Last month, a 78-year-old Dalit woman at Machenahalli in Tumakuru taluk kept the body of her 54-year-old son in front of her house for two days, saying her landless family had no place to bury him.
She said there wasn’t a separate burial ground for Dalits in their village and no person from the ‘upper’ caste will let a Dalit be buried in their land. The issue was resolved only when tahsildar Range Gowda visited the village and convinced the villagers to bury the body in the land which was previously owned by them.
In Chamarajanagar district, the last rites of an 80-year-old Dalit woman from Goolipura village, who died recently, could not be performed for more than 24 hours.
For, there was no burial ground for Dalits in the village. Eventually, her mortal remains were laid to rest near a stream, about a kilometre away from the village, in government land.
A group of youths in the village, who assisted in performing the last rites, have been campaigning for a burial ground for Dalits in the village from a long time and had even submitted a petition to the candidates contesting the APMC elections when they had visited the village.
