CUDDALORE: Samy Nagar, an Irular settlement on the outskirts of Cuddalore taluk, offers a glimpse into problems that face the Irular community across the State. Samy Nagar, home to 220 Irula families, is only a few metres away from a railway track -- the noise of trains whooshing past breaks the silence of the village.
While the men are away for work, children play in the sand, wondering how the trains actually work, as their mothers sit in a circle chatting. Idyllic as it may seem, the community is cut off from most services -- especially healthcare and education -- but their biggest struggle is that of trying to document their identity.
The community settled in the area in 1998. In 2001, members of the community started applying for a caste certificate (CC) to enroll their children in school. However, due to the illiteracy of the older generations and not knowing how to communicate with the officials, they found the government process intimidating. Worse, disinterest of officials to help them forced them to drop the effort. In 2014, they tried again, with the community head as liaison. This effort, too, failed, as officials proved unhelpful.
Finally, 20 years after giving up their nomadic lifestyle to settle in Samy Nagar, in December 2018 a few members of the community managed to get a caste certificate, thanks to the support of some NGOs. Workers from Habitat for Humanity, India and Rural Organisation for Action and Development (ROAD) had helped them submit petitions for CCs in 2017.
Still, data accessed by Express shows that of the 220 families, less than 10 per cent have caste certificate.
“In 2017, when we applied for the caste certificate, an official refused to consider us as Irulas. Only in 2018 some of us managed to get the certificates with the help of activists,” said Chelladurai, a former village head.
But why was this certificate so hard to access? Officialdom doesn’t seem to know either. “In case of Samy Nagar, officials should have issued CC when a few in the community applied for the certificate in 2001. There was no reason for an official to deny CC as the community are Irulas. I cannot understand why it took almost two decades for the community to get CC,” Cuddalore Sub-Collector KM Sarayu said.
“When I took office, I had about 2,000 birth certificate applications pending, but none were from the Irulas. Irulas seem laidback in applying for documents from the government. They do not persist with the government process. Importantly, even if they managed to get certificates, they are unaware of its usage,” said Sarayu.
Indeed there is a lack of awareness among the community. “I understood the importance of personal documents only when I ventured out for work. Hence, I decided to get a ration card for my family and to enroll my two children in school. But I was not aware of the CC,” said Rajandren, a Samy Nagar resident.
However, some question if the onus of getting such documentation done should rest solely with a marginalised community, letting officials off the hook.
“When I received my CC from the district collector last year, an official from Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department came up to me and said the department had not been aware that such an Irula village existed and requested I approach the department for any help if needed,” recalled C Jayaraj, one of the few from Samy Nagar who is in college.
“I was shocked and furious at the same time. Most members of my community have barely been outside the village but the official expects us to approach them if we need help. This clearly shows the sense of responsibility they have towards their job,” Jayaraj said.
Irulars in other districts also point out that officials rarely guide them on required documents or how to get them.
According to the 2011 census, the population of Scheduled Tribes (which include the Irulars) in Tamil Nadu has increased to 7,94,697 from 6,51,321. Yet officials are yet to issue CC for over half of the State’s ST population, said sources at the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department in Chennai.
K Saravanan, criminal lawyer and head of Pazhangudi Makkal Iyakkam in Tiruvallur district, recalled the issues he faced. “In spite of coming third in Class 12 in the district in 1995, I was unable to join college as I did not have any government certificate. I had to wait three years and get help from Irula associations in order to avail a CC… More than 20 years ago the awareness on CC was not much,” he said.
As per data from Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department in Chennai, since 2012, the department has received only 3,251 CC applications of which over 2,000 applications are pending, aside from the applications the department receives for clearance every month.
So what happens if you don’t have a CC?
No housing, no infrastructure Samy Nagar lacks road connectivity to the village, regular power supply, toilets and access to health care. Members of Irular communities in Villupuram and Kancheepuram said they faced similar issues. Of the 220 families in Samy Nagar, 101 families hold pattas, 60 do not have patta, and 60 families live in huts (of which 18 new families migrated to Samy Nagar six months back).
“In 2000, officials built us a few houses and gave patta. But in 2003, when we approached for houses again, the officials said, we did not belong to Irula community. Agitated by this, we took snakes and rats and staged a protest. But our efforts were in vain. In 2017, we were told to document our family tree for the last five generations to get a CC,” Chelladurai said. NGOs trained the community to write out a family tree. Of the 54 families who submitted their family trees, 49 received CC in 2018.
Schools ask for caste certificates, though they should not
Express found that of the 89 children at Samy Nagar, close to 69 attend a government school in Semmankuppam. However, teachers at the school told Express that on any given day at least 20 per cent of the students from Samy Nagar were absent, forcing the teachers to come to the village and bring the children to school.
“I force my children to go to school. But I have to go to work myself. Hence I am not available to take care of them. Also, I sometimes, make my elder daughter skip school to take care of my younger son,” said a mother of five children.
In the year 2012, nearly 40 students dropped out of the school in Semmankuppam. Due to higher rate of dropouts, found by a survey conducted by Block Resource Centre for 2013-14, a bridge course was introduced, where the students were trained to attend school every day.
“Most Irula students are told by teachers of government schools, a CC is needed to write their Class 10 final exams. This is absolutely false. A few teachers also go on to say, they can either get a CC or simply drop out, while some say, they cannot pursue a real job even if they studied or wrote exams, associating the children with the caste. However, in order to avoid this, we have informed the district education department that a CC isn’t required to write exams,” Sarayu said. According to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in TN, the literacy rate of STs is 54.3 per cent, 25.8 per cent lower than State literacy average.
Community’s future
Jayaraj is in his final year of an undergraduate degree in Mathematics at Periyar Arts College in Cuddalore. He is among the few from the community to go to college. For the past two months, he has started teaching the children in his village basic reading, writing and communication.
“I have been teaching 35 students on basic skills like reading, writing, and communication. I want them to be interested in learning. Although initially, I could not manage to bring even one child to ‘class’, over time, with a little persuasion I gathered 35 children,” he said.
S Veeramani (27), an inland fisher, is popularly called ‘writer’ in the village. Having studied up to Class 10, Veeramani one of the few who can fill application forms and write petitions. He is currently planning to resume his education. “We have been deprived of all the facilities or even basic necessities of life. We are no more associated with the occupation our forefathers did. But educating ourselves is the only way we can escape discrimination and social prejudice,” the two youngsters said.