JULY 7- The Logger didn’t know Ilavarasan of Naickenkottai in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district. Like most of us, he fell in love but unlike us he became famous, or infamous, depending on which side of the divide you are from. Divide, you say, what kind of divide? Divide is a word papered over in our pursuit to show the world that we are a united people without any divisions. Well, an occasional death here and there will keep the invisible mile-high divides jump into vision.
Wish the Logger could blame it on a lot of modern things, or things post-modern or plain old globalisation but there’s no getting away from it. Like Salman Rushdie’s Saleem Sinai agonising in Midnight’s Children on the centrality of his date of birth in his life, we cannot escape the one word which dominates everything in India but we believe, or are led to believe, that it doesn’t exist 65 years post-Independence: CASTE.
E. Ilavarasan, a Dalit, was found dead along the railway tracks in Dharmapuri town on Thursday. It took some time for the news to get to the wire. Police said the body was found along the tracks behind the town’s Government Arts College after Divya said in distant Chennai that she would never go back to him.
Ilavarasan, 19, fell for Divya, a Vanniyar woman, who reciprocated his love in the caste-scarred Dharmapuri district, and wed her on October 14, 2012. Dharma knows no love, it seems, when it involves a marriage transcending caste.
There had been damage to 22-year-old Divya’s family too. Her father, who was against the union, committed suicide after the marriage. Close to 300 Dalit huts were torched in three villages of the district in swift reprisal. The Vanniyars had the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founded by S. Ramadoss, whose son is former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, behind them. The Dalits had the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi led by Thol Thirumavalavan, who had come under national limelight for raising his and the community’s objections to cartoons of B.R. Ambedkar in CBSE textbooks which disrespected the Dalit icon.
Divya is now in Chennai to attend court proceedings brought about by her mother who had moved a habeas corpus petition in the Madras High Court to know her whereabouts and seeking her liberty. On July 1, Divya told the court that she would go with her mother “for the time being” and she had no problems in Ilavarasan’s house.
On Wednesday, she told reporters, according to PTI, that she couldn’t live with her husband after her father’s suicide and wanted to live with her mother. The Madras High Court reserved orders till Friday.
Police were quoted as saying that Ilavarasan committed suicide this afternoon but his family suspects foul play. The High Court ordered that his body be preserved for examination. His parents say he was very optimistic that she would come back and had also drawn money from his father’s ATM card to leave town for work. The police say they recovered three letters he had exchanged with Divya in 2011 and a photo of hers from the body.
The district is under heavy police watch but the divisions are out burning like oilfires in the desert. It’s a long night for Dharmapuri and for both the communities. Ilavarasan has just become a statistic, maybe a memorial to the depredations of caste which continues to rule in Tamil Nadu. Just like it does everywhere in India and goes unacknowledged.
The reason for the tension in the area stems from politics. The PMK is quite a mercurial party, it was with the DMK-led coalition in the state until walking out from the tie-up after the AIADMK swept elections in 2011. With the 2014 Lok Sabha polls ahead, the party will be back in sought-after category. Therefore, the upper Hand may rest with the Vanniyars.
INDIA TODAY
