Discrimination survives disaster

INDIA’S untouchables, reeling from the tsunami disaster, are being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors and being denied aid supplies, activists charged yesterday.

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,” he 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.”

More than 6,000 people died when tsunamis struck this southern Indian coastal district on December 26 and activists said that included 81 Dalits, who were daily wage earners working in agricultural lands which are now destroyed.

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 aid has flowed into the village which houses 83 Dalit families more than 30 kilometres from Nagapattinam town.

S Karuppiah, field co-ordinator 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,” Mr Karuppiah said.

“The government is turning a blind eye,” he said.

The government denied the allegations and said it was providing relief to every tsunami-affected family.

“There is no intention of closing down any camps and we are providing relief to each and every family. We will provide temporary shelters as these relief camps are getting overcrowded,” said spokesperson Veerashanmugha Moni.