 The Tsunami exacerbates Dalit women’s sufferings from caste discrimination Fatima Burnad, India Society for Rural Education and Development/Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement/APWLD member
Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement called a state level conference in Tharangambadi, Nagai District, on July 7, 2005 . Women from all over Tamil Nadu joined the conference to highlight the plight of Dalit women seven months after the tsunami. Most Dalit villages in the northern districts of Tamil Nadu, from Tiruvallur to Nagapattinam, have been affected by the tsunami. Families who lost their houses are not eligible for housing assistance as for generations they lived on their land without land titles. Over a million Dalit survivors of the tsunami have been living as refugees in ‘warehouse’ type temporary shelters. Dalit shelters are usually set up near graveyards or garbage dumps without sanitation and/or electricity. The toilets and washrooms, or rather lack of them, are still a primary concern in camps. Women are afraid to go to nearby bushes for fear of rape and molestation. The relief supplies are handed to men who spend the money on alcohol leading to increased domestic violence. Dalit women face increased violence inside as well as outside the temporary shelters. “In our village, out of 150 families only 50 received support from the State,” says Renuka. Children are not sent to school out of fear that they will be beaten or killed by the upper caste people.” Women, who have lost their husbands in the tsunami, are literally out on the road, not recognised as heads of household thus denied access to rehabilitation and relief assistance. They are not eligible for government support until they present dead bodies of their missing husbands to the government officials. Where would they look for the bodies seven months after the tsunami? Lalitha, who comes from an island, points out that they face threat on all sides: the sea and the caste. Dalits are not allowed to fish in the sea. Dalit women earn their living by catching prawns, snails, crabs and fish in the backwaters. Now with sand clogged backwaters they are struggling to survive on dwindling catches. Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement supplied old logs and nets to 24 families. They catch whatever is available and sell them in the local market. They are earning at least Rs.50 - 100 a day (USD 1 – 2.5). “We live on an island. We are not allowed to get into the boat, to buy anything, to walk on ‘their’ streets, to work in ‘their’ sea. After the tsunami we have no income, we want to go fishing in the sea,” says Manonmani from Lighthouse, Tiruvallur District. Women, small vendors, are left out with no means to earn. Agriculture workers lost employment as agricultural land is salinated by the tsunami. The fisher folks, who are higher caste, divert relief materials designated for Dalit communities. With no means to earn living and no government support many Dalit families are on the verge of starvation. Sundari from Kalpakam is in despair: “We are hungry; it is cruel to live with hunger.” Against the background of total exclusion from the government rehabilitation efforts, Vatchala from Pillaichavadi acknowledged the support that her community received from Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement: relief materials, food, clothes and school materials for children. Some Dalit women said, their ‘meal a day’ diet had changed after the tsunami, now they are eating ‘3 meals a day’ thanks to NGOs’ support. Women have undergone training on how to reclaim their lands. In three villages women have started training in new skills. “I am from an Irular (indigenous) community. Before the tsunami I worked as a house maid in a rich fisher family. Now I don’t have a job as the fisher family lost everything to the tsunami and cannot go fishing. Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement gave me a goat. Now I walk proudly with the goat and am not afraid of anyone.” Lakhsm i Dalit children’s access to education Every morning at eight K. Rajeswari scrambles onto a bus to make the 30 minute/20 kilometer ride from the temporary shelter for the tsunami affected in Kargil Nagar to her school in Royapuram. If she misses that bus run by Chennai-based NGO Karunalaya she will have to wait till the lone public transport bus makes its hourly appearance. That would mean getting late for school and missing crucial lessons for this senior high school student. For around 300-odd students (of the 3,000 estimated to be in Kargil Nagar), the three overcrowded buses run by Karunalaya are the only way to school and back. “If it were not for these crowded buses children would not be attending school,” believes Karunalaya Director Paul Sunder Singh. The government is unwilling to take over funding the school bus service. “Tsunami marriages” The statistics indicate more women and girls died in the tsunami across the affected countries leaving men to take care of the children. In India , it gave rise to a new phenomenon of “tsunami marriages” promoted by the government’s well-intended policy. As people were languishing in temporary shelters without basic amenities in post-disaster trauma, the government announced that it would provide financial assistance to the survivors, who had planned their marriages before the tsunami. While some of the marriages that were planned before tsunami got the benefit, a spate of “unplanned” marriages followed the announcement. Added to this was the incentive of a permanent home promised to newlyweds and with marriages there were many instant families to lay claims. In Nagapattinam, a mass marriage was announced; twenty couples got married. Priya claims to be 18 but comparing her age with that of her sisters and her mother and by her looks she cannot be more than 15. For Priya, tsunami is just one of the disasters that have struck her life. The larger disaster is her marriage to Suresh. For Priya it was a “love cum tsunami marriage” as they had some soft feelings for each other. While tsunami washed away their houses, her ‘tsunami marriage’ washed away all the soft feelings Suresh had for her. Two months after the marriage Priya’s in-laws and her husband started harassing her for dowry. Priya’s mother is a widow with five daughters. Ponnamma’s life is a living example of what an early marriage can do to a woman. Ponnamma was married at 18, had five daughters of whom Priya is the eldest and now is widow at 36. A battered woman with no means she is currently working as a helper at an NGO-run child centre. “At least, a young girl marrying a young man is better than marrying elder men who have lost their wives in the tsunami. Most of them are marrying girls so young that in one particular case the children of the man are elder to his new wife,” says Nisha, working with an NGO VRDP in Karaikal. In the Pattinachery and Karaikalmedu areas, at least, 100 “tsunami marriages” had taken place, mostly between tsunami widowers and very young girls. “Not a single widow marriage has happened. This is the society we live in,” continues Nisha angrily. Dalit women took the mike, occupied the Stage which is different from many other conferences. This conference was an outcry from Dalit women’s souls who have suffered from the tsunami in addition to their life-long pains from caste discrimination. The tsunami turned Dalit women into recipients of aid and left them waiting to “receive” but this conference called them to fight for their basic rights. |
