Swathi Murder Case And Ramkumar’s Death - How TN Dalit Politics Plumbed New Depths

Many Dalit organisations across Tamil Nadu hit the streets yesterday (Sunday 18th September) following the death of Ramkumar, the main accused in the lynching of Swathi, a young IT professional. According to the police, Ramkumar committed suicide by biting into a live electric wire inside the Puzhal Central Prison. Swathi’s gory death on a platform of Chennai’s busy Nungambakkam railway station, had sparked a huge outrage across the country.

While the public outcry subsided once the Tamil Nadu police arrested Ramkumar after a week long manhunt (Ramkumar had attempted to slit his own throat when police cornered him), the murder case predictably took an ugly casteist turn as the main accused turned out to be from the Dalit community. This immediately led to a number of Dalit parties taking up cudgels on his behalf despite the Chennai police establishing that Ramkumar had indeed stalked Swathi in the weeks before the murder. There was also a CCTV footage of the murderer fleeing the railway station.

But Dalit organisations would have none of it. It probably only helped their narrative that Swathi was a Brahmin girl and that Ramkumar was a Dalit. Dravidian parties had spent decades sharpening their rhetorical devices when it came to stories of Brahminical oppression and elitism. Dalit organisations simply borrowed from that.

Regardless of the evidence presented against Ramkumar, a number of insinuations were spread on social media. A fake ‘selfie’ of Ramkumar and Swathi was circulated suggesting that this was an honour killing by the Brahmin family. The Dalit boy could only have been a poor victim. The aesthetic templates of dark-skinned Dravidians versus fair-skinned Brahmins were employed to suggest that Ramkumar murdered Swathi because the latter mocked his appearance. It was even alleged that Hindu right-wing forces were supporting the police case against Ramkumar and that the Central Bureau of Investigation should take over the case to make sure Hindutva elements don’t influence the proceedings. 

Vicious character assassination of the murdered victim was resorted to by fringe Dravidian groups especially in social media and Tamil tabloids. Adding to the cauldron of rumour mongering was an attempt to lend a communal colour to the murder based on local media reports that Bilal, a close friend of Swathi, was also summoned by police.

Tamil Nadu has a long history of Dalit oppression. Some sections of the politically powerful Other Backward Castes (OBC) continue discriminatory practises such as untouchability, denying water resources and sometimes even graveyards. The increasing empowerment of Dalits has since decades put them in direct conflict with land holding castes hurting Dalits more than OBCs. Inter-caste marriages even today lead to honor killing of the lower caste party involved.

Given that Dalit groups have such serious issues to tackle, it is inexplicable that Dalit organisations would pick up cudgels for an individual whose criminal behaviour bordered on mental instability. To those who are not particularly invested in yesterday’s caste wars Tamil Nadu’s Dalit parties look beyond unreasonable. They look downright silly.