From Roundtable Indias recent publication, LTTE and the Annihilation of Caste: One tends to overlook any debate on the pernicious ramifications that caste had and continues to have on Eelam Tamil society. The other overlooks or deliberately distorts any discussion of the radical role that the LTTE played in challenging casteism in Tamil society. This is quite a remarkable statement to make considering the fact that the LTTEs role in regards to caste politics is almost all, and exclusively so, what we hear about caste and caste-based discrimination back home and back here. Not just is the LTTEs role in general overemphasised, but also its successes exegerated and used as a way to deflect from general social responsibility. Few people are denying the LTTEs impact on caste, its actually one of the few things even its opponents tend to agree on (read: yes, the LTTE had a positive (but also some negative impacts) on caste). But its made to belief that LTTE caste politics in any sense broke the caste system in its pillars. It did not. To frame it as politics towards the annhiliation (used by the Tamilnet Troika) is just another rhetoric play to distort and deflect from the fact that the annihilation of caste is far from achieved - no, caste has reclaimed many of its positions post-war, post-LTTE. LTTE caste politics are used by many Tamil nationalist (and yes, the nationalist discourse is particularly in the diaspora coined by the Vellalar caste) to absolve Tamil society as a whole of its casteism, as if the LTTEs caste project was a bottom up process of social engineering. Considering the fact that some who engage in this kind of rhetoric are stern believers in grassroot movements, this seems fairly ironic. It was not. It was imposed upon a very casteist society which continued to practice caste in the private and feels now, in the present, again encouraged to do so more in the public as well. Obviously this article was written as a response directed against my work around caste, which is quite an entertaining and interesting dynamic to follow in itself. To simply use South Asian failures in regards to tackling caste as a reference point or a hall mark to compare ourselves in order to pat ourselves us on the back is simply not enough and satisfying for those who continue to suffer from caste discrimination in the present. Like I said many times before, to talk about caste in Eelam and outside, should never, as claimed by some Tamil nationalist, exclusively be tied to the LTTEs social project. Caste exists with or without the LTTE, in and outside of them, and our experiences of caste are not necessarily always tied to them and their ideas on it. They are neither always positively informed by the LTTE. Caste should never be a discussion that ought to be restricted to the LTTE and be made only possible via the LTTE, as wished, socially policed and enforced by some Tamil nationalists.
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 09:04:45 +0000
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