Superintendent of Police’s car is attacked by a mob in the village called Villoor in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. It has happened in the first week of May, 2011 when he visited the area to enquire about the immediate cause of a quarrel between two communities of which one happened to be untouchables in the area. The fight arose on account of a higher community people objecting to the entry of ‘dalits’ (S.C people) into the temple. When the dispute became serious the police had to open firing to control the crowd. Some 50 and odd persons were arrested for the purpose. The intervention from the side of an Additional Director General of Police too was required in the matter. After the visit to the site he too confirmed the prevalence of untouchability and violation of human rights in the area.
A study made by an organization called ‘Satchiyam’ indicated, in its report sent to the state government, that the scourge of untouchability is still showing it ugly head in full swing without any let-up in as many as twelve districts of Tamil Nadu. Several instances have been quoted in the said report to drive home the point vividly and forcefully. Satchiyam’s Director of Planning Ms. Tilagam revealed that the study covered 213 villages in districts of Madurai, Dindigul, Virudhunagar, Siva Gangai, Tanjore, Nagapatinam, Selam, Namakkal, Guddalore, Villupuram, Kovai and Tiruppore. She had informed that in 104 villages the tea shop owners keep two sets of glasses or cups – one for the dalits and the other for the rest in the locality. In 211 villages untouchability prevails against the dalits while getting entry into the places of worship. Untouchability exists in the fair price shops of 70 villages. Differences exist in 208 villages as far as the usage of grave-yards is concerned. Dalits can’t cut their hair in the village saloons in 142 villages. They can’t fetch water from general water source in 145 villages. Even dalit doctors and other medical staff are not spared from this ill-treatment. The worst part is that the educated and well-placed individuals from the dalit community are not prepared to mingle with them freely; rather they avoid mixing probably by cursing their own fate.
The author was the District Magistrate and Collector in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh during 1979-82. Sagar was notorious for untouchability in the country-side. When it came to his notice during his tent-touring as a part of ‘Collector's Mobile Court in Rural Areas’, he made it a point to visit the locality of the dalits along with his subordinate officials including the Superintendent of Police, Sub-divisional Officer / Sub-collector, Tahsildar, Block Development Officer, the Patel, the Sar Panch (Panchayat President), Village Patwari / Karnam etc. in the early morning and spent sometime with the dalits and insisted on sipping of tea in their tea-cups while sitting on their wooden benches or cots made of ropes. The collector of the district sitting in their hutments and enquiring about their problems for an hour or so while making rounds of the village had a salutary effect on the minds of the entire village community. The author too derived immense job satisfaction that he could use his legitimate and constitutional authority in the interest of the dalits in interior pockets of the district where normally the district head had not visited and stayed there for the night (in the tents pitched specially for the purpose by the author) and solving many problems of the villagers on the spot.
I wish my younger colleagues in the Indian Administrative Service now serving as the district collectors make it a point to visit such pockets in their jurisdiction at regular intervals and extend moral and legal support to those mentally-suffering apart from physical hardships and discriminations on account of accidental births in a particular dalit community. That is the only way one can express our empathy and sympathy towards these people who are also the children of the same Gods and Goddesses you and I worship after all!
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