India's untouchables forced out of relief camps

When I was young and innocent, I confused untouchables with the Untouchables. My very patient mother was unable to explain. Not until I sat through 2-1/2's of Gandhi did I get it. And I immediately wanted to revert to my former way of thinking.

The AP has released a story about Keshvanpalayam, India's untouchables, having suffered as greatly from the tsunami as everyone around them, being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors. They have also been denied aid supplies.

"Kuppuswamy Ramachandran, 32, a Dalit or untouchable in India's rigid caste hierarchy, said he and his family were told to leave a relief camp in worst-hit Nagapattinam district where 50 more families were housed.

"The higher caste fishing community did not allow us to sleep in a marriage hall where they are put up because we belong to the lowest caste," Ramachandran said.
"After three days we were moved out to a school but now the school is going to reopen within three days and the teachers drove us out," he said.

"Where will I take my family and children? The school had no lights, toilets or drinking water," available for the displaced. At Keshvanpalayam, the Dalits had only flattened homes to show while survivors elsewhere enjoyed relief supplies such as food, medicines, sleeping mats and kerosene.

No government official or aid has flowed into the village which houses 83 Dalit families more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Nagapattinam town.

Chandra Jayaram, 35, who lost her husband to the tsunamis, said her family has not received promised government compensation of 100,000 rupees (2,174 dollars).

"At the relief camps we are treated differently due to our social status. We are not given relief supplies. The fishing community told us not to stay with them. The government says we will not be given anything as we are not affected much," Jayaram said.

S. Karuppiah, field coordinator with the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation, said in some of the villages the dead bodies of untouchables were removed with reluctance.

"The Dalit villages are in most places proving to be the preferred choice of the fishing community to bury the dead. If the Dalits ask for relief materials the government says they can only give the leftovers," Karuppiah said.

"The government is turning a blind eye," he said. "When Dalits bury the dead they are not given gloves or medicines but only alcohol to forget the rotten stench." Another activist, Mahakrishnan Marimuthu, who heads the non-governmental Education and Handicraft Training Trust, said tsunamis dealt a double blow to the caste."