CHENNAI: S Aravinthan vividly remembers the day his village was set on fire. “We were all at school. It was about 5 O’ clock in the evening. People came rushing to our school and asked us to run away and hide, they said our village was under attack.”
That was in November 2012. Today Aravinthan and his friend D Ramki, both victims of the caste violence in Dharmapuri that followed the tragic Divya-Ilavarasan saga, are students of the premier Loyola College in the city.
“The fear never went away even after we reached back to our village after that night. When we came back we saw that all our houses were burnt. The Ragi that was harvested was all gone. Many of my friends lost school certificates. For weeks we all stayed in a shed. But, in spite of the presence of all the people, I somehow felt that they could come back any minute and attack us. I could not even study. Even though schools reopened after three days we did not go. Later, the police would take us in their vehicles to the schools,” he recalls.
The event had left many scars. Ramki, lost his 22-year-old cousin sister, Vasuki, in the attack and its aftermath. “My sister was mentally unstable. The trauma was too much for her. She died within a few days after the incident,” he says. Till the houses were rebuilt, the community had to survive in the open shed in the biting cold. “During the first couple of days there was nothing, even food was hard to get. Then, the government and later neighbhouring villages provided us with food and clothes,” says Aravinthan.
None of the Dalit boys from their batch in school are studying in colleges in Dharmapuri now. “Some got admission in the engineering college in Arakonam. We got admitted here,” says D Ramki, whose house stood opposite to that of Ilavarasan’s at the Natham Colony.
“After the incident, there was a complete rift. People from the dominant castes would not speak to us, not even look at us. Earlier, we used to sit together and discuss, do group studies, all of that was over with that issue. That rift continues even now when we go back to our village,” reveals Aravinthan, whose house was in the neighbhouring Anna Nagar colony.
While the intercaste marriage of Divya and Ilavarasn after their elopement, had isolated the Dalits, they point out that it had not always been like that. “Even 20 years back there has been similar intercaste marriages. Some of the children born to intercaste couples are now studying colleges. It has not been so violent,” maintains Ramki.
But, back in Chennai both are happy to have had an opportunity to study. “When we were in school, I had not typed on a computer even once. It was there in our school but only the teacher would use it. Within two months of coming here, I can search whatever I want on the Google, send e-mails and I have a Facebook account also,” smiles the youth with pride.
Besides the library, being able to learn English are the other big attractions of the city. However, nothing comes over the relief that the city and the urban space offer as an escape from caste, if only temporarily. “Here people don’t seem to notice our caste. Many know that we are from Dharmapuri and we are Dalits. But, here we have been able to build relationships without that thought in mind,” he says.
The two are now convinced that bringing people out of their villages to the city will give respite from the tyranny of caste system. “I tell my friends in Dharmapuri to come here. But not many can afford to come here. For all of us from my batch, there was support from Dalit groups and they admitted us to colleges,” says Ramki.