The village of Nayakankottai, on the road from Dharmapuri to Tirupattur, bears the only tribute to Naxalism in all of Tamil Nadu: a whitewashed sickle-and-hammer memorial commemorating slain Naxal leaders Balan and L Appu. But the caste violence that wrecked the lives of over a thousand Dalits earlier this month has forever tainted the image of Dharmapuri district as a former Naxal stronghold that, even a decade ago, had no place for caste or class differences.

More than two weeks after three Dalit settlements, not far from Nayakankottai in this backward district in north-west Tamil Nadu, were attacked, the air is still thick with tension. In the town of Dharmapuri, about two dozen policemen stand guard at an agitation by the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party, or VCK) and its president and MP, the fervent orator Thol Thirumavalavan.

Peace, however brittle, prevails at the gathering. The front of harmony that existed between the two majority castesVanniyars, a Hindu caste politically represented by S Ramadoss's Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), and Parayars, one of the Scheduled Castes whose cause the VCK purports to championnow lies shattered. Observers say the fragile accord soured over the past few years upon incitement from caste leaders. They allege that the attack, apparently triggered by an inter-caste marriage, was politically engineered.

When N Divya, a Vanniyar from Sellankottai village, and E Ilavarasan, from the neighbouring Dalit colony of Natham, fled due to parental opposition to get married, a caste panchayat held on the morning of November 7 by leaders from both communities ruled that the girl be returned to her family. Distraught at her decision to stay with her husband, Divya's father, G Nagaraj, who worked at a cooperative bank, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself. The discovery of his body later that day is said to have provoked a 1,500-strong mob to rampage through Natham and two smaller Dalit settlements, Kondampatti and Anna Nagar, where it set ablaze over 200 houses, damaged at least 50 others, and allegedly looted valuables and cash worth lakhs of rupees.

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In Natham, a village of about 1,500 Dalits driven to despair and destitution, no one is in a state to cook. Every day, since returning to the smouldering remains of their homes, they gather under a tent that is their only shelter and argue over who will chop vegetables. "Yesterday, we went hungry. The government and some Dalit sympathisers have sent us provisions, but we are too weary," says 52-year-old N Ravi.

Surrounded by lush turmeric and sugarcane fields, Natham looks as if it was struck by lightning. Roofs have caved in, revealing blackened rooms with furniture and books burnt to a crisp and walls broken by long cracks. Twisted ceiling fans hang by wires, switchboards have melted and TV sets stand gutted. Broken tiles litter porches and no livestock remain in the colony. Millets, saved for next year's crop, have begun germinating in the midst of the clutter.

Police guard the road branching off the Tirupattur highway towards Natham and escort Dalit children to school in vans. With their houses gone and no land to call their own, observers estimate that it will take the people of Natham at least 20 years to regain their economic standing.

On that ruinous day, in the absence of the men of Nathammany work as daily-wage labourers in Bangalore and Coimbatorestorm was gathering outside the village. More than a thousand caste Hindus had taken to the streets, bearing Nagaraj's body, shouting war cries and felling trees to block access to the Tirupattur highway. The women and children of Natham were left to scamper across to the sugarcane plantations and the woods beyond. Parimala, 25, too, ran with her three-day-old baby to hide in the scrub forest. Hers was the first house in the village and the mob was upon her before she could go looking for her three older children. "They took all valuablesgold, silver, and the Rs 2.5 lakh cash we had set aside to build a provisions store," she says.

At Ilavarasan's house, a few paces down the road, sunlight shines through the roof and crumbling walls enclose the ashes of the abandoned household. According to Ilavarasan's cousin, Madumaran, and his wife, Indrani, who live next door, the mob charged into the village at about 4.30 in the afternoon, armed with petrol and weapons. "About 20 people entered the house, broke windows and lit a fire. We escaped after an hour, when the mob had moved on," says Indrani.

On receiving news of the attack, 41-year-old Madumaran, employed with the police in Kashmir, rushed home to find that little remained of it. "Till a month ago, my wife owned 25 silk saris. Now she does not have a second set of clothes to change into," says Madumaran.

Villagers say they have known about the love affair for at least a year. Ilavarasan's parents, anticipating trouble, reportedly fled the village soon after the couple eloped. "The girl's family knew too. In January, the Vanniyars beat him up and warned him to stay away. But you see, they eloped over a month before the violence. Why the sudden rage now," asks Indira, 23. The government has handed out Rs 50,000 in compensation to each family, a meagre sum with which to reclaim their lives.

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The population of Vanniyars, an intermediate caste inhabiting parts of northern Tamil Nadu, is estimated at 11-12 per cent, while the Parayars constitute about six per cent. "The Vanniyars here live in about the same economic conditions as the Dalits," says A Marx, state organiser for the People's Union for Human Rights, who led a fact-finding team that visited the affected areas on November 16. Marx says caste politics has been on the rise in Dharmapuri following the arrest of 28 Naxalsfive of them from Nathamhere in 2002. With the collapse of Naxalism, the people, once monolithic in their opposition to untouchability and discrimination, were now lured by caste identities and the promise of power. Thus began a disquieting era where Dalits were made vulnerable by radicalised groups and Vanniyars turned sanctimonious about their perceived position in society. "Even now, restaurants and stalls serve tea and coffee to the two castes in two different sets of cupsstainless steel for Vanniars and disposable plastic for Dalits," he says.

While Ramadoss has rubbished allegations that his party orchestrated the incident, many Dalits believe otherwise. J Gurunathan, senior PMK leader and state president of Vanniyar Sangam, a community organisation, is said to have fomented tension between Vanniyars and Dalits by publicly condemning marriages between the two. However, there is no evidence that the PMK played any role in the attack.

Many blame the fecklessness of the police and the district administration. "This was a planned incident where a caste mob had been mobilised from 22 neighbouring villages. The mob rampaged for four hours and the 19 policemen stationed in the area did nothing," says P Dillibabu, CPI(M) MLA from neighbouring Harur taluk and vice-president, Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front.

The DSP, incidentally a Vanniyar, and the constables responsible for maintaining peace in the area have since been transferred or suspended. "We have made 142 arrests. FIRs have been filed against 500 people. The case is now in the hands of the crime branch, CID," says SP Asra Garg.

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The people of Anna Nagar, a colony of about 50 houses built on government-allotted land, say the mob laid siege not just to Dalit villages, but also to their progress in society. "The men who stormed into the village shouted obscenities. One said, 'We are burning the books of your children. This should set you back by a generation'," says Santosh Kumar, whose house was among the 36 that were set ablaze. "'Today is our Deepavali,' shouted another," says Shanthi, who lost her house worth Rs 25 lakh and 480 gm of gold.

Despite being unrelated to Ilavarasan and Divya, this hamlet suffered the same fate as Natham, 1.5 km away. Kondampatti, nestled in the midst of tapioca and turmeric plantations, was slightly luckier. The mob's last stop, it lost 14 houses to the riot before the vandals fled in fear of an approaching police team. "I am scared to think about what could have happened to us," says Sarala, 25, whose brother Netaji married Muthulakshmi, a Vanniyar girl, in Chennai last year. Deemed guilty by association, Sarala and her parents came home the next morning to find their home ripped apart. Ever since Netaji eloped 14 months ago, the family has lived in fear of a group of Vanniyar thugs who had threatened them and broken the windows of the house.

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A five-minute drive on a kuccha road past Natham, Sellankottai is a small, now-heavily guarded village of about 120 Vanniyars who earn their living from agriculture and dairy farming. It is almost dusk and 40-year-old Thenmozhi puts all her strength into milking a cow. "My husband used to milk the cows and we earned Rs 200 from each cow in a day. Since he died, all the men of the village have been arrested and we are left alone to fend for ourselves," she says. Memories of her daughter and her husband return to her like an insistent tide. "Divya was a bright girl. We had nurtured dreams of marrying her into a well-to-do family of our caste. She was studying at Om Shakti Nursing College in Dharmapuri and lived in a hostel. She would come home over the weekend. Then we noticed that the boy used to follow her around. We made it a point to drop her at a bus stand past Natham because the village is full of boys who chase high-caste girls in the hope of extracting money from their parents. But one Monday, she did not come home. We were worried for four days until we heard from the people of Natham that their boy was missing too," she says.

Thenmozhi alleges that while her daughter is 20, Ilavarasan, a student of B.Com, is just 19. "This is a case of kidnapping for extortion of money. Villagers from Natham promised to deliver our daughter back to us in exchange for Rs 1 lakh, but when we went there with the money, Divya, possibly threatened by them, refused to return," says Thenmozhi. "Over 2,000 Vanniyar girls have fallen prey to Dalit boys in the last few years. This must stop."

Divya, whom she once liked to dress in the flashiest silks and ornaments, is now as good as dead to her. "I have lost not just my husband, but my daughter too. Even though the police say she and the boy are safe, I can never meet her again. She did not come to her father's funeral and she cannot come to mine," she says. Thenmozhi claims that persons unknown to her forcibly took her husband's body and marched off into the street even as she ran after them. "I do not know who engaged in violence. All I know is, we have lost our bread and butter to the depression that has come upon us after my husband's death." This is the first time someone from this village of 40 houses has married outside his or her caste and the consequences have been disastrous.

Police say the couple, whose marriage seemingly angered a caste mob into vicious retaliation, is safe at an undisclosed location. As the caste war continues to rage in the minds of people, the Dalits of Natham cradle a fragile hope that one day, they won't be refugees in their own village.

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