Andhra Pradesh: The village divided between areas where dalits can enter and where they cannot

by Guest Sun Jun 19, 2016 12:28 pm

All the 56 convicted and 212 people arrested for the massacre of eight Dalits here on August 6, 1991, were acquitted by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2014. As the Supreme Court, which has stayed the HC order, hears the case now, justice has stood still not just in the courtroom.
Twenty-four years later, the small village of Tsundur is divided between areas for Dalits and those where they can’t enter. A church serves as the divider, with the Dalit families confined to behind it in an area they call Ambedkar Nagar.
Even the memorial to the killed Dalits, standing in the middle of the village, couldn’t be completed. The construction was stopped after a court ordered a stay on it and the case is sub judice.
The quiet of a lazy Sunday morning is broken only by prayers at the church. A number of children followed by women file in slowly, clutching Bibles and bottles of drinking water, forming a neat line from the colony to the church.
“We live on this side of the road, they live that side. It is as simple as that, and things are ‘normal’ as long as it remains like that,” says Jaladi Ig Kumar, a PhD student at Acharya Nagarjuna University at Guntur, whose father J Immanuel was one of the eight lynched in 1991.
“A few members involved in politics may interact with the other caste during elections, otherwise the divide is very stark,” adds Jaladi Shobhan Kumar, another villager.
Among the houses at Ambedkar Nagar, which now has a population of 4,500 and a smattering of pucca houses, are those constructed by the state government for the families of the eight massacred Dalits. The family of a Dalit who died in police firing and another killed in an accident during a protest in New Delhi had also been allotted houses here.
Several statues of Dr B R Ambedkar dot the lanes and bylanes of the colony, which also has two smaller churches on one side.
When the incident happened, in August 1991, Ambedkar Nagar was only known by its caste credentials, and called ‘Dalitwada’.
A rumour went down one day that the “Reddys” were coming to attack. Panic-stricken Dalits ran around looking for shelter, with some fleeing into the fields.
It was here that the upper-caste men set upon them, killing eight of them, chopping their bodies, stuffing the same in jute bags, and then dumping them in irrigation canals, where they were found three days later.
Tension had been building up in the village over minor scuffles and the lynching was a climax of that.
Two immediate provocations were a Dalit boy’s foot touching the foot of an upper-caste boy; and a Dalit youth seen reading a newspaper in a barber shop.
Many of the witnesses have pursued higher studies or found jobs and moved away from Tsundur since then. At least five completed their PhDs recently and have started working as teachers. However, as Dr Medikondu Kishore says, there is no escaping the village.
A professor of chemistry at SVRM College at Nagaram near Guntur, who has published several research papers, Kishore says, “It is our fate that we are born Dalits and Tsundur’s Ambedkar Nagar constantly reminds you of it.”
His wife, who too is from Ambedkar Nagar, is a PhD scholar.
For J Samadhanam, 48, a walk through the lanes brings scary and painful memories. Her husband J Isaac was just 26 when he was killed that day.
She says when she saw the news of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide at Hyderabad Central University, she could immediately identify with Rohith’s mother, who had single-handedly brought up her children.
“I know how difficult it must have been for Rohith, growing up in an atmosphere that is hostile towards Dalits,” she says. “It was difficult for me to bring up my three children too as a single mother. But I got a job at the government hostel for B C Students at Repalle and somehow managed. My daughter is now married, both my sons are working. Life has to go on, we cannot escape (our fate),” she says.
Katti Padma Rao, a Dalit poet, activist and founding general secretary of the Dalit Mahasabha, who lives in Ponnur, 17 km from Tsundur, says the caste rift has only widened over the years. “Whether it’s Tsundur where eight Dalits were killed or Karamchedu where six Dalits were killed on July 17, 1985, nothing has changed on the ground. In fact, caste rifts have widened as Dalits gain education, get empowered and seek their rights,” Padma Rao says.

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/24-years-on-this-ap-village-still-cant-put-massacre-behind-it/