When will casteist think tanks working hand in glove with the opportunist rabble rouser politicians of Tamilnadu will find their agenda mercilessly rejected by ALL women with the support of majority of people of TN ? "..The role of the police in the Dharmapuri incident reeked of bias. The police refrained from acting or getting additional force to the spot for four full hours. The SP of the district was the same officer who headed the Madurai police at the time of the Paramakudi massacre of Dalits. It has been pointed out that inter-caste marriages are fairly common in the region. Tamil Nadu is the land of Periyar who had vocally advocated inter-caste marriages and women’s freedom. The marriage of Divya and Elavarasan was therefore not a ‘spontaneous’ trigger of caste violence. Some months before the incident, local PMK MLA Kaduvetti J Guru, who heads the Vanniyar Sangam had publicly warned that Dalit men who married Vanniar women would have their hands and heads chopped off. Clearly, there was a premeditated campaign against Dalits and women’s rights, predating the actual marriage. After the Dharmapuri incident, PMK founder S Ramadoss said of Dalit youth, “They wear jeans, T-shirts and fancy sunglasses to lure girls from other communities,” alleging that backward caste women who married Dalit men subsequently suffered desertion, exploitation and harassment. He advocated “Keeping a vigil on girls and ensuring that they do not fall prey to love is the duty of parents and elders in the family as well as community”, and raising of the age of marriage for women to 21! Several months later, in April 2013, the PMK had given a call for a Vanniar rally at Mahabalipuram celebrating the Chiththirai (1st month of the Tamil New Year) full moon day festival. Vanniars from all over North Tamil Nadu were mobilized in a charged atmosphere, and there was a planned attack on a Dalit colony in Marakkanam en route to Mahabalipuram. Again, Dalit homes were torched, again the police did not act in any preventive way to protect the Dalits, though there was a clear danger that such violence might occur. In fact, the police arrived on the spot two hours after the attack began. The destruction would have been much greater but for the fact that Dalit youth organized to resist the violence, holding a road blockade." cpiml.org/liberation/year_2013/july_2013/commentary_6.html
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:23:24 +0000