Battling caste in Tamil Nadu

Hindustan Times

3 days ago

The idea of social justice has shaped politics in Tamil Nadu for over a century. Political parties that subscribe to E V 'Periyar' Ramasamy's anti-caste ideology have had an uninterrupted run in office since 1967. Yet, caste violence, mostly targeting Dalits and perpetrated by members of castes under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, continues to roil Tamil Nadu, highlighting not just the administrative failure of successive governments but also the ideological hypocrisy of parties subscribing to the Dravidian Movement that takes pride in its anti-caste roots. The latest incident comes from Tirunelveli in southern Tamil Nadu that boasts 90% literacy, where a 27-year-old Dalit software engineer was killed for allegedly being in a relationship with a woman from the Most Backward Caste community. The woman's parents are police sub-inspectors, and the killer is her younger brother. The district was in the spotlight two years ago when a Dalit school boy and his sister were attacked by their schoolmates. The MK Stalin government had then appointed a retired judge to investigate the matter. The exhaustive Justice Chandru report found shocking evidence of not just deep-rooted caste prejudice in institutions but also a reluctance by heads of institutions to even recognise the malaise, let alone act against it. Anecdotal evidence too suggests large-scale use of caste markers among students in educational institutions, reflecting the polarisation in society.
Dalits constitute close to 20% of the state's population and have become politically assertive in the past few decades. Improvement in educational standards and a shift towards service jobs have upset the traditional power relationship, triggering caste violence. Inter-caste marriages, especially when the girl is from a dominant caste, increasingly trigger a violent response, as witnessed in Dharmapuri (2012) and Udumalaipettai (2016). Unfortunately, the administrative apparatus, including the law enforcement system, has often failed to rise above caste associations and enforce the rule of law. Political parties that invoke caste pride covertly and overtly are equally to blame.
For the Dravidian majors — the DMK and the AIADMK, primarily — the anti-Dalit violence suggests the failure to transcend their core vote bases, which are OBC communities, and usher in a politics that can enable the annihilation of caste. This task has been left incomplete by parties that now view politics entirely through the prism of economic development and ignore social fault lines that call for intense ideological engagement. Tamil Nadu's crisis is also the result of its economic advancement and improvement in human development indices, and its solution lies in political parties reinventing a paradigm of social justice.