Even as the whole country protested the stripping and thrashing of Dalit youth in Gujarat by a ‘cow protection’ gang, the casteist-communal forces perpetrated yet another shocking caste atrocity, this time in Tamil Nadu. A young comrade of the CPI(ML), Mariappan, from the oppressed Vannar (washerman) caste, was beheaded by members of the Hindu Munnani for having challenged casteist norms.
Comrade Mariappan had filed a complaint against Hindu Munnani members in 2013, for having attacked people of the Vannar community in a bid to prevent them from using the public corporation road for a funeral procession. On July 20, when he had gone to attend a Court hearing in the same case, the Hindu Munnani members threatened to behead him. The same day he disappeared, and his decapitated body and severed head were found the next day.
Local dominant caste leaders had also been incensed by the CPI(ML)’s fielding candidates from the oppressed caste in the ward elections, thereby flouting an unspoken ‘ban’ on such candidates. All four accused in Mariappan’s beheading have now been arrested.
As has been witnessed elsewhere in the country as well, people from Dalit and oppressed castes are routinely denied the right to vote or contest elections – and their assertion of this right, of what Ambedkar called the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ and ‘one man, one value’, is seen as a social and political challenge to dominant caste ‘honour’ and clout.
The dominant caste and Hindu Munnai wished to ‘warn’ the oppressed Vannar community of the consequences of asserting their civil and political rights – hence the barbaric beheading of Comrade Mariappan, a young activist from that community.
The barbaric decapitation reeks of casteism. The incident is reminiscent of the manner in which CPI(ML)’s Comrade Bant Singh’s limbs were chopped off in Punjab because his daughter demanded justice against rapists.
Even as the Dalits’ protests in Gujarat have brought the barbaric casteist-communal ‘cow protection’ outfits into focus, the killing of Mariappan reminds us that this nexus between casteism and communal Hindutva is country-wide.
In Tamil Nadu, perpetrators of caste and communal atrocities have been enjoying a free reign with Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister. There have been a series of killings of young Dalit men who married non-Dalit women, as well as attacks on Dalit villages as reprisals for such marriages. In March this year, a Dalit youth and his wife were hacked by swords on a public road, leading to the death of the young man. Various caste outfits as well as the PMK political party have publicly justified such killings and instigated hatred against Dalits and oppressed castes. Yet, the ruling AIADMK as well as the main Opposition DMK remain silent on such atrocities. The Sangh Parivar and outfits like the Hindu Munnani have often made common cause with such casteist outfits – a prominent instance being the violent mob censorship of the writer Perumal Murugan, whose right to write was recently upheld by the Madras High Court. The series of barbaric attacks perpetrated by a nexus of Hindutva groups and casteist groups underline, again and again, the essentially Brahminical character of Hindutva.
It is time to launch a countrywide offensive against violent casteist, communal and patriarchal outfits – including the ‘Cow Protection’ groups, Hindu Munnani as well as various casteist formations. Such outfits cannot be allowed to get away with their barbaric attacks on democratic values, and the ruling political formations at Centre and State must stop their tacit patronage of such outfits. Annihilate caste, resist atrocities by casteist-communal outfits!
