CHENNAI: Lamenting that the shackles of caste could not be broken even after 75 years of independence, the Madras High Court has asked the state government to make a good beginning by turning burial grounds common for all communities.
“Even a secular government is forced to provide for separate burning and burial grounds on communal lines,” observed a division bench of Justices R Subramanian and K Kumaresh Babu in its recent order in dispute over burying bodies in a remote village in Salem. “Equality has to start at least when the person travels to his/her maker,” the judges said.
Quoting the lines of celebrated poet Bharathiyar that ‘there are no castes’, the bench noted that even in 21st century, we are grappling with casteism and division along caste lines in burying the dead. The situation has to change for the better, the bench said, and hoped that “The government of the day would come forward to make a beginning by making at least burial grounds and burning grounds common for all communities.”
The judges made the observations while setting aside an order of a single judge who ordered exhumation of a body that was said to have been buried on a plot, a cart track, not designated as burial ground at Navakurichi village in Athur in Salem district. Separate burial grounds have been provided for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) and Backward Class communities in the village.
Quoting laws governing crematoria, the bench said burial is prohibited in a panchayat only within 90 metres from habitation or drinking water sources. There are various customs across TN over burning and burial of the dead. There are villages where there is no specific place earmarked for cremation. In such places, the village’s customs prevail, the bench noted.