MADURAI
For more than two decades as a human rights activist, she was involved in the rescue of around 250 children from bonded labour and has won some important court cases. Her journey, however, has no dearth of disappointments and failures. Yet, activist-cum-lawyer S. Selvagomathy, who is the Managing Trustee of Justice Shivaraj V. Patil Foundation for Social Legal Education and Development and the Deputy Director of Society for Community Organisation (SOCO) Trust, says the failures have only strengthened her will to fight for the downtrodden. In a conversation with The Hindu , she speaks about what pushed her into activism and what keeps her going.
Ms. Selvagomathy, who hails from a village near Surandai in Tirunelveli district, says her father L. Suryakannu, a retired bank employee, had a considerable influence on her life. “He is an upright person with progressive values, for whom caste and religion never mattered. He encouraged us to read a lot and taught us to be always on the side of the underprivileged,” she says.
According to her, it was this upbringing that led her to pursue her undergraduation in law, which she saw as a tool to fight for justice for the downtrodden.
However, an incident soon after she started working with SOCO Trust in 1996 forced her to put legal practice in the back burner and plunge into full-time activism. “A team led by SOCO Trust’s Batcha sir (Akbar Mahaboob Batcha) went to rescue nearly 35 people kept as bonded labourers in a brick kiln near Ilaiyankudi in Sivaganga district. It was my first experience directly on the field and the plight of the families, particularly the children, left a strong impact,” she says.
Stating that the incident made her a committed fighter against bonded labour, she recollects her work as part of a district-level committee to investigate exploitation of girls in mills and factories through the ‘Sumangali’ scheme.
Highlighting that she has strong faith in the judiciary, which always helps her in the fight for justice whenever the government fails, she points to the interim order of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court against Centre’s rules banning sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets and its order to Madurai Corporation to allocate land for Sathya Ammaiyar Memorial Home for Destitute Children, from where children had to be sent out due to lack of space, as some of the significant victories in the cases she filed.
Arguing that secularism, feminism and human rights are the key ideals that keep her going, Ms. Selvagomathy says her future plans include interventions in public health, particularly in the treatment of cancer and palliative care since the poor are unable to afford treatment.
