Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 12.07.13
Peace returns to Bhagana with fall of 'caste' wall- The Times Of India
Nadiad murder: Dalits protest police inaction- The Times Of India
PMK regrets Ilavarasan's tragic death, says G K Mani- The New Indian Express
DC Special: Here, love gets `fixed' - Deccan Hearld
A Dalit Prime Minister: why Maya is more of an Obama than Namo- IBNLive
NOTE : Please find attacjment for HINDI NEWS UPDATES (PDF)
The Times Of India
Peace returns to Bhagana with fall of 'caste' wall
HISAR: The Bhagana village panchayat has demolished the wall raised upper caste residents to cordon off the
houses of dalits, following discussions with the Hisar district administration. The wall was built in May 2012, which had led to ostracisation of dalits and caste conflict.
Following the alleged diktat by the upper castes of Bhagana to shun dalits, the latter had started a relay protest at the district headquarters. About 10 dalit families used to end their dharna with demand for registration of case under the Prevention of Atrocities Against the SCs/STs Act against those who issued orders to shun the socially backward people of the village.
The wall had blocked access to three houses of dalits and led to tension between the upper caste villagers,
mostly jats, and dalits, after which the social boycott of all lower caste residents was announced.
Talking to TOI, Hisar District Congress Committee president Dharambir Goyat, who mediated to resolve the lingering row, said on Wednesday, "A meeting was held under the leadership of village sarpanch Rakesh Panghal and other prominent members. It was decided that they would approach the deputy commissioner's office and request the administration to demolish the wall, which had created social conflict in the village."
The Times Of India
Nadiad murder: Dalits protest police inaction
Nadiad: Members of KhedaZillaDalitHaqSamiti held a rally in Nadiad on Thursday to protest against the failure of the police in arresting those responsible for the murder of a gas agency owner on June 25.
The agitated dalits marched from Santram temple in Nadiad town to the district collectorate where they submitted a memorandum to collector Shalini Aggrawal seeking her intervention in the matter. Assuring them of action in the matter, the collector asked additional collector to look into the matter.
On June 25, owner of Bhagwati Gas Agency on Dakor-Kapadvanj Road Dalabhai Vala (58) left for home, but did not reach his destination. His family members tried to locate him frantically, but failed. His body was found from a ditch opposite Don Bosco School the next day. A police case was registered in the matter and one Hardik Shah was booked as an accused on the basis of suspicion. No arrest has been made in the matter yet.
The New Indian Express
PMK regrets Ilavarasan's tragic death, says G K Mani
Pattali Makkal Katchi president G K Mani said the party felt sorry for the tragic death of Dalit youth E Ilavarasan
last Thursday.
"We feel sorry for Ilavarasan," Mani told mediapersons here on Thursday, after coming out of Vellore Central Prison, where he met party cadre detained under the Goondas Act and National Security Act (NSA) and lodged in the prison.
Mani was accompanied by former Union Railway Minister R Velu and Anaicut MLA M Kalaiarasan. However, he refused to speak further on the violence unleashed against the Dalits after the inter-caste marriage of Ilavarasan and Divya. "The case is pending in court. We will express our views once the case is over," he quipped.
Responding to a question on political parties in the State charging PMK of trying to gain mileage over caste division, he said, "Unable to stomach the rising popularity of PMK, several parties were making such comments."
Further Mani said their party leader had never been against any community. "We want to bring a change in the SC/ST Atrocity Act. It is being backed by various sections of the community," he added. On the arrest of the PMK cadre, he said, "We will face the cases legally."
Deccan Hearld
DC Special: Here, love gets `fixed'
Dharmapuri: About eight months ago, two young lovers —Dalit youth Ilavarasan, 19, and Vanniyar girl Divya, 18,—eloped from their home in Dharmapuri and got married in a remote temple outside the state borders. Unlike other marriages, the union of these two teenagers caused a violent pandemonium that was unprecedented in the history of the district.
The girl's father committed suicide and now her husband has ended his life unable to bear the pain of being separated from her by caste pressures; several homes in the villages where Ilavarasan and Divya belonged to, Natham Colony and Sellankottai, have been razed to the ground while the remaining are decaying; hundreds of families who had lived at peace with each other despite their caste differences and economic conditions no longer look at the rival community face to face and have become sworn enemies.
To blame caste-based politics and caste hatred for the chain of incidents over these eight months out of Nayakankottai and surrounding areas, which was the cradle of Naxal movement in TN back in '70s and '80s and still bears a huge Marxist-Leninist symbol of sickle-hammer with statues of Naxal leaders Appu and Balan right in front of the Natham Colony, would be a myopic excuse for putting away an impending disaster.
If the investigating authorities, the rights activists and social commentators want to seek the truth, they have to go to Nayakankottai, Natham Colony, Anna Nagar and, most importantly, Sellankottai, where Divya was born and raised, and talk to the locals.
Any old-timer in Dharmapuri knows that villages and hamlets surrounding Nayakankottai are blatantly pro naxal and their lives were largely influenced by naxal leaders until as late as a decade ago.
When the Reds slowly moved out of the villages, other powerful and more manipulative groups took centrestage. They decide on marriages, break-ups, selling and buying of land and almost everything else in the region. Their growth over the past decade is responsible for many of the malaise affecting Dharmapuri today, including rampant child marriages, say the locals.
Among all the bizarre twists and turns that the Divya-Ilavarasan love story has taken, three incidents are pivotal to understanding what happened in the lives of the lovers.
Nagarajan, the office assistant at the Nayakankottai Agricultural Cooperative Society located outside Natham Colony, who allegedly cooperated with police in trying to trace his daughter, suddenly committed suicide on November 7, 2012 in his home. Why did he commit suicide?
According to villagers in Sellankottai, Nagarajan's daughter Divya had eloped with Ilavarasan at least a month before he killed himself. Despite being a complainant, Nagarajan was asked to visit the Krishnapuram police station every day and interrogated for seven days since November 1, 2012.
While nobody knows what transpired during these interrogations, the sub-inspector at Krishnapuram police station, Perumal, a Dalit, was suspended for dereliction of duty in connection with the Divya-Ilavarsan case on November 10, 2012. Why was an SI suspended in a woman-missing case after her father committed suicide?
Following Nagarajan's death, large-scale violence was unleashed by members of Vanniyar community on Dalit colonies of Natham, Anna Nagar and Kondampatti where allegedly hundreds of homes were razed to the ground in five hours.
Roads were blocked to prevent police and fire service personnel from helping villagers and some political party workers unleashed mayhem.
Dalit residents of Natham claim that such violence was unprecedented where Dalits and Vanniyars have been living as brothers for centuries. If the two communities did not have major clashes for so many years, why now?
The last and most important puzzle in the case is the dramatic turnaround by Divya, who had braved her parents and community members to elope with a 19-year-old, unemployed youth and lived with him for several months. But, suddenly, she claims she never wants to return to him. Why this turnaround?
To get an answer to all these questions, one has to first find out if the residents of Nayakankottai and Sellankottai are so opposed to inter-caste marriages and the extent to which they would go to prevent it.
Selvaraj, 48, from Anna Nagar near Natham Colony, is a casual labourer working at construction sites in far-off cities. He says Dalits marrying Vanniyars is not a new trend at all.
"Even in our colony, of just 55 families, one family is a Vanniyar-Dalit couple. They are happy and have now gone to the GH to lend support to Ilavarasan's parents," he claims.
Not just in Anna Nagar, at least six inter-caste couples live in Natham Colony and a few others in Kondampatti, the three Dalit colonies that were razed by an angry Vanniyar mob. If it has never been a problem, what is unique in the Divya-Ilavarasan marriage?
"This region has changed over the past few years. This kind of problem was not prevalent here when the naxals were around, this is a new trend," he says.
Dalit residents of all colonies in and around believe that the mob violence and razing of their homes is just not a fallout of the suicide of Nagarajan.
"To think that the suicide of Divya's father led to attacks is absurd," says Vedi, a resident of Kondampatti. He points out that the attackers hurled hundreds of petrol bombs.
"They had also blocked the roads on either side using chopped trees. All this could not have been be organised in a short span of time," he argues. "This is a planned attack."
Located around 2 km from Natham Colony, and accessible only through a dirt-filled road between groundnut fields, is Sellankottai where Divya lived with her parents Nagarajan and Thenmozhi in a modest home away from the main road.
Her house has remained locked since the day she returned to her mother after she was told that her mother was ill and needed her help. At least a dozen police officials guarded their home on Friday when a furore was breaking out over Ilavarasan's death, just a few kilometres at the Dharmapuri GH.
Elsewhere in Sellankottai, women gather around in small groups and whisper about the plight of their lives. Most men have gone for work in other districts and distant cities as agriculture has not been as supportive.
Govindasamy (23), who had just completed college and returned home to stay with his parents, is the only male present in the village on Friday afternoon. Neatly clad in a sports T-shirt and shorts, he hardly looks like a man who would go on the rampage against a village because a boy fell in love with a girl.
"None of the villagers here is opposed to love marriages," says Govindasamy. "We have also grown up watching young men fall in love with women like the rest of the country. We would not oppose a love marriage if it was genuine," he says.
The womenfolk soon gather around Govindasamy and tell him not to talk to the scribes. "Media and government have been extremely unfair to us. After the violence, 55 men from the village were jailed. At least 17 college students were put in jail and as a result of this, they had to discontinue their studies," says Lakshmi (name changed), a resident of Sellankottai.
The women claim that while there was a lot of coverage for sufferings of Dalit colonies, not even the collector or local MLA bothered to hear their version of the story.
"Let them try to answer why Nagarajan committed suicide more than a month after his daughter eloped with a Dalit youth. If he was so struck by shame, he would have committed suicide immediately, not a month later," says Lakshmi.
Villagers at Sellankottai claim that Nagarajan who had to walk past Natham Colony every day to his cooperative society bank on the Dharmapuri-Thirupattur main road was harassed and verbally abused daily.
"It is a tactic used by some political party leaders to intimidate parents of girls who elope with 'other' men. When the humiliation reaches unbearable limits, a mediator would enter the scene and negotiate an amount for returning the girl back to the family and restore the family honour," says another woman at Sellankottai who refuses to be identified.
She claims that in this particular case, the mediator was sub-inspector Perumal who used his official machinery to force Nagarajan to agree to Rs 3 lakh to get his daughter back.
"Only after Nagarajan died, senior police officials found out about Perumal's role and they immediately suspended him," she says
Residents of Sellankottai point out that the arson and related activity were not triggered by the isolated death of Nagarajan or eloping of Divya.
"For years, this has been the practice. Whenever an inter-caste pair are in love, local politicians from the same community intimidate the parents of the girl against accepting the groom. They threaten to ostracise the family if they agree to the marriage. Once the girl's father disapproves, the rival caste-based party leaders arrange for the elopement and marriage of the love birds. After the two marry, it is a sheer game of numbers where a deal is struck and the girl returns to her family," says Lakshmi (name changed).
In the Divya-Ilavarasan case, reliable sources point out that a deal was struck for Rs 3 lakh at a hotel in Dharmapuri town which was notorious for such kangaroo courts. "Despite Nagarajan agreeing to pay the amount, he was harassed by police and rival community leaders which could have led to his suicide," a police source said.
Senior police officials in the region point out such kangaroo courts have been prevalent in Dharmapuri and the surrounding areas for a long time and many have made a killing out of it.
A police officer said that usually the money demanded is anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 3 lakh. "Unfortunately, we cannot invoke the law to prevent such activities as there are not enough provisions in the rule books. In the absence of such a mechanism, it is extremely difficult to curb the menace," the officer
explained.
IBNLive
A Dalit Prime Minister: why Maya is more of an Obama than Namo
Mayavati, the four-term chief minister of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is the country's most famous Dalit (lower caste) leader who aspire to be its Prime Minister one day.
Much like Barack Obama is for the Blacks, Hispanics and a host of other groups of the American political divide, Mayavati is an Icon and hope for millions of lower caste people of India who aspire for better opportunities still denied to them even after 60 years of Independence.
If Mayavati had once sent an aircraft to fetch her a pair of footwear, or showed off a diamond necklace in a mass rally, she had strong reasons which you and I didn't need to know but meant a lot to her followers, not just the whims of a vain woman.
Mayavati is no body's fool. She certainly wasn't showing off the 'Taylor-Burton diamond' of a love affair or was out to stun the world with her beauty like Imelda Marcos.
Since her public actions and pronouncements time to time reveal chinks of mettle and strength of character worthy of a Prime Minister of India, which most of her critics have failed to notice, she had perhaps valid reason for her famous caprices too.
What if Mayavati had simply wanted to show millions of her Dalit compatriots they they have a right to wearing expensive jewellery like the rich of India, thereby awakening their sense of their rightful place in the society?
Many of her recent political moves and supportive actions for the ruling UPA in Parliament on critical legislation similarly point to mature political thinking. Her concern for the nation above parochial indulgence is evident from her recent dig at Narendra Modi, the three-time chief minister of the state of Gujarat, who, she declared, is not fit to be a leader of India.
That Mayavati managed to muster the necessary majority support to rule the state four times as chief minister with the support of other parties and also render decisive outside support to the coalition governments at the Centre is proof that this trained teacher has the knack of keeping her class together till the bells ring.
Much has already been written how her social engineering skills have taken the wind out of the sails of the Congress party, which has ruled India for the bulk of the decades after its Independence.
Unlike the Congress which traditionally had the support of the upper class Indian society and thrived on an inclusive plank to carry the lower classes by championing their cause, Mayavati has shown, time and again, that the majority lower caste offering a real partnership for the upper caste is a better vote-winning formula.
Mayavati has shown that she will base her election strategy on this tried and trusted formula which can also work beyond the boundaries of her own state, as eventually it can give the same level of satisfaction to the masses as what the Congress party, popular in many states, promise.
In several ways, the inclusive approach of Mayavati, a leader of the underprivileged lower classes of India, which has a sizable majority that is good enough to claim the chair of the Prime Minister of the country, resemble that of the US Democrats who found an acceptable and capable leader in Barack Obama.
In contrast, Narendra Modi, whose supporters claim he could be India's answer to President Obama, despite projecting a Gujarat model of development and in spite of being supported by the Hindutva brigade, is seen as a divisive character.
Wait a minute. I hear you cry: what about the Taj corridor scam, the swindle of magnificent elephants and the disproportionate assets case against Mayavati?
Actually, the Indian apex court has examined the allegations and all but rejected them as without sufficient base to prosecute Mayavati.
If you view the apparently extravagant government spending on the statues of Dalit leaders and her favourite elephants, from the point of view of millions of Dalits who remain underprivileged in 21st century India, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
If you think the garlands, spun from thousand buck bank notes, which are presented to Mayavati during her rallies and meetings are obnoxious, you haven't dined in one of those fund-raising dinners of the Republican party or made an online donation to Barack Obama's election fund. In reality there is little difference and really nothing to complain about an indigenous way of party fund raising.
Don't you think it is a century or two early to talk about a corruption-free government in a nation in the thick of development, into which money is flowing in from all around the world? Especially when it is almost a democratic right in India to be enticed with sops to part with your vote, the most fundamental guarantor of fairness in society.
In a state where an Australia-educated engineer, with a post-graduate degree, finds it imperative to promise and distribute laptops to win votes, after all talking about corruption, at least for now, is pointless. Akhilesh Yadav wouldn't have wanted of any of his mates or faculty from the Sydney Universty where he studied to be around when he had to go through the bare necessities of Indian democratic system.
However, going by electoral maths, Mayavati and India may have to wait a few more years for their Obama moment in national leadership.
News Monitor by Girish Pant
--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
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Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
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