Why classrooms in Periyar's Tamil Nadu are still drenched in caste colours

On the outer wall of the Government Higher Secondary School at Pallakkal Pothukudi, in Tamil Nadu’s Ambasamudram town, there is a graffiti of a smiling APJ Abdul Kalam painted next to a signboard congratulating three of its students for cracking the coveted NEET. The calm and order surrounding the modest school building belie the storm that swept the campus recently.

The school made headlines after a Class XII student belonging to Thevar (OBC) community was killed in a fight with his schoolmates over wearing colour-coded wristband denoting one’s caste inside the school premises.

The victim had reportedly asked one of his juniors, a Dalit student, why he was wearing a caste band, which only ‘dominant caste’ students typically wear inside school premises. This led to an altercation between the two. The Class XI student and two of his classmates allegedly hit the 17-year-old on April 25 with a stone following which he succumbed to his injuries five days later on April 30.

While the death of the student came as a shock to the entire state, such fights among students on caste lines, residents say, are not so surprising.

“Students fighting on caste lines is not new. But this time the fight happened inside the school premises. And the fact that it led to a murder is shocking,” says a policeman posted outside the school following the incident.

The killing, unfortunately, was no stray incident. Police personnel have been standing guard outside the Pallakkal Pothukudi school to prevent possible violent clashes from breaking out for the past five years now.

“Ever since the first caste-related violent scuffle between students happened around five years ago in this village, we started deploying police personnel outside the school premises in the morning and evening around the time students would reach and leave school. But we did not fathom violence would break out on the school premises as well,” adds the policeman on the condition of anonymity.

For schools in Tirunelveli, about 650 km south of Chennai, caste comes in various shades. They come in red, yellow, green and saffron. It’s not just what students wear on their wrists. It’s on their foreheads, around their necks and under their shirts. By the time students reach high school, they know what ‘their colour’ is. Friends and enemies are made on the basis of colours.

Thevars sport red and yellow, Nadars wear blue and yellow, while saffron denotes Yadavs — the socially and politically powerful Hindu communities grouped under the Most Backward Classes category. Dalit students, on the other hand, wear green and red wrist bands. Some Dalit students also wear black and white bands.

In 2015, while investigating the increasing number of clashes between student groups, the district administration found that wrist bands, signifying castes, were often used to target each other. So, Tirunelveli district collector M Karunakaran asked the education department to ban wrist bands in schools across the district. The ban never really came into effect because there was no written order, only a direction issued at a meeting of the education department.

A teacher, who hesitantly enquired about this reporter’s visit and denied entry inside the school premises, later shared that the caste differences played out in various forms. Wrist bands, she said, were just one of the many shades in which caste divisions manifested on the ground.

“Caste bands are the explicit markers of caste divisions. But right from the sitting arrangement in classrooms, to having lunch, to leaving the school, students belonging to the same caste exist in silos and don’t intermingle. It may look like people from the same village study at this school but actually it is children of various caste groups who study here. They are allied by their castes, not the village,” the teacher shared, wishing to remain anonymous.

According to another teacher in the school, students want to identify themselves with their castes.

“Many students wear t-shirts that have pictures of their caste leader under their school uniform. Even if the caste leader’s picture is not visible, the colour of the t-shirt, often visible, denotes their caste. Even when the school bans all such symbols, the students put a tattoo of their caste leader or caste name on their hands or some other part of their body. So, stopping the students from demonstrating their caste identity has been impossible,” the teacher says.

“All we can do is to try and avoid clashes inside the classroom. But, you know, it is not practically possible to monitor them all the time,” the teacher adds.

Former functionary of the Democratic Youth Federation of India and a social activist Murugan Kanna says the April incident isn’t the first case where a student was killed in a caste-related clash.

“In 1999, a school student, Esakkiraja, was killed in a clash with caste Hindus. In 2017, Venkatesh was hacked to death inside the Adi Dravidar Welfare hostel as a result of a similar rift over wearing caste bands. The people in conflict with law in all the above cases are minors and it is because of the way they are raised,” Kanna says.

He also claims that in a lot of cases minor boys belonging to the dominant caste are presented before the police after such clashes or disputes because the law enforcement agencies adopt a lenient view towards minors.

“In a common pond in Puliangudi between Maanur and Karambai villages, both caste Hindus and Dalits went for a bath. After a caste Hindu man allegedly teased a Dalit girl, a clash broke out between the two groups and a complaint was filed by a Dalit man. When the police went to arrest the accused people, the caste Hindu villagers produced four minor people saying they were the ones who teased the girl,” Kanna says.

It was only after prolonged protests by Dalits that the police arrested the real accused, Kanna adds, saying that this has been the primary reason for the rising caste consciousness and the spate in clashes over caste among minor children in the district.

The school spillover

Anand Vincent Raj, alias Evidence Kathir, founder of Evidence, a human rights organisation, says the scenes playing out on the school premises are an extension of what happens in the villages.

“The villages are separated along caste lines by elders and that separation has extended to the classroom by children. It is a social issue and not just a student issue,” Vincent says. He also cites the example of Kuruvithurai village in Madurai where no Dalit student is being admitted to the Government High School.

The villages are separated along caste lines by elders and that separation has extended to the classroom by children. It is a social issue and not just a student issue… Vincent Raj

“For more than two decades now, people belonging to the Adi Dravidar colony in the village travel to nearby Mannadimangalam and study there. It’s because the relationship between the Adi Dravidars and the Thevars is not good. In Thanjavur, after a Dalit student died of an insect bite, the school principal, who happened to be from the dominant caste, was suspended. In retaliations, people demanded that no Dalit should be admitted to the school,” Vincent says, adding that these are examples where caste differences influence the day-to-day functioning of schools.

The extent to which schools have been influenced by caste is reflected in the data revealed by the Social Justice and Human Rights wing of the Tamil Nadu police department. The data shows that there are about 445 villages in Tamil Nadu where caste-based discrimination still exists. Southern districts like Madurai, Tirunelveli, Thenkasi and Thoothukudi (with 43, 24, 14, 14 villages respectively practicing untouchability), are among the top 10 districts that still practice caste-based discrimination.

Educationist Prince Gajendra Babu, in fact, feels that caste consciousness has increased among minor children over a period of time.

“Earlier, casteism was mostly seen in the behaviour and attitude of boys, while the girls didn’t appear casteist. But recently after an hour of conversation about social justice with students of a polytechnic college, I was shocked to find out that even female students are against the reservation system in education,” he says.

Acknowledging that caste consciousness among the students was a reflection of the society the students live in, Gajendra Babu calls for an inclusive multidisciplinary curriculum in schools which would teach students equality and social justice.

It took centuries for Dalits to enter school. If caste discrimination and differences still exist, it would take another generation for the children’s family to see a graduate. – IAS officer

In 2018, a group of IAS trainees at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie debated the topic on caste bands and submitted a representation to the government that helped issue an order to ban caste bands in 2019. However, the order was withheld after the then Tamil Nadu school education minister KA Sengottaiyan ordered a status quo.

When asked about what prompted the action, an official with the School Education Department says the State Education Policy will have aspects of sensitising the students and that they are already in the process of driving students away from any divisive caste consciousness through positive reinforcements.

“We have announced a slew of measures, including conducting sports events and art and cultural activities. These activities require teamwork and through that we try to bring students from all backgrounds together,” the official says.

But is that enough? Apparently, people from outside the state feel otherwise.

When The Federal reached out to a few IAS trainees behind the 2018 representation to the government, now posted in different parts of the country, they shared that children identifying themselves with their caste by wearing caste bands and t-shirts to schools left them aghast.

“It was actually shocking for all of us. That Tamil Nadu, which is a model state in the country and one of the progressive states on most metrics, still allows such practices in schools is unacceptable because the consequences of such caste differences are that the socially and educationally underprivileged students will eventually drop out of schools,” an IAS officer, now posted in Jharkhand, tells The Federal.

“It took centuries for Dalits to enter school. If caste discrimination and differences still exist, it would take another generation for the children’s family to see a graduate. So, we sent a representation to the government in the hope for change,” the officer says.

Change on the ground, however, seems a distant dream as future generations carry forward the legacy of caste biases, inciting violence – a far cry from the kind of ignited minds former president Kalam once envisaged and dreamt for the children of India.