Recalling Melavalavu ..............

It was a function with a difference in Chennai last Monday. The presidents of four grama panchayats – Pappapatti, Keeripatti, Natarmangalam and Kottakachiyandal – were here to be felicitated by the Chief Minister, M.Karunanidhi and his son, M.K.Stalin, Minister for Local Administration. That the DMK decided to stand up against caste-based discrimination and with those who mustered courage to defy the unstated ``rule’’ that power shall not vest with the Dalits is indeed a positive development.

As one sat through the function and as one saw a few hundred citizens from the four villages (from Madurai and Virudhunagar districts) get down from chartered buses to enter the Kalaivanar Arangam on Monday evening, memories of the gory massacre of Murugesan and six of his associates on June 27, 2007 came to mind.

Recall that murderous assault on democracy and the Republican Constitution. Murugesan was among those from Melavalavu who had defied the dictat of the intermediate caste members from the village that he shall not file nomination for the post of president of the Melavalavu panchayat even if it was reserved for the Scheduled Castes. And because he defied that dictat, he was killed in broad daylight on his way back from the Madurai District Collector’s office. Six others including three members of the panchayat and an employee of the panchayat were killed with him.

I remember having gone there to Melavalavu, many times after that ghastly display of caste arrogance and did not find any semblance of remorse among those who belonged to the same caste as the accused in the ghastly massacre. One did find members of almost all major political parties among them and they all felt that they did nothing wrong! It took several years for the prosecution to ensure conviction of the accused in the trial court and one also found that this was achieved only because the prosecution was assisted by a bunch of public spirited lawyers.

The appeal by the alleged perpetrators of the crime is now lying before the High Court and it remains to be seen as to whether justice is ensured in the final analysis.

Meanwhile, the citizens living in the Dalit colony at Melavalavu were struggling hard to keep themselves alive. And this was because they were denied of employment in the agricultural land in Melavalavu as well as in the several villages around. There were hardly anyone in that colony who owned land to take care of the livelihood concerns of all the Dalits and this meant starvation. Some able bodied men had gone over to Kerala to work as casual labourers there and some other were wondering if they should go to Chennai.

The children there had stopped going to school because the school was located outside the Dalit colony. The grama panchayat office remained locked for months on end. Those visits to Melavalavu convinced me that the social conditions in Tamil Nadu were not too different from Bihar. The story of Melavalavu was in many ways not very different from Lakshmanpur Bathe, Miapur and Narayanpur.
Recall the fact that the massacre of Dalits in Narayanpur (in 1999) had provoked the then President, K.R.Narayanan to recommend dismissal of the Rabri Devi Government in the State and the measure had to be reversed only because it was certain then that the move will not be endorsed in the Rajya Sabha; any dismissal of a State Government, even when the Constitutional scheme of things have failed will have to be approved by both Houses of parliament after the Supreme Court’s decision in the S.R.Bommai case.

It may be true that all this are stories from the past and the fact is that a lot of water has flown down the Tamaraparni by now. The fact is that the Dalits in the Southern districts of Tamil Nadu have risen to assert their democratic rights and the political establishment too willing to stand up with them. The DMK seems to have woken up from stupor and realized the need to revive some aspects of its past. In other words, it is a positive change from the 1996-2001 period, when the party, despite being in power, did precious little to ensure the protection of Murugesan and others; it did nothing to ensure elections in these four villages then.

This change, however, will have to be accompanied by concerted efforts to ensure the setting up of agro-based industries in these villages as well as in other parts of the region so that the Dalits are not forced into starvation. The fact is that they do not own substantial land. And even those who own land – the members of the thevar community – are not affluent in any sense of the term. Their concerns too will have to be addressed.

Lest it be mistaken, let me stress that a plea that the concerns of the thevars be addressed shall not mean, in any way, that their ``sentiments’’ that they be allowed to control the resources of the grama panchayat. This will have to be left with the elected panchayat heads and it shall be ensured that they control such processes as auctioning the fishing rights in the ponds that belong to the panchayat and also the land vested with the temple in these villages.

All this will require a firm conviction on the part of the DMK’s rank and file in the villages and elsewhere to the idea of equality as espoused by Periyar EVR and Annadurai. A tall order no doubt but it is possible.