The caste tensions that sparked after T.N. Scheduled Caste activist Immanuel Sekaran’s murder in 1957

September 11 carries a special significance for Tamil Nadu for more than one reason. The date marks the death anniversary of nationalist-poet Subramania Bharati. It is also on this day that Immanuel Sekaran, an activist representing the interests of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the caste-ridden composite district of Ramanathapuram, was murdered at Paramakudi 68 years ago. The murder led to sensational events, including the arrest of U. Muthuramalinga Thevar, a contemporary of the then Chief Minister, K. Kamaraj, of the Congress and a key political figure of the Forward Bloc. Interestingly, Sekaran spent the day attending a function in memory of Bharati. (In January 1959, Thevar was acquitted of the charge by the trial court at Pudukkottai).

Despite the passage of time, the 1957 events, starting with riots at Mudukulathur, known for the concentration of the SCs, continue to dominate the public discourse. While the SCs were among the adversely impacted people, an incident of the police firing at Keezhathooval, wherein five persons belonging to the Mukkulathors were killed, confounded the situation. It gave rise to an impression that the Congress government of Kamaraj was ill-disposed towards the community. Much has been written on the Mudukulathur episode, with the versions of the two sides presented. A senior citizen, who was in the mid-20s then and who belongs to the Maravar community (which is the denomination of Thevar too), feels that great clarity is still not available on every aspect of the episode and perhaps, more time is required to understand the full import of certain events of 1957.

An end to servility

There are other views about the whole affair. V. Geetha, a writer-social historian, in an article in June 2024, described the events as one “signifying a clash between social and political democracy”. A veteran academic, K.A. Manikumar, in his work, Murder in Mudukulathur (published by Leftword in 2017), referring to the killing of Sekaran and the subsequent “positive intervention” of the Congress government, stated that this had “helped to end the servility in their [SCs’] social relationships”.

The Mudukulathur disturbances were an outcome of the changing political and economic dynamics in eastern Ramanathapuram. Radha Kumar, in Police Matters-The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900-1975 (published by Cornell University Press in 2021), cites two factors — the rise of Nadars (to which Kamaraj belonged) in terms of “economic and caste standing” over the first half of the 20th Century and the enhanced activism and political participation of Devendra  Kula Vellalars (to which Sekaran belonged) — for sharpening of the long-standing tensions among the three caste groups. Though Thevar began his career in the Congress, he followed his leader “Nethaji” Subhas  Chandra Bose, who formed the Forward Bloc in 1939. It so happened that Thevar and Kamaraj, who became chief of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) in 1940, found themselves on different sides of the political spectrum. Though the Forward Bloc posed no threat to the Congress’s dominance in the State, the political differences between the two leaders were also viewed as one of the factors that contributed to the disturbances, which had attracted media attention in the western countries, including the United States, as reflected in a news item of The Hindu on October 26, 1957. Predictably, the treatment by the international press of the government’s handling of the situation was negative.

Union Minister’s take

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs B.N. Datar, who made a three-day visit to the riot-hit areas, told reporters in Madurai on October 7, 1957 that the origin of the disturbances in east Ramanathapuram was “political” in the sense that what happened after the last general and by-elections in Mudukulathur gave an impetus to the “already existing bitter communal feelings” between the Maravars and the Scheduled Castes. Beyond that, he added, it could not be called political, according to a report published by this newspaper on October 8, 1957. Datar was on the dot, when he said the primary task would be “to enable the people” to get over the “strong communal feeling”, a point that holds relevance for all time to come. Biographers of Kamaraj, including V.K. Narasimhan and A. Gopanna, record that the Chief Minister and his government had realised that elementary needs, including those on the economic and educational fronts, had been neglected in the eastern part of Ramanathapuram. An emphasis was laid on housing and rural roads that would benefit all the sections. Manikumar mentions that “the measures that the Kamaraj government adopted might not have put an end to the caste animosity between the two conflicting groups in the region. But, certainly, they helped the Mukkulathors gain better access to educational and job opportunities.”

Police firing in 2011

In the last 68 years, the successive governments have done their bit to keep the communal equations under control during the death anniversary of Sekaran and the birth anniversary of Thevar in October. Only once — in 2011 — did the situation go out of control when seven SC persons were killed and many others injured in police firing and the subsequent violence. Jayalalithaa was the Chief Minister then. The firing occurred when SC members assembled in large numbers at Paramakudi to pay homage to Sekaran on his 54th death anniversary. The violence broke out after the arrest of Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader John Pandian, whose supporters demanded his release. Last month, this newspaper reported that the CBI, which had taken over the probe into the Paramakudi incident on the orders of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, declined to share details of its investigation under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. The Mudukulathur riots of 1957 have been caused by a mix of complex social, political and economic factors. The need of the hour is to study the reasons dispassionately.