Tamil actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan’s woes, ostensibly related to Muslim protests over an unflattering portrayal of the community in his Rs. 125-crore blockbuster, Viswaroopam, could be linked to his advocacy of Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram as the next Prime Minister. There could also be covert disapproval to the demeaning of Brahmin women in the movie.
As recently as December 30, 2012, the Finance Minister attended a book release function in Chennai (‘P Chidambaram – Oru Paaravai’, a compilation of articles by popular writers on him), where Kamal Haasan startled the gathering by expressing a wish to see P Chidambaram become the next Prime Minister. Celebrities at the event included DMK president M Karunanidhi (who endorsed this view), superstar Rajinikanth, poet Vairamuthu and Tamil Nadu Congress president BS Gnanadesikan. Political observers feel this did not go down well in some quarters.
An unpalatable aspect of the film – totally ignored by the secular media – is the debasement of Brahmin women and their cultural practices. Kamal Haasan, like many actors and politicians in the State, has for years thrived on anti-Brahmin diatribes. Thus, Viswaroopam has a scene where the hero tells the heroine, a Brahmin and a vegetarian, to eat a chicken and tell him how she finds it.
He addresses her as “paapathi”, which has upset this community. While this is the Tamil word for Brahmin women just as parpaan denotes Brahmin men, under the Dravidian movement the word has long degenerated in an abusive term for Brahmin women. In fact, a decade ago, a fringe party painted words to the effect that ‘Brahmin women should be made common property’ on walls around Chennai.
Tamil Nadu, in fact, appears to be a caste cauldron being stirred by unknown agent provocateurs. In the recent violence in Dharmapuri in October 2012, PMK founder Dr S Ramadoss charged that certain caste leaders were instigating their young men to selectively marry girls of OBC communities. At that too, there considerable literature was circulated about marriage to OBC girls.
The PMK said they opposed instigated inter-caste marriages and love dramas, and not inter-caste marriages per se. On December 2, 2012, the PMK passed a resolution expressing anxiety over the abnormal divorce rate in couples with inter-caste marriages, and demanded that a High Court judge be asked to scrutinize inter-caste marriages registered in the past two years.
Tensions over the stalking and luring of young girls are currently agitating Tamil society. In the wake of the increased national sensitivity after the Delhi gang-rape, some issues deserve scrutiny. The role of the media and the film industry in aggravating caste tensions in society, with hideous repercussions on the lives of young girls, deserves attention.
In Dharmapuri, the professionally successful intermediate caste groups are up in arms over the ‘targetting’ of their young women, who often come to grief later. On the face of it, Scheduled Caste hamlets were attacked after a girl from an OBC community eloped with an SC man. But locals resented the media coverage as false and exaggerated.
Friends who went to Sellan Kottai and neighbouring villages to find out what happened were told that the marriage reportedly took place on October 14, 2012, and the woman’s father committed suicide on November 7, about 23 days later, which they found suspicious.
Local people said the tragedy was a culmination of many incidents in the past. The trouble reportedly began when a senior police official started appointing only his own caste-persons in police stations under him. This gave a boost to a particular political party and made life difficult for others. There followed a series of teasing, harassment and molestation of young girls in public, which drove many girls to stop going to school.
In many instances, girls of a particular group were lured by ‘friends’ in the name of love, taken by deceit to some place till their parents paid for their release. The katta panchayat (illegal kangaroo court) would intervene to get the girls released; the parents would pay up and avoid police complaints for the sake of the girl’s reputation. In some instances, the girls committed suicide after such trauma.
In Dharmapuri, the young woman was studying B.Sc. (Nursing) in a nearby college. A young man, Class XII pass, befriended her, but when the woman’s father, Nagaraj, opposed the affair, she promised not to meet the youth again. Suddenly the couple eloped on October 13, and believing that they had married, Nagaraj let matters be.
It was only when the katta panchayat telephoned him and said his daughter was safe with them, that he understood the plot. The local police station, approached by Nagaraj, got involved in the negotiations. As too many people became involved in the case, and senior police officers learnt of the existence of the katta panchayat, matters spun out of control. The family lost huge money, their reputation was ruined, and the father committed suicide.
This enraged the villagers who took Nagaraj’s body to the main road and blocked it, demanding the arrest of the seven persons who conducted the katta panchayat. Fear led one group and a local police officer to quit the locality.
Violence broke out and matters escalated as some administration officials allegedly functioned with bias loyalty. Several persons, including minor boys who were friends of the girl’s brother, were arrested, but the existence of the katta panchayat was not brought up in court. This surprised even the senior police officers, as it had become an open secret.
The Dharmapuri incident has triggered demands for amendment of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Senior politicians in Tamil Nadu admit that the Bill is discriminatory and prone to misuse, though they declined to give their names. Violence against women takes many forms; instigated caste-based stalking is a modern atrocity that deserves our attention.
NitiCentral.com, 30 January 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/01/caste-tamil-nadu-and-vishwaroopam.html