: Whenever violence erupts over the Cauvery water-sharing issue – either in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka – fear grips 26 families who were affected by the anti-Tamil violence that took place in Karnataka in 1991.
After the Supreme Court upheld the interim award of Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) in June 1991 that directed the Karnataka government to release 205 tmcft of water, a State-wide bandh on December 13 ended in violence against the Tamil people. Of the thousands of Tamils who fled Karnataka, 26 families from Kamala Nagar in suburban western Bengaluru escaped by train to Chennai. They lived in a special camp for over a year. After a long struggle, they were allotted house plots in Baskardas Nagar, at Bathalapalli in Hosur in 1996. Most of the families work as labourers in construction sites and their life depends on the daily wages they earn.
V. Rajkumar (48) said that whenever they hear news or see the violence over Cauvery issue on television, they are reminded of the violence unleashed on them that hurt them physically and mentally. “We are yet to come out of the trauma. But life has to go on,” he says.
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“We were driven out of our house, beaten up and our things set on fire by the angry mob. Before we could resist, things happened,” recalls 55-year-old Kasi . He said that he aarrived in Chennai with his family, fearing for life. “The government allotted the land and gave Rs. 5,000 as assistance with which we could construct a hut,’’ he added.
Vasantha (52) and Parvathi (53) said that they had left their own house in Kamala Nagar and had never visited Karnataka after the incident. It is painful to see violence against Tamilians repeated , they added. All these families wanted politicians and farmers from both the sides to arrive at a permanent solution as only the labourers are affected by the dispute. It is not an issue between two countries, but between two States that can be resolved, they say.