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Shunning deep-rooted caste biases in Tamil Nadu’s equality villages

By, Vadachittur (coimbatore)
Jul 14, 2022 09:32 AM IST

In 1997, then chief minister M Karunanidhi introduced the concept of Samathuvupuram — a village where the government would provide free housing to people from different castes who would live together and shared civic amenities.

The date is fuzzy, but the memory of the night is vivid. It was past 1am on February 2020, just before the first wave of Covid-19 hit, and 46-year-old K Selvi, her body feeling weak, knew she was running a high temperature. A single mother, whose daughter moved away after marriage, there was nobody at home to help. Her first call was to Malar Kodi, her neighbour.

The concept of Samathuvupurams was introduced in 1997. (HT) PREMIUM
The concept of Samathuvupurams was introduced in 1997. (HT)

“Malar and her husband Arjunsamy drove me to the Kinathukadavu hospital, eight km away, on their moped. They made me sit in between them so I wouldn’t fall. They stayed with me in the hospital for five hours, brought me back home and made kanji (porridge) for me for the next day,” Selvi said.

In Tamil Nadu’s hinterland, where children still wear threads to indicate their castes on their wrist, where there are segregated households, temples and shops and where there are still instances of caste based killings and discrimination, that memory fills her with pride — because Selvi is from the Gounder caste, a powerful other backward class (OBC) community in Tamil Nadu’s complex caste matrix, and her neighbours are Dalits.

Selvi lives in a Periyar Ninaivu Samathuvupuram (Periyar Memorial Equality Village) — a radical experiment started by former DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi in 1997 and now being revived by his son and current chief minister MK Stalin to resettle people in villages where castes intermingle by design. Selvi has lived in one such village, in Coimbatore’s Vadachittur, since 2003.

“We see no differences among us — of caste and religion. It is a life I have come to love and how we must all change with the times,” Selvi said.

What’s a Samathuvupuram? The 1990s were a violent decade in Tamil Nadu’s history. Wave upon wave of incessant caste-based crimes, beheadings and murders broke out in the state, particularly in the southern districts of Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari. These instances of violence continue to this day. Data from “Evidence”, a Madurai-based organisation that has done extensive work on caste, says that 300 people from SC/ST communities were killed in caste murders across the 33 districts of Tamil Nadu from 2016 to 2020.

Looking for a solution, in 1997, then chief minister M Karunanidhi introduced the concept of Samathuvupuram — a village where the government would provide free housing to people from different castes who would live together and shared civic amenities. Under the state government’s policy, each Samathuvapuram had 100 houses with the following ratio of allotment — 40 houses to Scheduled Castes (SCs), 25 to backward classes, 25 to most backward classes, and 10 to families of other communities such as Schedule Tribes. Under the scheme, each village would have the bust of Periyar EV Ramasamy, the father of the Dravidian movement and a rationalist who envisaged a “casteless society”.

The first Samathuvupuram was set up at Melakottai in Madurai, and the government allocated 35 crore to establish 100 such equality villages in different parts of Tamil Nadu.

The programme grew, and by 2011, 238 Samathuvupurams were set up in the state. But the DMK claims that in the decade that the AIADMK was in power, between 2011 and 2021, most of these fell into a state of disrepair. In their election manifesto before the 2021 assembly elections, the DMK promised that they would refurbish the existing peace villages and set up new ones.

In April , the state government passed a government order to refurbish 180 of the 238 Samathuvupurams at a cost of 130 crore, which would include 50,000 for the renovation of each home. Vadachittur, an equality village set up in 2003, is one of these villages.

On June 8, Stalin inaugurated a Samathuvapuram in Sivaganga that was built in 2011 but stayed unopened since then. At the inauguration ceremony, the chief minister said that the project was Karunanidhi’s dream in promoting social justice, and blamed the AIADMK for its apathy to the cause.

Four more Samathuvapurams in the districts of Villupuram, Thiruvallur, Trichy and Cuddalore which were readied in 2011 but never handed over are next on the anvil, officials said.

A sense of communityThirty kilometres from the bustle of Coimbatore, on the city’s , dotted with coconut tree farms on both sides of a quiet road, is Vadachittur. There is no board that welcomes visitors to the Samathuvuram, and the only marker is the customary statue of Periyar. Spread across 10 acres of land, lanes of gravel divide the rows of houses. There is a ground in one corner where children play, and next to it an overhead water tank. There is also a community hall, but years of neglect have meant peeling walls and disrepair. There is an aanganwadi centre in the village, and most children walk to the local public school a kilometre away.

In 2003, Selvi, then 25, left her mother’s hut in the main Vadachittur village and moved four km away to the Samathavupuram, her 10-year-old daughter in tow. “Only 10-15 houses were occupied then,” she said. Selvi now works as a maid and also takes MGNREGA work when she can get it, but in 2003, had already spent a decade working in a spinning mill in Coimbatore. A poor single mother, she lived with 10 other family members, and the promise of a proper home in the equality village was too good to ignore.

When the move was being finalised, the district collector obtained a written undertaking from each beneficiary that they would follow specific conditions, failing which the property would be taken back by the government. These included a bar on the installation of statues of religious leaders, on selling the homes for 15 years, on separate places of worship and on consumption of liquor. The village has a common burial ground.

Prospective beneficiaries then went through a filtering process led by the district administration, which checked if applicants were below the poverty line, and that they did not own any other assets. “Once the district collector approves the final list, the beneficiaries draw out their names from a lot for their house numbers so that the allotment is randomised,” a Coimbatore district official said.

Despite these measures, the beginnings in Vadachittur were far from easy. By the end of 2006, there were 40 SC families, 19 Gounders, 4 Naiyyakars, 2 Vanniyars, 12 Muslims, 1 Christian family, and a few from other backward and most backward classes.

“When we first came here, there was no water and electricity. On top of that, we were all new to each other. We all came from various villages and different castes so we had different practices. It was difficult for us to mingle,” recalled Selvi.

In the early years, those from the Scheduled Castes did not approach the front entrances of homes of the other communities, and had an unspoken agreement that they would not touch the water pots of other castes. “It took many days, perhaps years, for all of us to realise this is a Samathuvapuram,” Selvi said.

Today, all homes have cement floors with one room, a toilet, and a kitchen. The government has promised to re-lay all the roads with bitumen, install individual soak pits and rain water harvesting systems, and paint the homes from the outside. Selvi’s home, where she lives alone, has a pale yellow facade with blue windows. In one corner, there are kitchen vessels and pots of water, separated by a wall to the Indian style toilet.

Since they belong to the Gounder caste, which is dominant in large swathes of western Tamil Nadu including Coimbatore, Selvi’s family members still cannot fathom how she lives side by side with “lower castes”. In both the village of Vadachittur, where her mother lives, and the village of Vannamada, near the Kerala border, where her daughter has moved after marriage, there is a clear segregation among Gounders, SCs, and Muslims.

“I don’t like going to those villages anymore. There is no affection there, only hostility between castes. My family still asks me how I can possibly be so close to the Dalit women in the Samuthuvapuram. But when I am in need, it is they that have come to my aid” said Selvi.

For instance, Selvi said she was once harassed by an inebriated man. “Everyone here knows I’m alone so some men tried to take advantage. When a drunkard landed in front of my house and attempted to harass me, all the women in Samathuvapuram, regardless of caste, backed me. Not only did they drive him away, the next day, we walked together to file a police complaint. Another time, my younger brother came and picked a fight with me. He slapped me, and it was my neighbours who chased him out of our Samathuvupuram. These people are my family,” said Selvi, breaking down with emotion.

Next to her is Tamilmalar, the 17-year-old daughter of Krishna Bhama, a Scheduled Caste woman and the first in her family to go to college. “I’ve grown up listening to stories from my parents that we were not allowed to walk on certain streets and could not draw water to drink from certain wells. I cannot imagine how people live like that,” Tamilmalar said.

Moving forwardRepresentatives of the Tamil Nadu government say they intend to extend the scope and ambit of Samathuvupurams in the state. “For a peaceful administration, what we need is a peaceful society. Kalignar(Karunanidhi) had said that his wish was that gradually from a district, this idea should spread to the entire nation,” said rural development minister KR Periyakaruppan.

C Ponnaiyan, one of the AIADMK’s founding members, said that Samathuvupuram was a Tamil Nadu government scheme, and not just a DMK scheme. “Maintaining these homes is mandatory for any government. But the DMK used poor quality cement and construction materials, which is why they have fallen into disrepair.”

Senior state government officials said that over the coming months, the government will try to bring a primary school, library, a community centre, a ration shop and a playground, to each village. “Earlier, one drinking water tap was provided for 6-7 houses. But now we are working to provide a water connection to each home as prescribed under the union Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM),” said a Vadachittur panchayat official.

Five houses in Vadachittur are occupied by people with disabilities, and Periyakaruppan said that the government intends to expand this to other Samathuvupurams as well. “More people with disabilities as well as transgender persons will now be given homes under the programme,” he said.

Back in her one-room home, Selvi has a bucket of yellow paint in her hand, and is beginning to make broad strokes across the peeling wall. As she paints, neighbours begin to collect, picking up the brushes.

In Vadachittur, there is always help at hand.

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