Refusal by Dalits to work as agricultural labour and to perform menial duties plus their relative economic improvement have made them the targets of caste violence
In the recent violence against the Dalits in Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu, about 300 of their houses were burnt down and other properties destroyed by the Vanniars, a numerically strong intermediate caste, sections of whom have been economically stagnant. The immediate cause for the rampage was a Vanniar woman’s marriage to a Dalit youth and the consequent suicide of the woman’s father. However, the large-scale and systematic destruction of Dalit properties was a result of the simmering discontent against the upward mobility of the Dalits.
The growing intolerance of the intermediate castes towards this economic mobility of the Dalits is not confined to Dharmapuri district alone. In the last two decades, 11 districts in the State have witnessed similar destruction of Dalit property as part of caste violence. There are two aspects to this Dalit mobility and the resultant violence against them. One is the declining of role of agriculture in rural Tamil Nadu and its impact on the social and economic relations within villages. The second is the specific ways in which the changing economic relations have been negotiated through altered caste and gender relations posing challenges to the intermediate caste’s pre-existing power.
Younger workforce
Across Tamil Nadu, the role of agriculture in sustaining rural livelihoods has dramatically declined with non-farm employment increasingly playing a significant role. A recent survey of rural households in four districts in the State done by the Institute of Development Alternatives, Chennai reveals that only 28 per cent of households rely on agriculture solely for their livelihood. In the remainder, at least one member of the household was engaged in non-agricultural employment, ranging from construction work to a range of manufacturing sector jobs. This resonates strongly with the observations made about the “commuting worker” in contemporary rural and urban landscapes. In Tamil Nadu alone, more than 72 lakh workers commuted from rural areas to work in non-agricultural sectors. This mobility is highly gendered with the age profile indicating the emergence of a young male workforce. This mobility has been accompanied by a new mobility of capital too. Studies indicate a growing ruralisation of the formal manufacturing sector in the last 15 years, with its output increasingly coming from the rural areas even as urban manufacturing employment is becoming more informal.
Impact of manufacturing
It is in this context that one needs to understand Dalit mobility in parts of Tamil Nadu. The spread of a range of manufacturing activity in small towns in Tamil Nadu and its diffusion into the nearby villages have spawned new rural-urban and rural-rural mobilities and a move into manufacturing and service sector jobs among Dalit youth, particularly in the northern and north-western districts. This mobility has also been backed by investments in education albeit of a limited kind.
The move away from traditional agricultural work has undermined the control that the intermediate castes could wield on Dalit youth. Fieldwork in villages adjoining and housing textile and clothing factories in the Coimbatore and Tiruppur districts, and shoe factories in Vellore district reveal not only a striking shift from agricultural work among the Dalit youth, but also a strong reluctance among them to take up agricultural work. The mobility beyond the village has enabled Dalit youth to challenge their traditional caste obligations and the masculine powers of the dominant castes. The refusal of Dalit women to perform menial duties for intermediate castes, the refusal of the younger generation of Dalits to labour in the lands of intermediate castes and to perform caste obligations such as funeral drumming — combined with relative improvements in their every day existence — have become the source of conflicts between the Dalits and the intermediate castes in the State. The inability and reluctance of sections of intermediate castes to make a shift from agriculture despite its non profitability due to strong social values attached to agriculture, their inability to force the castes below them to work on their farms and their lack of control over the mobility of Dalit youth have underwritten their caste anxieties.
Masculine power
Further, caste dominance is contingent upon the masculine power of men, their ability to control women in private and public spheres and also their ability to control the subordinate men of oppressed castes. With the challenge posed to their caste dominance, the intermediate castes find their masculinity in crisis since they are unable to exert power over the subaltern Dalit men and women. They also imagine an erosion of their masculine power in the private sphere with their claim that Dalit men lure away “their women.” The crisis of intermediate caste masculinity, which is the result of the economic mobility of the Dalits, is certainly at the core of these conflicts and the caste violence which targets Dalit properties. Otherwise, how can one explain the fact that invariably during the caste violence in recent times, motorbikes owned by the Dalits, a symbol of masculine mobility, have been targeted by the intermediate castes who desire to imitate the erstwhile dominant castes in their starched white dhotis moving on Enfield motorbikes!
(The writers are Associate and Assistant Professors at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.)
Keywords: Dalit issues, caste violence, Dharmapuri riots
Well, to all those who write comments or read comments, just remember one thing, "Agriculture as an occupation is reducing at a faster rate than ever". About 15 years ago, there existed small farm owners with 1 or 5 acres of land. They cultivated with the help of dalits, and its not a caste barrier that stopped someone from working. Neither the owner of the land or the dalit really felt the difference. There was a little bit of profit, and the profit was shared with dalit by these farm owners, and they had these Pongal/Ayudha pooja/Diwali to ensure that sharing occurs.
But with these modern world, neither there are human resource available for farming, the cost of farming has increased, and the small farmers are not able to do farming.
The result is violences like this.. No one plans these activities, it all happens right at the moment because of prolonged frustration.
Endru Thaniyum Jaathiyin Mogam????
This wont happen in Bharath, only in India.
It only proves that caste cycle is taking its own turn in Tamil Nadu. During the early days of DK and DMK, the 'intermediate castes' used to feel the same way about Brahmins as what Dalits are feeling about intermediate castes' to day. After some time, a section of Dalits now enjoying the benefits of reservations and hence upwardly mobile will be targeted by the rest of the sections like STs. It is same cycle and is no wonder.
The problem caused by cast Hindus is rampant and
it tries to undermine basic human dignity and the right of every human
to choose his means of earning his/her livelihood.
Long has the Indian society tarried in its archaic system, the way out
is in breaking free from all these practices, be it oppressing or
harmless, by all mature liberal minded people from every corner of our
society.
Even simple things like arranged marriages strictly within ones caste
is to be avoided by responsible people, though it could be with
consent, we have an obligation to break free from the single most
regressive influence in our society, no matter how harmless the
practice might seem.
As author says '“Mobility beyond the village” has enabled Dalit youth to challenge their traditional caste obligations and the masculine powers of the dominant castes'. It reminds me what F Max Muller had to say about mobility beyond village in his celebrated lectures - India-What it can teach us.
He says - "Take a man out of his village-community, and you remove him from all the restraints of society. He is out of his element, and, under temptation, is more likely to go wrong than to remain true to the traditions of his home-life"
Muller had definitely not considered side of Dalits, he was talking about low crime rates and truthfulness of upper castes of India.
Perhaps breakdown of Indian Agrarian Society is good to resolve some of our social ills, like untouchability. Muller wasn't fully right about Indian society, then!
Well reserached article. The upward mobility of oppressed people should be welcomed by all. The 'intermediate castes' as the authors coin it, should go with the changing times and offer respect, better wages and facilities for the farm labour. The days of feudalism no longer exists and nor should it be encouraged by any political setup.
The caste Hindus other than brahmins are having their caste status as
some thing to show them as 'some body'. They find it very hard to
digest the fact that the earth below them is heaving in with the ascendance of Dalits. The pain of becoming 'no body' makes them to
retaliate. But this is only a social pathology whose duration is
limited. Once the pathology is over new social order fortified by
social classes would set in. The Dalits who suffer now should
congratulate themselves for bearing the brunt of the attackers for the
simple reason that they are leading the evolution and should not take
to heart the hurt they are suffering and concentrate on how to come up
economically as quickly as possible by educating/skilling themselves.
They should the politics for this purpose but never allow themselves to
be used by the politicians.
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