VILLUPURAM: The birth of Piraba Kalvimani from Virudhunagar in the same year as India’s independence could not have been a mere coincidence. Call him destiny’s child. For the septuagenarian, popularly known as Kalyani, heroism comes wrapped in wrinkles, a pair of age-old glasses, a bag filled with boring and even obscure papers, and long years of experience.
Kalyani has been trying to bring forth the voice of the Irular tribal community for three decades now. He was associated with 1993 gang-rape of an Irular woman by Puducherry policemen and helped the survivor file a police complaint as well as pursue the case at Villupuram court. According to J Sivakami, district coordinator of Kalyani’s organisation and a member of the community, “For many decades our people were remanded under false cases by the police to cover up for the original culprit.”
Kalyani trails these victims of police brutality and offers them a fighting chance with his knowledge and resources. Moreover, after word of his support for Vijaya spread, more people from the community began approaching him to help them fight the police and state government predominantly against custodial violence. As a result, Kalyani has attended over 500 cases of police atrocity, and caste oppression against Irular tribal people in the district. The senior activist would visit the Irular victims of police torture and caste discrimination directly and then file a complaint on their behalf. He pursues the developments on the cases.
This tendency, however, did not sprout from the saviour syndrome, but from the growing footprint of the left ideology during the 1970s. “Along with academic texts, I indulged myself in reading more about revolutionary movements across the globe, ideologies that shook fascism and was active in the then student revolutionary movements in the state. We started various clubs/study circles back in the 70s to spread the ideas of Tamil nationalism, Periyar’s reformation and Ambedkar’s anti-caste revolution in Villupuram,” Kalyani tells TNIE.
He founded the Tribal Irular Protection of Rights Organization in 1993, and has been aiding victims of police atrocities from the community in Villupuram, Kallakurichi and Cuddalore districts. His comrades include fellow activists Sister Lucina, Reverend Father Rafel and P V Ramesh. Someone who has taken the responsibility of an entire community on his shoulders does not have anyone to take care of him. Kalyani is a full-time activist who sustains on his pension and is a regular at protest sites.
He worked as a lecturer at Aringar Anna government arts college in Villupuram in the late 70’s. It was also around this time that he was involved in the anti-Hindi and Eelam Tamil Liberation agitations that led him to quit his job and take up full-time activism. He settled in Tindivanam taluk in the 80s. In 1994, Kalyani along with his revolutionary circle, including present Villupuram MP - D Ravikumar, started a Tamil-medium school in Tindivanam to provide free education to children from the area. They named it Thai Tamil Palli, and insisted on educating kids in their mother-language, which they said is the best way to improve knowledge.
Kalyani rests his trust on the tribal youth to take his mission of protecting their rights and educating them, forward.After 30 years of resolute service, Kalyani, however, feels that there has been little progress. He says, “It is a long journey, yet nothing has changed much. Our judiciary acts on-point sometimes but for the most deprived sections of society, it often acts with negligence. It is evident in our fight for the 11-year-old Thirukovilur gang rape of Irular women.”