TN Dalit panchayat president not allowed to hoist flag in school

POSTED ON AUGUST 10, 2022

Sudha V, the panchayat president of Eduthavainatham village in Tamil Nadu’s Kallakurichi is allegedly being blocked from hoisting the tricolour at a local government school on Independence Day and Republic Day. In a letter written on August 3 to the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP), Susha said that she is being stopped from hoisting the national flag in the local government school since she belongs to a Scheduled Caste. In the letter, Sudha stated that ten panchayat presidents before her had all hoisted the flag on Independence and Republic days in the school but she has been blocked by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA).

The letter said, “Since I am a woman from a Scheduled Caste, I was not allowed to hoist the flag during the last Republic Day by the school’s PTA president Arulkumar and vice-president Kannan.” Further, she requested the DySP to provide her with the necessary security and the opportunity to hoist the flag on the 75th Independence Day in the school.

Sudha’s husband Varatharaji, a carpenter by profession, said, “My wife is the eleventh panchayat president of the village. The ten leaders before her were able to hoist the flag but she is not being allowed to do so. We were informed the night before Republic Day by the PTA president Arulkumar and vice-president Kannan that she will not be hoisting the flag. Although they did not cite her caste as the reason, we could understand that it was about her caste.”

Varatharaji alleged that there are members of the Dalit community in Eduthavainatham who are still not allowed inside temples. “If a Dalit woman hoists the national flag in a school, villagers from dominant castes are worried that Dalit people will begin asking to enter the temples as well. People are creating a connection between these two unrelated things to prevent Sudha from hoisting the flag,” Varatharaji said.

Sudha’s husband said that the headmaster of the government school, Mani, asked them and the PTA leaders to resolve this matter outside the school. After Sudha and Varatharaji had written to the DySP’s office, it was decided by the PTA leaders and the aggrieved party that the headmaster of the school will hoist the flag in the school hereafter and nobody from the village will be doing it.

“My wife and I are an inter-caste couple, which has already irked some people in the village. We decided to make a compromise because we did want to disturb the peace in the village or make enemies. There was no other option for us,” said Varatharaji, when asked why such a compromise was made.

This is not the first time panchayat leaders from Scheduled Castes have alleged discrimination in Tamil Nadu. In November 2020, Rajeshwari, panchayat president of reserved Kalpiravu constituency in Sivaganga district, resigned from her position alleging caste discrimination by panchayat vice-president Nagarajan. Rajeshwari said that she took the decision because the public started to question her for not doing her duty without knowing the complete picture.

In a similar incident in July 2020, Rajeshwari, the Therukuthittai panchayat president in Cuddalore district was forced to sit on the floor by Mohan, the vice-president of the panchayat and a caste Hindu. Mohan allegedly refused to conduct the meeting until Rajeshwari sat on the floor. The incident was known to the public after a photo of Rajeshwari sitting on the floor went viral on social media.

Tamil Nadu Forest Minister K Ramachandran and Nilgiris District Collector SP Amrith on Tuesday, August 9, visited the house of a woman estate worker who was killed after a tree fell on her. The minister handed over a solatium of Rs 4 lakh to her nearest relatives. Forty-year-old Sumathi became the first victim of the heavy rains in the region as a huge tree fell on her while she was working in a tea estate in Gudalur in Nilgiris district on Monday, police said. According to reports, Sumathi was harvesting tea leaves in a private estate in ‘O’ Valley Town Panchayat of Gudalur, when the incident happened. While Sumathi died on the spot, 55-year-old Marudhammal has been admitted at the Gudalur Government Hospital with severe injuries. The incident was reported on Monday evening.

Speaking to reporters at Ooty, Ramachandran said that the impact of rains was gradually declining and about 400 tribal residents from Puthurvayal, Kolapalli, Thenvayal Thorapalli and Gudalur, which witnessed heavy rains, were housed in a relief centre. Almost all the dams in the district are full and considering the safety of the people living on the banks, the surplus water will be released, he said. Committees have been formed to monitor the situation and the works undertaken by the district administration to tackle the rains were laudable, the minister said.

Meanwhile, about 40 feet of earth caved in due to a massive landslide near Emerald about 15 km from Ooty in the Nilgiris District, with one acre of agricultural land washed away on Tuesday. The area, which is experiencing heavy rains for the last 15 days, got wet and suddenly the earth where tea is cultivated caved in, police said.

Courtesy : Thenewsminute

Note: This news piece was originally published in thenewsminute.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights