Ambikapathi says she believed her children were safe in the school they went to in Valliyoor, outside their locality in Nanguneri in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. For years, she was unaware of the casteist harassment and abuse that her son had to endure at school. On August 9, her teen son and daughter were brutally hacked by their schoolmates and are still recovering at the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital. “I was afraid that one day it would happen to our children,” the single-mother says. The attack on the Dalit siblings has shaken Tamil Nadu, not because it is a one-off incident, but because it points to the deeply entrenched casteism in the state. That school students have taken up arms against their peers reveals the extent of the rot.
Ambikapathi’s 17-year-old son Chinnadurai is a class 12 student, while her 13-year-old daughter Chandraselvi is a class 7 student. The family belongs to the Paraiyar community (Scheduled Caste). Both siblings were hacked with sickles by seven minors who belong to the dominant Maravar community, a sub-caste of Thevar (Backward Class). In the days after the brutal attack, it was revealed that Chinnadurai’s dominant caste schoolmates subjected him to prolonged caste-based harassment and abuse because of his being a Dalit who excelled in studies.
The week before the attack, Chinnadurai stopped going to school. “My son told me that he wanted to discontinue studies and relocate to Chennai. When I asked him why, he said it was nothing,” Ambikapathi recalls. “On August 8, I called his class teacher to ask if she knew whether something was bothering him. She wanted to talk to my son. Chinnadurai then told the teacher that he was subjected to caste-based harassment and abuse by four students who belong to the Maravar community. It was only then that I came to know of the harassment and abuses that he had regularly endured for the last four years,” Ambikapathi says.
On August 9, a day after the phone call with the teacher, Chinnadurai went to school accompanied by his mother and submitted a written complaint. Following this, the teacher warned the students who harassed him. This set off a series of events that led to the hacking that evening.
“Around 4.30 in the evening, the students who harassed him came to our house and questioned why Chinnadurai complained to the teacher. They had a bitter argument with him and left after some time. Later, the parents of one of the students came home, asked him the same questions, and left. There was no way we could predict what was about to happen,” says Sumathi, Chinnadurai’s aunt, detailing the incidents that ended in the attack.
Around 10 pm on the same night, the dominant caste students came back to Chinnadurai’s house and hacked him multiple times with a sickle. His sister Chandraselvi was also hacked when she tried to stop the attack. By the time their neighbours rushed to the spot, the assailants had fled. After waiting for over an hour for an ambulance to arrive, the neighbours took them to the hospital on a motorbike. The siblings were taken to the Nanguneri Government Hospital where they got first aid. Later, they were admitted to the Tirunelveli Government Hospital.
Detailing the extent of the abuse, Sumathi says that the Maravar students harassed her nephew because he was a bright student. “They didn't want him to study,” she says. The Maravar students, who are residents of Peruntheru where Chinnadurai too lives, used to harass him by asking him to buy them snacks and cigarettes, carry their bags, and pay their bus fare. “They forced him to skip classes, disrupt classes, and name-call the teachers, so that the teachers would get a poor impression of him. If he failed to do so, they would beat him. He faced such harassment for a long time,” Sumathi reveals.
The police have arrested the minors who hacked the siblings and those who helped them flee to Tenkasi. Among the arrested, four are 17-year-olds and two are 16-year-old students. A seventh accused, who had been on the run, was reportedly arrested in the morning of August 12. Sumathi however voiced her suspicions regarding the involvement of the accused’s parents in the crime. “They must have planned it this way as the case would not be strong if it is minors who committed the crime. Sooner or later, they would be discharged. But it is our children who need to live in the fear of being discriminated against and attacked,” she says.
“My sister was always afraid that this would happen someday. As a single parent, she did everything to ensure her children received good education in a safe environment. She believed that the schools in Nanguneri were unsafe for her children and sent them to one in Valliyoor,” Sumathi says. Ambikapathi is a cook in a government school at Peruntheru, Nanguneri. “To afford a better education for her children, she works as a house help in her free time. That’s how she raised her children,” Sumathi adds.
Kathir, the founder of the NGO Evidence, says that in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, schools see violent expressions of caste hatred. The proliferation of caste atrocities inside Tamil Nadu’s schools have now become more obvious than ever before. Students are frequently engaged in scuffles over ‘caste threads’, discrimination, and abuses. In 2019, TNM reported the rampant use of ‘caste threads’ in schools and the impact that it had among school students. Urging the government to form a committee to monitor caste-based discrimination in schools and colleges, Kathir demands a study on caste discrimination inside education institutions. With the Nanguneri incident, students have gone from wearing ‘caste bands' on their wrists to wielding sickles.
Expressing concern over the incident, Chief Minister MK Stalin said that the law will do its duty. Terming the incident as shocking, he stated that it shows how the poison of caste is deep-rooted in students. "Individuals cannot see their fellow humans as equal but identify them based on their caste, hate them, and express the hatred violently. It is intolerable that this trend continues," he said, while also requesting the teachers to inculcate social harmony among the students to stop such incidents from taking place in the future.
The accused minors have been booked und,er sections 294(b) (sings, recites, or utters any obscene song in public), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (causing hurt by dangerous weapons), 352 (assault), 452 (house-trespass), and 506(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code as well ,as sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s), and 3(2)(VA) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Ac,t. Section 3 of the Act pertains to offences committed against members of the SC/ST communities. The accused are lodged at the Government Observation Home at Palayamkottai.