An empty ground overlooks the Nagapattinam Court.
We converged there every day when the hearings were in session. We were patient. The waiting became the blood in our heads. To the lawyers, who had spent the greater part of two years working on the case, any judgment was gratifying. To the party, it meant more meetings, more denouncements, more discussions. To the eighteen bereaved families, the case was the shell they made their home, it was the hut where their loved ones had remained on the night of the tragedy. We were all waiting as the days dangled before us.
Two years after the atrocity, the Special Additional First-Class Magistrate M. S. Gopalakrishnan delivered his verdict. He came to conclusions: the accused took the law into their own hands, deliberately set fire to the huts, destroyed all homes in three streets, shot at agricultural labourers. He doubtless grieves that their ‘causing grievous harm’ resulted in the loss of forty-two (plus two, silent) innocent lives and decides, in the circumstances of the present case, to impose a fitting punishment. He has a full meal in mind, but he skips the salt. He frees fifteen landlords. Eight of them get a token punishment of ten years in jail. No one is sentenced for life, no one is sentenced to death.
The Special Additional First-Class Magistrate also said that the accused who have been convicted by this Court of Sessions at the East Tanjore District on that the Thirtieth day of November Nineteen Hundred and Seventy should be handed over to the Tiruchy Central Prison.
Some issues are sidestepped. Most are buried. The court kept saying that the fire did the killing. At one point, the magistrate talked about the people who died because they were trapped inside a hut that caught fire. As if the hut of Paappa and Pandari Ramayya was waiting there, waiting to catch fire, waiting to self-immolate, waiting to commit suicide.
Our lawyers say justice has nothing in common with law. It is a late lesson.
The convicted landlords, already out on bail, announced their decision to challenge the order. When they went to the High Court, we laughed to ourselves. This was an old joke: for a minor stomach ache, a mirasdar had to run to Madras. Even there, the case dragged on and on for a further three years.
In the big city, we saw the final hearing of the case stretch for sixteen long days. Day after day, the judges would come and take their seats and listen to the arguments from both sides. The prosecution which was the police and the defence which was the landlords and then again the prosecution which was us. The judges asked question after question. Some of us who went there were already getting impatient. We wondered why they could never make up their minds. We marvelled at the words that came out of their mouths, always English, always in a steady tone, like a thresher at work. Sometimes, sitting in the court, grass grew within our heads and sometimes, we sensed snakes mating. Their English could shoot like darts, it could curl and coil around itself.
Muthusamy, who knew some English, would translate for us at lunchtime. ‘They are talking about the massacre.’ ‘They are talking about seeing the massacre.’ ‘They are talking about what happened during the massacre.’ ‘They are talking about what happened after the massacre.’ We stopped asking him for translations. Seeing their placid faces, we often had a feeling that nothing related to death was being discussed. ‘How can they sit for so long in one place and silently listen?’ asked Raman, and then he said, ‘See, even my buttocks have fallen asleep on this bench.’
The state minister for agriculture was the minister of Harijan welfare – it was the government’s way of acknowledging that we grew the food that everybody ate. These things went together, like gift and gratitude. Minister Sathyavani Muthu was like us, from one of the outcastes. This was their way of saying that even ‘untouchable’ people had come up in society.
The state was going to give us some money for our dead relatives. The state was going to support the voluntary organization that wanted to rebuild our homes. The organization had taken money from the refinery at Narimanam in East Tanjore, and, because he still ruled over these villages, sought blessings and approval from Gopalakrishna Naidu. We reasoned it out by saying, ‘Everyone who has taken on a body, has taken up a begging bowl.’
Years later, we think that it was a mistake. The landlords would show pictures of our new homes to the judges and claim that Gopalakrishna Naidu built this for us. The photographs would carry the lie to its logical end. All these acts of compensation and compassion cut deep into us.
These were knives that found every inch of our flesh. We were angry not only because we wanted to avenge the dead.
It is said that wisdom and learning are contained in a measure of rice. For our food, our fists fought the earth. For our freedom, our fists froze the air. Now, we saw them tamed by handcuffs. We spend our days in jail, eight of us ending up in prison for agent Pakkirisami Pillai’s death. But, the landlords, with blood on their hands, walk the streets with their heads held high. Congress leaders garland them.
Sadly, along the way, we see our party leaders use public platforms to please and provoke others. When Muthusamy went to Madras, he heard the Communist leader ASK Iyengar speak about the greatness of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. ‘She has nationalized banks and she has promised to eradicate poverty. We must support the Indian National Congress,’ ASK said. We know that the Congress in Kilvenmani is not Indira Gandhi. It is Gopalakrishna Naidu. The politicians and the police are only puppets on his strings. We know it is a mistake to support the Congress.
When the Land Ceiling Act came, the landlords of Tanjore started their protests. They refused to pay land revenue, they refused to crop. They cried about the reforms. They asked to be exempted, and when it did not work, they started opposing the act. They figured out ways to work around it. Fraud would win where fights could not.
They grew used to complaining. They said they lacked proper transport facilities to take the levy paddy to the government warehouses, so they wanted the government to come and collect it instead. They fussed about little things. They behaved like moody, foolish cattle that require lots of cajoling. They established the right connections to the politicians to see that they were saved. Like vermin and rodents, they knew their way around. They were either members of the Indian National Congress or DMK, and because feudal funding fed these parties and kept them running, politicians took orders from mirasdars. Reforms and land redistribution, promised eloquently on paper, were never put into practice. They dug their way into every corridor of power, they worked to appropriate the voices that criticized them.
Even Periyar EVR, whom the entire state held in the greatest regard, who had vociferously condemned this massacre, was not out of their grasp. Patronage and caste connections helped them purchase proximity. We heard that Gopalakrishna Naidu had managed to meet Periyar when he had come to Nagapattinam and was receiving visitors at a school building. We felt let down. We found little to trust in Periyar’s rhetoric of Self-Respect, the DMK’s Tamil nationalism, or in the Congress promise to eradicate poverty.
While Indira Gandhi keeps making these promises, the shops run out of kerosene, the state runs out of coal. There is scarcity of petrol and diesel. There is a 75 per cent power-cut in Madras, the newspapers say. There is a 99 per cent power-cut in our villages.
Paddy is at nature’s mercy. Failure of monsoons means drought and famine. Cyclonic winds means ruined crops. Excessive rain means rotten crops.
In between, the nation went to war with Pakistan. In between, there were reports of how the Naxalites were taking over the Western Ghats. There were reports of how the Naxalites were taking over the trade unions. Spinning mills were shut down. Factories were locked up. The country was in a state of emergency.
The Paddy Producers Association continued its crimes. Our party, as usual, opposed them. What one sought to do, the other sought to undo. Because the Communist Party held its meetings on new moon nights, the Paddy Producers Association held its meetings on full moon nights. That is how they behaved in every aspect. Often, we got drunk because we needed to stay
tough. Between the bald heads and the braided tufts, there was little else any god could do.
Rumours, like bats, reached the remotest places. Someone said, ‘Gopalakrishna Naidu’s elder brother’s son is getting married to the daughter of the brother of a judge of the Madras High Court.’ Someone said that advocate Seshappa Iyer was responsible for this match-fixing. Our fate was sealed.
Even without the marriage we had little hope. The court in Tamil Nadu’s capital city was nowadays known as the Tamil Naidu High Court. The chief justice was a Naidu. Seventeen landlords involved in that case were Naidus. They had all been represented by Thambaiah Naidu. We were all untouchables in their eyes. Listening to our case was going to be a ridiculous, empty gesture. The accused would enjoy justice as a favour.
We try hard not to lose the little hope we have.
The Madras High Court outdid Gopalakrishna Naidu.
Justice Venkataraman and Justice Maharajan argued that if the main intention of the mob had been to cause hardship to Kilvenmani, they should have torched all the huts in all the streets on which we lived. Because only the huts on one of the streets were set on fire, they concluded that the attack was retaliatory – to avenge the death of agent Pakkirisami Pillai – and not deliberate. We consoled ourselves that we were lucky that these judges were not part of the mob that rampaged through Kilvenmani.
Letters of Gopalakrishna Naidu to the chief minister were quoted word by word in the judgment to prove that he had been implicated in this massacre only because he was an enemy of the Communists. The judges held that we had found it difficult to contain our urge to make him the villain of this episode.
This court rejected all our testimonies. They found everything we said to be faulty, unreliable, contradictory, smacking of falsehood, lacking in credibility and an afterthought, so they refused to accept any of it.
The High Court judges were defending the landlords better than their defence lawyers. As experts of ruling-class behavior, they used their understanding of caste and feudal practices to bail out all the accused.
Muthusamy translated their judgment for us. It said: ‘There is something astonishing about the fact that all the twenty-three persons implicated in this case should be mirasdars. Most of them are rich men, owning vast tracts of lands and it is clear that the first accused, Gopalakrishna Naidu, possessed a car. Such mirasdars might have harboured cowardly thoughts of taking revenge on Communist agricultural labourers. However much they might have been eager to wreak vengeance on the peasants, it is difficult to believe that they would walk bodily to the scene and set fire to the houses, unaided by any of their servants. Owning plenty of lands, these mirasdars were more likely to play safe, unlike desperate, hungry labourers. Anyone would rather expect that the mirasdars, keeping themselves in the background, would send their servants to commit the several offences which, according to the prosecution, the mirasdars personally committed.’
Though we had slaved on the fields of these Naidu mirasdars, we did not know that they could be capable of rage but incapable of revenge. We learnt it from the High Court. The judgment also said: ‘It is truly regrettable that the forty-two agricultural labourers who sought refuge in the hut of Pandari Ramayya lost their lives because that house was set on fire. However, it is a little comforting to learn that the accused did not have any intention to burn them to death.
‘In our opinion, the onus for responsibility of the tragic incident that took place on the night of 25th December 1968 lies with the accused, who have to accept the blame. But we regret the fact that we have not found sufficient evidence on record to implicate the accused in this incident. We have tried our best to separate chaff from grain, to lengthen the punishment for at least a few of the accused, and at the same time to ensure that the witnesses depose in a natural manner. But the subliminal shortcomings of the prosecution witnesses prevented us from punishing individuals whom we consider innocent. We believe the dependants of those who lost their lives in the holocaust will be generously compensated by the government.’
All the accused were acquitted. All of them walked free.
The fire of Kilvenmani had been rekindled. We were burning with outrage.
We told them that we did not want compensation.
We also did not want their justice.
EPILOGUE
Before this text is wrapped up and this book is mercilessly put down for being postmodern, here is a parting dose of Derrida:
‘The book is the labyrinth. You think you have left it, you are plunged into it. You have no chance to get away. You must destroy the work. You cannot resolve yourself to do so. I notice the slow but sure rise of your anguish. Wall after wall. Who waits for you at the end? No one…’
This direct address startles you. You. You, unable to leave a book. You, plunged in its text. You, seeking to destroy the work. You, you, you. Seduced into this labyrinth, with no means of escape, you prepare yourself for the immense task.
Wait. What if you don’t want to take it up? What if you decry deconstruction? What if you believe Derrida is a fancy French philosopher whom only the snooty guys at university quote? I am with you. So are most of the others. We are in this together. We are the 99 per cent. Come and occupy the novel, dear reader.
You, being this you, you being no ordinary reader, you being the collective, you being the reader who rights the wrongs, you being the reader who fills in the blanks, you being not only evasive but also anonymous, enter this story.
You have done all the preliminary groundwork. You know well that between the closure of the book and the opening of the text, there will be moments of wandering. You are prepared for the travel, the trials and the tribulations (you can ignore my alliteration). You have discovered much more than what I stopped to say. You have studied beyond survey tabulations and statistical manipulations. You know, for instance, that the global market-economy made Tanjore a mono-crop region. You know that rice production under the colonial capitalist mode increased five times more than the population, but the working people’s standard of living went in a downward spiral. You know all the strengths and sell-outs of communism in this dead-flat delta district. You know the trappings of agrarian resistance, you know the failings of a Tamil woman writing an English novel. You, being the perceptive reader, even know the history that I have glossed over. You don’t take long to fault me for talking only about the white imperialists – you can quote someone’s story that at the end of the eighteenth century, Hyder Ali’s marching armies, aided by the French and Dutch, forcibly took away 12,000 children from Tanjore to Mysore. You know that at that time, men were massacred and that the unmentionable happened to women and only those who escaped into the forests survived. You even speculate on the mookkaruppu por, where invading soldiers were said to have cut off the noses of the masses and collected them in sackfuls. You can reel off the dates of self-immolation of thousands of women of the Nayak royalty to save themselves from the fate that awaited them at the hands of the Marathas. You are not afraid, you are not the self-censoring kind, you point out that the Marathas spoke Marathi, the Nayaks spoke Telugu, and for a long, long time, Tanjore was never ruled by the Tamils themselves, and even if they got to rule, who would have had power but the feudal landlords? You can skip the soft-pedalling, you do the hard talk. You will get away with it. You have courage, dear reader, your words will never cost you a career.
Armed with all this knowledge, you visit Kilvenmani. You want to get the atmosphere right. You want to get the season right. You go there during harvest time, you go there in December, on the first day of the Tamil month of Margazhi, when dew begins to diamond the golden fields, you select a Sunday, you avoid the crowds and Christmas rush, you go there ten days in advance of the anniversary of the massacre.
You go and meet Maayi, you want to measure up the old woman in my novel against the original one, you want to know if justice has been done to her. She is busy – this is the harvest season after all, she has to earn her daily wage. You cur
ry favour by telling her about your visit to Tharangambadi – Tranquebar for the Danish – her birthplace, her mother’s home. You have touched her at a tender spot. She reminisces about her wedding, about the day she left her coastal village, about coming to Kilvenmani as a bride. Things were bad in Tharangambadi, but she had no idea that Kilvenmani would be worse. She shares her shock at seeing that her wedding feast consisted of nothing but pumpkin fry, a dried fish curry and rice. Burma arisi. Tanjore grew the best rice in the world, but Maayi and people like her were slaves and were fed second-grade food, the cheaper Burmese rice. When the British left, the coarse rice vanished too, and in the years of monsoon failure, or cyclones, famine ate up the people.
You like her metaphors. You see that she speaks in the style of all old women, her words slur because of the absence of teeth, all her consonants are flattened as they roll out of her mouth and her vowels seem no different from each other. You find it easy to understand because she speaks of the familiar and she speaks with emphasis and her hands dance as she speaks and everything fits itself perfectly into the grand story that she is weaving. Her hands tell you of how she, and other women from the cheri, could not take water from the wells or the lakes, how she had to wait for a caste-Hindu woman to take pity and pour water into her pot. She tells you that before petrol or christoil made its appearance, the coal-powered buses did not let the people of the cheri sit with the Hindus. In the cinema tents, she says, they were made to sit separately.
She shows how it looks, a serattai, the coconut-shell that the untouchables had to carry to the tea stall because they were not served in tumblers. Her husband had joined the Communists because they fought for these rights. Reeling under the spell of the Self-Respect Movement and the enticing militancy of early Communists, the people of the cheri had got together, entered the caste-Hindu village and dismantled the temple chariot. Word got around that Sannasi, her husband, had masterminded this protest. He was abducted one day, never to be seen again, until his body turned up two weeks afterwards, a hundred villages away. She beats her breasts, she weeps.
The Gypsy Goddess Page 16
