In an incident in Tamil Nadu earlier this month, a Dalit school student, Chinnadurai, was attacked by three students wielding a machete. His sister was also attacked when she tried to intervene. Dalits continue to face violence in some form or the other across India every day. However, the incident, which took place on August 9, in Nanguneri in Tirunelveli district, shocked the State as the perpetrators were school students, who belong to the numerically dominant community in that region.
Earlier too, there have been similar incidents in the State where Dalit students have been attacked — Muruganandam and Pradeep, from Cheranmahadevi, on August 4; Hariprasad of Kazhugumalai, on August 14, and a case on a bus near Karur on August 28. The perpetrators were either students or youth aged between 16 and 25 years. It is common knowledge that many students, particularly in rural Tamil Nadu, wear specific colour bands on their wrist as a mark of caste identification. In a State that has a history of caste violence against Dalits since Independence, the latest incidence is cause for worry. These incidents must not be seen in isolation. There are many factors such as a mushrooming of caste organisations that run high on caste pride, a near total absence of anti-caste activism within the powerful Other Backward Classes (OBC) by social and political organisations, and even the feeble response from non-Dalit intellectuals.
