Why I want to ask disturbing questions and say the unsaid

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Meena Kandasamy
'What happened in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district is not merely anti-Dalit caste hatred, but also the most vicious form of sexual oppression of women. Almost every single home was burnt and looted.'
'I still withhold my tears because of the fear that weeping will rob me of my rightful anger, that emotional catharsis will lead to complacence, says poet Meena Kandasamy in this column exclusive to Rediff.com

Five days after visiting the ravaged Dalit colonies of Nathamkottai, Kondampatti and Anna Nagar in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district -- where almost every single home was burnt and looted on November 7, 2012 by a thousand-member strong mob of Vanniyars wielding Molotov cocktails and crowbars -- I still withhold my tears because of the fear that weeping will rob me of my rightful anger, that emotional catharsis will lead to complacence.

The provocation for the organised rampage is attributed to the alleged suicide of Nagaraj, father of Divya, a 20-year-old Vanniyar woman who fell in love with and married 23-year-old Ilavarasan, a Dalit man from Natham.

The local police, keeping their caste sympathies intact are guilty of not just dereliction of duty, but of actually facilitating the violence against the Dalits by failing to check the Vanniyar mob's free-run of destruction.

Having gloriously performed their caste dharma of being passive bystanders to such horrifying violence, they now seem to have taken their job of policing very seriously: They ferry Dalit children in police vans to their schools and do not fail to ask a thousand impertinent questions to every single visitor who wants to step inside these colonies.

Why I want to ask disturbing questions and say the unsaid - Rediff.com News