GENERAL APPEAL(India): Caste based discrimination against 13 villages in Tamil Nadu must end

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from the Meetchi Makkal Iyakkam and the People’s Watch, two human rights organisations based in Tamil Nadu, India regarding the case of people’s protest against the systematic denial of rights and the discrimination practiced against the Dalit communities in Iruvappapuram panchayat. Iruvappapuram panchayat comprising of 13 Dalit hamlets is in Srivaikundam Taluk of Thoothukudi district.

CASE DETAILS:

Iruvappapuram panchayat is a Dalit dominated panchayat. In the past, the panchayat was administered by the Dalits. [Panchayat, village, taluk and blocks are administrative and revenue subdivisions in India]. Iruvappapuram had within its territorial jurisdiction 2,500 hectares of fertile agricultural land that generated reasonably good revenue. However, on 20 October 1964, Iruvappapuram was annexed to the neighbouring Sawyerpuram Village Panchayat, which was controlled and dominated by non-Dalits. Sawyerpuram is now a Town Panchayat.

The annexation was against the wish of the residents of Iruvappapuram. It is alleged that the then state administration annexed Iruvappapuram to Sawyerpuram to please the non-Dalits in Sawyerpuram who were finding it difficult to conceive a flourishing Dalit panchayat near to them. Before the annexation Iruvappapuram was considered to be one of the best-run panchayati raj institutions.

Ever since the merger, the residents of Iruvappapuram faced discrimination from the Sawyerpuram administration and from the rest of the state administration. Iruvappapuram and its people were systematically ignored by the non-Dalit dominated administration to such extent that the residents of the 13 villages in Iruvappapuram were denied the benefits of development works. The residents of Iruvappapuram did not even have a burial ground. The people of Iruvappapuram were denied proper representation in the Town Panchayat. After the merger of Iruvappapuram with Sawyerpuram, Iruvappapuram was divided into two wards having the possibility of just two ward members while the Sawyerpuram had 16 ward members even before the merger. The two representatives from Iruvappapuram is a minority in the Panchayat Council. The discrimination was practiced against the residents of Iruvappapuram, systematically, that even the funds allocated to the development work in Iruvappapuram were diverted repeatedly for the benefit of non-Dalits living outside Iruvappapuram.

The local people allege that even to lodge complaints with the local electricity office the residents have to walk for hours to reach the electricity office. The residents have to walk up to three to four kilometers to get their ration supply from the public food distribution shops and the government primary health centre. A child development centre (Balwadi) that was provided to one of the villages was allocated near a burial ground. This discrimination is continuing since the past 43 years.

Being fed up with this discrimination the residents of Iruvappapuram started holding protest meets. They also organised themselves and started writing to the district as well as state government authorities, explaining the caste based discrimination practiced against them and urging the authorities to restore the independent status of Iruvappapuram. However none of these demands were taken seriously by the administration. This lack of response from the administration agitated the villagers and they decided to protest by of organising a relay hunger strike from 2 October 2007.

While the hunger strike was progressing, several protest meets were organised by the villagers in front of government offices and other administrative offices at the local town and at the district head quarters. It was at this time a woman named Muthar died on 7 January 2008 at Pethanachiamman Nagar village in Iruvappapuram panchayat. Since the village did not have burial ground, the villagers started protesting keeping the body in the village and calling upon the administration to provide a burial ground for the village. The district administration was forced to yield and they acquired a waste land and allocated it as a burial ground. But the burial ground alone was not the only concern of the protestors since there were several other issues left unanswered. The hunger strike continued.

The administration at this juncture tried to intervene. The Deputy Superintendent of Police Mr. Nataraja Moorty was asked to intervene with force on 9 January 2008. The Superintendent along with about 100 of his officers reached Peikkulam village and started threatening the villagers. The villagers by then had put up a resistance fence to symbolically protest against the police intervention. The police tried to remove the fence forcibly. The people continued their protest. Mr. Jeevanantham, a resident who was part of the protest group poured kerosene over his body and tried to burn himself. However, he was saved and the fire was put out. Later he was taken to the Government Hospital in Thoothukudi.

This incident provoked the police as well as the administration further. Later on 10 January the police took into custody 13 persons including two children who were aged three and five years and Mr. Jeevan Kumar, the state coordinator of Meetchi Makkal Iyakkam and his wife. Those who were arrested were later produced in the court, of which the AHRC is informed that Mr. Kumar was remanded to 15 days in custody. Several of those who were arrested are the leaders of the protest movement in the panchayat.

While the AHRC is not aware whether Jeevan Kumar was released on bail, the AHRC is concerned about the manner in which the local administration has reacted to the protest organised by ordinary villagers who are demanding equality and protesting against the caste based discrimination practiced against them for the past 43 years by the non-Dalit community. The fact that the leaders of the people’s protest were targeted by the police also indicates the manner in which the administration wish to deal with the issue using unwarranted force rather than trying to resolve the problem through peaceful means.

This is not the first case that the AHRC has been reporting from India, where voices of protest are being tried to be muted by registering criminal cases against the leaders of such protest. In the recent past the AHRC has reported the case of the PVCHR, a local human rights organisation and the Guria, yet another organisation, both working from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh state where false charges were filed against human rights activists for organising people to demand their rights. It is in similar circumstances Dr. Binayek Sen of Chhattisgarh state is still being detained in custody for alleged involvement with the Maoists. This is an alarming trend to silence opposition by using the police to register false cases against human rights activists, which has to be condemned. For further information regarding the issues of Iruvappapuram panchayat please see the article published in Frontline titled Missing Panchayat.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please send a letter to the relevant authorities mentioned below urging for an immediate and thorough investigation into this case and to try to sort out the problems faced by the residents of Iruvappapuram panchayat by mediation. The AHRC is also writing to the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance calling for an immediate intervention in this case.

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