Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a state of the mind - B R Ambedkar
Caste in Tamil Nadu today is not just a wall or even a state of mind. It is a thread dyed in different colours or left plain white that is inextricably woven into the psyche of people. It starts at school and ends in the grave.
If we join the dots of the developments in three areas during the past month, we will get a picture of caste and identity politics that runs like a perennial stream, sometimes coloured with blood, across Tamil Nadu: from school children in Tirunelveli wearing caste-coloured wrist bands, to youth in Vedaranyam breaking into a bitter clash after a road skirmish led to the desecration of an Ambedkar statue, and to a body being winched from a bridge to a river bed in Vellore because the relatives were denied access to the path leading to the burial ground.
Let us start from anganwadis, where infants and school children come to play, gain knowledge, and, eat, as the noon meal scheme ensures that children at least come to school to avoid going hungry, and in the process, learn the three Rs. But there are cases where aganwadi workers have been refusing to cook for children who are from the bottom rungs of the caste hierarchy. The segregation begins there.
TNIE reported on the 73rd Independence day how untouchability continues to be practised with impunity in a Madurai village. For the past 40 years, children of Arunthathiyar and Pallar communities have not been allowed to study in a panchayat school. The middle school, built 60 years ago, has not had a single Dalit student for 40 years. Members of the community have said they had no choice but to send their children to a government-aided school 2 km away as children were allegedly not being treated equally by the school teachers.
In Tirunelveli schools, where children of mixed caste study, there is stratification as many wear coloured wristbands, identifying their position in the caste hierarchy. Perhaps taking a leaf out of the “scriptured” white thread worn across the shoulder by the Brahmins, bands are the identification of the varna. Red, yellow, green and saffron are no longer colours children use in their drawing sheets. They wear them on their wrists so that when they raise their hands to ask doubts or answer questions posed by their seemingly neutral teachers, or play sports, their position in the caste hierarchy is immediately understood.
Dalit children are also expected to bring their plates to school to ensure “purity” of school inventory. Despite Article 14 of the Constitution stating that “the state shall not deny any person equality before the law or equal protection of the law within the territory of India”, there was ambiguity on how the caste band issue was treated.
Caste scars are raw and run deep, which bleeds when poked a bit. That was what happened in Vedaranyam, a town near Nagapattinam, when a flickering casteist barb sparked off a skirmish that flared up and spread to other areas.
The struggle of Dalits finally ended up in the grave as was the case of a family who had to “airdrop” the body of their relative from a bridge to the bed of the Palar river as they were denied access to the crematorium. The government allotted 50 cents of land for the cremation of Dalits. But as the Madras High Court pointed out, a different cremation ground for Dalits amounted to perpetuating the caste system.
The state is tied up in knots with the entangled strands of multiple caste threads. But these are the threats that have helped political leaders secure their vote vaults. It will require sensitivity and social responsiveness to carefully untangle this mess. And, no one is able to put a finger on the time span of this exercise.