Bad hair days after caste bar
- A trim too few here, too many there
G.C. SHEKHAR
Chennai, June 15: Price of caste arrogance: an unkempt look with
crumpled clothes and overgrown beards and hair.
All because the majority Thevars of Irunjirai, located 80km from
Madurai, had warned the village's lone dhobi not to press Dalits'
clothes.
The dhobi has shut shop and fled the village of 130 families and so
has the barber, fearing the same diktat from the Thevars.
"Now we have no choice but to travel by bus to the nearest town to get
a haircut or shave. Almost no one here bothers to get his clothes
ironed any more," rued K. Paandi, a Thevar.
A. Periasamy, the dhobi, said: "The Thevars had asked me not to iron
Dalits' clothes or else they would boycott my shop."
When he still went ahead and ironed a Dalit farmer's shirt, the matter
was dragged to the village panchayat which issued Periasamy a warning
last January "to respect the majority sentiment".
That scared barber Maarimuthu too into turning away his Dalit customers.
"Since the Thevars outnumber all other communities put together in the
village, I could not afford to antagonise them," Maarimuthu said.
But when the Dalits complained to the Virdhunagar district
administration, revenue officials told the barber and dhobi if they
refused to serve the Dalits, they would be booked under the SC/ST act
for discrimination.
So the duo decided to move to the nearby town of Thiruchuzhi after
informing the officials in writing that neither wanted to do business
at Irunjirai.
When the matter came to the notice of Virdhunagar collector Siji
Thomas, he got the revenue authorities to appoint a barber and a dhobi
as government-nominated representatives at Irunjirai.
The barber was given the necessary tools and the dhobi an ironing box
(coal-fired) and a cart for pressing clothes. Both were given sheds by
the government to carry out their trade in the village.
But the Thevars would have none of it and boycotted the two
"outsiders", who too moved out in no time.
But the Thevars appear not to have learnt any lesson. Village headman
V. Murugesan, a Thevar, blamed the Dalits for "blowing the issue up"
and complaining to the district administration.
"The panchayat was ready to resolve the issue amicably but once the
district authorities started arm-twisting our barber and dhobi, they
moved out. And our villagers refused to support outsiders plying their
trades here."
The Dalits are not complaining. "For the past six months we had to
take a bus to get a shave or haircut. Now even the Thevars have to do
the same thing. It's all their own doing," said Gurusamy, a farm
worker.
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