Friday, September 23, 2011

Tamilnadu Untouchability Eradication Front (CPM): A critique

Ayya Adhiyamaan says: Theendaamai Olipu Munnani(Untouchablity Eradication Front) was started in Tamil Nadu few years before, which is a wing within CPM (Tamil Nadu), Aathi Thamilar Peravai also joined them. Even at that point we objected to the name "Theendaamai", because this was spoken during the Gandhi's period. Therefore it is not appropriate to talk about the same after 50 years of independence. Basically it should either be as Caste eradication or eradication of Hindu religion, such we argued. Even then they did not yield to the idea of opposing the name. However, they were taking so many issues related to Arunthathiyars, which made us to feel better.
I do not completely reject them, but still they have not understood the reality.


If they are very serious about Dalits getting political power, then they should stop fighting for temple entry, untouchability, etc and they should provide utleast 10 districts secretary post for Dalits within 30 districts, which will result to solve Dalit problem themselves. In particular they should give atleast 5 district post for arunthathiyars.

At present even in state level, district level or thaluk level, there are still no posts are given to dalits according to their percentage. Therefore they speak the 'untouchability' as Gandhi spoke. Gandhi standing within the Hindu Religion, started saying that we should be together, we should not separate. That was the reason for him to use the word "Harijan", The same concept is followed by CPM (TNUEF) even after 50 years of independence, which means talking abstractly about dalit, and not serious about their emancipation. Therefore I am here to say that last week Aathi Thamilar Peravai has withdrawn the membership from TNUEF.

(The Interview was taken at coimbatore in ATP office. The video was shoot by Mr. Randeep Singh,punjab)
Aathi Thamilar Peravai(ATP) is an organization fighting for the injustice done to dalit community, arunthathiyars in particular. Arunthathiyars are those who engage in manual scavenging, leather working and other menial jobs in tamil nadu.

watch the video in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtEczY20_ic


The video is in Tamil, and I translated it here.

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