Showing posts with label Swathi Murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swathi Murder. Show all posts

Monday, July 4, 2016

CASTE< VIOLENCE AND SUBALTERN IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY TAMIL NADU; A SICK SOCIETY REINTERPRETTED

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

On June 24th 2016, a young, educated girl hailing from a middle class brahmin family was brutally murdered in front of a large crowd on the platform of Nughambakkam Railway station. Shockingly not a single one of the onlookers stirred to help her even as a young man took out a billhook (aruval) from the back back that he was carrying and struck three times at her face neck and upper part of her body. The brutality of the crime was in fact a rerun of a typical ISIS operation:brutal, cruel, quick and in full public display. While the killing of Nirbhaya in December 2012 was an event that brought together a large proportion of civil  society and political parties to bring about change in the legal system, this barbaric attack was largely ignored. Does the fact that the victim of this brutal crime happens to be a brahmin girl  and the accused a dalit have anything to do with the cynical indifference with which this crime has been viewed. I have always said that the position of the brahmins in Tamil society today happens to be akin to that of the Jews in Germany during the Nazi era.

The Dravidian Movement, especially the anti brahmin Self Respect Movement made brahmin bashing, brahmin percecution, brhamin marginalization and exclusion an inherent part of South Indian public life. Like the Jews in Germany, brahmins were excluded from university positions and public office and like the victim of this monstrous attack, they had to take up employment in the soft ware industry or immigrate to USA in order to escape the vicious and untrammeled assaults on person and dignity. The public media both the Press and the Electronic media is conditioned to highlight dalit atrocities and ignore similar attacks on brahmins. Indeed, the condition of both the dalits and brahmins are more or less identical in post colonial Tamil Nadu ad scholars like the late M S S Pandian and others have sought to give legitimacy to upper caste domination by invoking the discredited theories of Cauldwell and others.

The attacker, Thiru P Ramkumar is a resident of Ambedkar Nagear in Meenakshipuram near Tirunelveli in the deep South. He had apparently been stalking the victim since May 2016 and the Tamil movies generally portray stalking as an innocent trivial assertion of male interest. The gross infringement of the rights of the girl/woman is not taken into consideration and the Police generally ignore complaints of such behaviour. Since the attacker happens to be a dalit, public discourse has suddenly gone silent and it is likely that in the days and months the crime will get politicized in the manner in which the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. And dalit poltical parties like the CVK and the PT and also sections of the dravidian parties will also start a chorus in favor of the killer. Who can forget the fact that the killer of the Madurai corporator,a dalit woman was pardoned by Karunanidhi when he was in power. Crime in Tamil Nadu walks hand in hand with political parties.

The world has to awaken to the plight of the barhmins in Tamil Nadu,. Their human rights anre being violated on a daily basis and while attacks on dalits are highlighted by the Media, politcal correctness prevents it from highlighting crimes against brahm,ins.