The Tamil Nadu government, which has been publicising its efforts to help Dalits enter temples, appears to have no plan in place to deal with the vicious backlash from dominant castes that invariably follows such efforts. A ground report by TNM has found that the Dalits who become targets of such hate crimes rarely receive the protection they need from the government. The police, though bound by law to register cases under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been reluctant to file even a basic FIR in most cases.
Thenmudiyanur village in Tiruvannamalai district, around 200 km from Chennai, offers a classic example of the government’s failure to offer protection to Dalits who challenged an 80-year-old boycott and entered the Muthumariamman temple on January 30. The temple entry was facilitated by District Collector B Murugesh, Superintendent of Police (SP) K Karthikeyan, and Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) Mandhagini among others, who were projected as heroes by the media. Within a few days, however, caste Hindus unleashed a wave of violence and imposed an economic boycott on Dalits. Neither the ‘hero’ officials nor their sizable media entourage have intervened to protect the Dalits.
The caste Hindus in the village have cut off water supply to the small farmlands owned by Dalits. Standing crops are withering by the hour in the intensifying summer heat, but there has been no effort from the government to address this emergency. Dalit labourers in the village have been removed from their jobs, a social and economic boycott imposed on them, forcing them to travel to nearby villages to earn a livelihood or even buy provisions. Even the parai (traditional drum) artistes from the Paraiyar community have been banned from performing at village functions such as weddings, funerals, and initiation ceremonies.
On February 7 morning, a petty shop owned by Indra (44), a Dalit single woman, was burned to ashes on the Edathanoor Junction road, just 1 km away from Thenmudiyanur. “I live alone here. The lock wasn’t broken and nothing had been stolen,” she says. The vandals did not loot the shop is a clear sign that this was a crime inspired by hate, and not greed.
This story was originally published in thenewsminute.com . Read the full story here