Natham Colony caste violence: 8 yrs on, scars remain

The opening scene of Pariyerum Perumal, the critically acclaimed 2018 Tamil drama film, shows caste Hindu men unleashing violence on Dalits. To find their  attackers, Perumal, a Dalit youth, and his fellow villagers are hunting with dogs, including his own named Karuppi (black).

Sitting near a pond, their discussion hovers around their identity. Perumal is visibly anxious and wants to leave immediately to avoid any altercation with the caste Hindus (intermediary castes among Hindus considered higher to Dalits) but some question as to why they should fear them.

As they walk back, Karuppi goes missing. The caste Hindus have taken it and left it tied to a railway track. Perumal runs to save it but it is run over by a train.

Violence inflicted on Dalits runs throughout the movie. Filmmaker Mari Selvaraj invokes the railway track scene again in the climax wherein caste Hindus attempt to kill Perumal by pushing him onto the track when he’s unconscious. The killer pours liquor on his body, makes him drink some, to portray it as a suicide.

This was a fallout of Perumal loving a caste Hindu woman violating their norms. Although the woman also loves him and her father doesn’t mind his character, caste differences force them to separate.

The film is loosely based on the infamous Ilavarasan-Divya case of Dharmapuri that captured the attention of Tamil Nadu in 2012-13. E Ilavarasan, a Dalit, and Divya Nagaraj, a Vanniyar, fell in love, eloped and got married but a kangaroo court in Sellankottai village where Divya hailed from, ordered her return in November 2012. After Divya refused, her father was found dead allegedly by suicide. Within days, caste Hindus take revenge and burn down 268 houses in Natham Colony (Nattam Kottai) where Ilavarasan and his fellow Dalit people lived, in Kondampatti and Anna Nagar in Dharmapuri district.

While the government came to their immediate rescue with compensation and rebuilt the houses, in July 2013, Divya’s mother filed a Habeas Corpus petition and Divya told the court that she would want to return to her mother.

The very next day Ilavarasan was found dead near a railway track. The police declared he was hit by Coimbatore-Kurla Express train.

Although Dalit groups raised doubts over the death, the one-man probe committee formed by the Tamil Nadu government and the police (CB-CID) closed the case, saying it was an act of suicide. They gave the reason that Ilavarasan was depressed after Divya returned to her mother.

Dr Sampath Kumar, then head of the forensic medicine department at Sri Ramachandra Medical College had ruled out suicide as the facts, he said, did not point towards it.

The aftermath

Inter-caste marriage, claimed to be the root cause of the violence, is not new to people of this region. Such marriages often take place in villages and disturbances used to be confined to the concerned families. But here, the mob went on a rampage and looted and raided houses, turning a love story into full-blown caste violence.

“In a democratic country like ours, we are even unwilling to give the man and woman the right to determine whom they want to marry,” the Madras High Court had in 2016 observed while rapping the state government for administrative lapses in containing the violence. “Not only that, life and property are lost in the meaningless fury of one community against the other, reflecting a sorry state of affairs of the society,” the court said.

The violence left the local population heavily polarised back then. Several Dalit households lost important assets like bicycles, motorbikes, identity documents like ration cards, property documents. That an entire village consisted of Dalits made them an easy target for the caste Hindus.

With no land or industries, Dalits worked in the fields of Vanniyars as farm labourers. After the violence, it all took a hit. The Dalit families started to move to other districts and places like Bangalore, Coimbatore and Chennai, in search of construction labour work.

Eight years on, a non-violent but divisive politics plays on the ground. Today, Natham Colony remains somewhat devoid of all enthusiasm. The smiles are missing on people’s faces.

Durai M, one of the victims in the mob attack and who rebuilt his house, says though peace prevails, the caste differences still remain as both the communities do not talk to each other or venture into each others’ village.

“One or two people have changed. But largely the discrimination still stands. Even today, youngsters from the neighbouring villages attack Dalit children,” Durai says.

Durai rues that with lack of rains, the farm labour work too got affected and most people went in search of work outside the district. “We appealed to the government to bring in some industry where we can be employed. But those requests fell on deaf ears,” Durai adds.

He says with people moving out for work, it in a way reduced the friction between the two communities.

A 17-year-old- Dalit boy studying class 12 in Dharmapuri says if he carries beef in his lunchbox, his caste Hindu classmates in college tease him.

“Also, while walking back home, they tend to show their superiority by teasing the Dalit children,” the boy says. The college student, like in the Pariyerum Perumal movie, says he does not get into an altercation with the caste Hindus as it may provoke further tension. They’ve been directed at home to bear with it and get back home without inviting trouble.

Madamma and Ramakka, two women who lost their house and rebuilt them with the government compensation, are today quite unhappy with the whole incident. Their children work in far-off places, they are mired in debts, and it took away their rights to free movement.

Showing the charred images of her house and petty shop she had back then, Ramakka says the incident only put them in deep debt with families borrowing money to build houses as the government compensation wasn’t enough.

“The government gave ₹2.7 lakh each and out of which ₹30,000 was spent on solar power. Although we asked for higher compensation, we weren’t allotted. So we had to borrow additional money to rebuild the house,” she says.

The Federal in 2019 reported how the village remained under strict supervision of the police, with people having to take permission for any festivity. Besides, the youth had complained of not being able to secure jobs in and around Dharmapuri, with their identity as Dalits and address in Natham Colony being a baggage.

Munirathan (name changed), 26, a nursing graduate, says she has not got a job for the last three years. “If I apply for jobs, they ask for ₹2-3 lakh as a bribe. Being a Dalit, I cannot afford to arrange for such money. The system only makes it worse for us lower castes to get a decent job,” she says.

With the state assembly elections on, a man paints the walls of their neighbour’s house with the rising sun (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s party) symbol. Political groups have been mobilising people, relying heavily on caste.

Politics of inter-caste marriages in TN

In the current election, the Congress, an ally of DMK, has promised in its manifesto to bring a law to protect inter-caste marriages and prevent honour killings. The other parties have however remained silent on the issue.

In the past, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), which enjoys support of the Vanniyars (OBC), thrives by polarising the community with fear mongering over inter-caste marriage. Soon after the riots, PMK leaders had openly called for attack on Dalits if they tried to “take away” Vanniyar girls.

Inflammatory speeches by its leader S Ramadoss, his son Anbumani and late Kaduvetti Guru trivialised and justified the Dharmapuri violence. Guru called for the castration and murder of Dalit men who would ‘dare to fall’ for Vanniyar women. He was also the leader of Vanniyar Sangam. The police even arrested Anbumani for hate speech, following which his supporters again unleashed terror by burning buses.

They fought the 2014 Lok Sabha election in alliance with BJP to win the Dharmapuri seat. The party campaigned on the claim that it would press for amendment of the Protection of Civil Rights Act and the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, which they claim Dalits use to foist false cases against others.

In fact, the Modi government amended the SC/ST Act in 2018, diluting the original provisions that gave protection to Dalits. And the Supreme Court upheld the amendments, giving way to protests from the community across the country.

PMK’s approach has been akin to that of BJP. While the BJP played the ‘love-jihad’ card with Hindu-Muslim where they accused Muslim men of luring Hindu women into marriage, PMK did the same against Dalits and created a sense of fear among Vanniyars, saying their women were not safe as Dalits wearing jeans and T-shirts, lured Vanniyar women only to benefit economically.

The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) that supports Dalits and led by MP Thol Thirumavalavan ended the uncomfortable bonhomie with PMK after the Dharmapuri violence. Today they stand as bitter rivals.

Irrespective of which political party comes to power and whatever they may promise, for the 17-year old boy in Natham Colony, it’s an everyday battle to go to college and be back home safe. But he hopes someday things may change.

“Even as I get mocked for eating beef and being a Dalit, I tend to ignore them. I listen to songs of Casteless Collective band on Dalit issues and beef eating and feel empowered,” he says.