning a living.”

That’s not how things panned out when she moved to Edatt auto stand with an autorickshaw bought under the Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana. Though many women followed Chithralekha’s footsteps, most of them withdrew following harassment by male auto drivers. Now, there are only three female auto drivers left in the entire Payyanur area, says Chithralekha’s second husband Sreekanth.

“They greeted me with scornful comments,” said Chithralekha. “They abused me by my caste in front of my customers and other local people.”

Years on, Chithra is not ready to give up the fight. She says she will end her dharna in Thiruvananthapuram only after all her demands are accepted.

“I understand that a Scheduled Caste woman like me will not get justice. The only recourse left to people like us is agitation. I am resorting to another strike because I just need to be able to work and live peacefully without life-threatening insecurities.”