Parameswari and Suresh (names changed) work at large banks in Chennai and have known each other since they were classmates in a Vellore college. The two wanted to get married but Parameswari’s parents, who live in a village near Vellore, have refused permission. They are vanniyars, categorized as OBCs, and the boy is a dalit.

The family’s fears are understandable – over the last couple of years, vanniyar-dalit marriages have led to violence across northern Tamil Nadu . Metropolitan Chennai is just 200km away from Parameshwari’s village but it is far removed from her family’s realities.

Violent clashes between dalits and OBCs have been a feature of the southern districts for many decades . But since the late 1980s, when PMK chief S Ramadoss, a vanniyar leader, started a powerful campaign demanding separate quotas for his caste group, violence has become common in the north too.

In the past it took egregious instances of untouchability to set off a conflict — serving tea to dalits in separate tumblers or refusing to let them use footwear for instance. But today, violence is sparked off by inter-caste marriages and dalit demands to worship in temples.

Typically, dalits would ask for the right to pull the village temple car (rath) during festivals. But, at Seshadripuram village in Villupuram, the Mariamman temple was for dalits, and the district administration had brokered an agreement between the vanniyars and the dalits on the route that the car would take.

On the night of August 15, a dozen dalit villagers were decorating the car for next day’s procession when there was a sudden blackout. Under the cover of darkness, a mob descended on the dalit colony, launching a brutal attack. As the 80-odd dalit families fled the colony, the mob got to work, burning down houses and vehicles. The temple car was torched and petrol bombs were lobbed into homes.

It took the police four hours to bring the situation under control. Over 70 persons were taken into custody and charged under various sections including prevention of atrocities on SC/ST act. "We never expected violence on this scale especially after we reached a consensus on the festival. Most vanniyars are not against taking our temple car in procession but a few influential people were against it. They said the presiding deity can be taken in a bullock cart through public roads, not the temple car," says a dalit representative, who had participated in the discussions.

The violence has raised the political temperature in the state. A week after, the dalits have still not returned home. Ramadoss has alleged that the police and district administration are biased against vanniyars. Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), the party that represents the dalit caste group in northern TN, has flayed the delay in providing compensation to those affected.

It is important to understand the whole tussle over the temple car. In Tamil Nadu, the temple is the centre of village – and community – life. Temple festivals are the most significant events in the village calendar and dalits have been increasingly demanding that their right to worship and take part in common festivals be upheld. The dominant OBCs in the areas have often opposed this.

During the 2011 local body elections in Seshadripuram, dalits had asked the vanniyar candidate standing for the panchayat president’s post (he belonged to actor Vijayakanth ’s DMDK) for a temple car. The candidate agreed and delivered on the promise though his rival DMK leader, also a vanniyar, opposed this. But the dalits were told that they couldn’t take the car in a procession through vanniyar streets.

"This is the classic situation that Ambedkar described. The OBCs may be vociferous in their opposition to upper castes and brahmins, demanding quotas as under-privileged, but they need the dalits under them so they feel superior," says C Lakshmanan, faculty at the Madras Institute of Development Studies .

Though TN is among the earliest states to see a popular OBC-based movement, Dravidian parties have sought for themselves a larger profile beyond local caste dynamics. Personalities, welfare schemes have often been the campaign issues in elections. But, an all-in-one OBC front that they have sought to project fractured a few decades back, starting with the vanniyar-based PMK.

It seems that the caste genie that the Dravidian movement unleashed is out of control now. Today, in the state, nearly every caste group has a party. "That we have so many caste outfits with political strength is the reason for the violence that we don’t see in other southern states," says dalit scholar and VCK leader D Ravikumar .

Even the PMK that went in for a large-hearted social and electoral alliance with VCK in 2005 later did a U-turn and went back to caste antagonism when it failed miserably in the 2011 assembly elections. "What we are seeing today is the failure of all ideologies: Dravidian, Marxist, even Hindutva. No attempt to mobilize people on a larger idea is working," says Ravikumar. Incidentally, Amit Shah has been, in recent years, trying to put together a largely caste-based alliance for the BJP — of vanniyars, gounders, mudaliars, thevars.

