While the world focuses on the fishing communities that bore the brunt of the tsunami, spare a thought for the Irulas of Tamil Nadu.
While the world focuses on the fishing communities that bore the brunt of the tsunami, spare a thought for the Irulas of Tamil Nadu. These tribals, once displaced from their forest homes and traditional occupations, have now lost their pathetic settlements and precarious livelihoods in coastal villages. In Nemeli, some Irulas have finally found a home
They ranked at the very bottom of the heap. Driven out of their forest homes they had no land, no steady means of livelihood, no papers to derive any of the government benefits they were entitled to and no savings. Virtually cut off from the mainstream of society they could never be a threat to anyone. Yet the 23 Irula families who sought refuge at the Muttakad relief camp after losing their pathetic belongings in the tsunami wave of destruction that engulfed 376 villages of Tamil Nadu, faced extreme hostility and threats of violence by the fishing community.
Workers of ActionAid India who had been touring the East Coast Road down the Chennai coastline providing relief materials after the tsunami were struck by their plight. Says Nithila Bhaskara, Programme Manager of the NGO, “They were there trying to cook a meal with no form of shelter, not even a tarpaulin sheet to protect them from the open sky. Some of the women had recently given birth and they and their babies were in a really pitiable condition.”
But the distribution of milk powder, food and relief materials drew the ire of the more powerful fishing community or meenavars who demanded that the Irulas leave immediately or they would be attacked. The meenavars believed that they had suffered the most when they lost their boats and nets and the Irulas would divert attention from their needs. The ActionAid workers urged the fishing community to allow some time to find an alternative site to resettle the Irulas.
Then, working with the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Trust (ITWWS), a civil society organisation looking after the needs of the 1,50,000 Irulas in the scattered settlements of Tamil Nadu, the 23 families along with a few other Irulas from the Kalpakkam area, were relocated at Nemeli in Kancheepuram district.
Ironically, when the Irula families were gathering up their belongings to leave, the meenavars said they were ready to accommodate three Irula families. The offer came not from any altruistic motive but because the Irulas have been exploited as the cheapest form of labour across the state.
The Irulas, the largest adivasi tribe in Tamil Nadu, found themselves virtually bonded labourers when in 1976 the Forest Protection Bill robbed them of a lifestyle, home and livelihood. These traditional snake and rat catchers from Tamil Nadu were dealt another blow when the state enacted laws to protect snakes.
Anthropologists believe that the Irulas belong to the Negrito race. The name Irul (meaning dark complexion) may have originated because of their colour or because they were spotted in the forest as only distant and dark silhouettes.
Dependent on the forest, they gathered and sold honey, beeswax and firewood to villagers in exchange for village products, and relied on the forest for food, comprising largely of vegetation and wild animals.
When they were forced out of their forest homes, they found they had little or no skills and could only labour in rice mills or as inland fishermen. Often they are not given wages but paid in kind for their work in the mills. This leaves them with scarcely any earnings, absolutely no savings, and the ability to just about scrape together the day’s meal.
A semi-nomadic existence means that the Irulas have no documents that allow them access to the benefits they are entitled to as a scheduled caste. Most of them do not have a ration card and do not utilise the public distribution system.
Annie, in charge of the ActionAid hub in Chennai, explains that contrary to the belief that only the fishing community suffered in the tsunami, the Irulas too stand in danger of losing their livelihood.
Some of them have settled on the fringes of the villages or at the mouths of rivers and backwaters where they eke out a living using cast nets for inland fishing or combing the riverbeds to hunt out earthworms that are sold to fisheries. A day’s work of scouring for earthworms yields some Rs 200, to be divided among four persons. But after the tsunami the topography of the land has changed. The silt in the riverbeds has made it difficult to dig out earthworms. Agriculture has been affected because of salinity in the fields, affecting the labourers in turn. The marginal fishermen have lost their nets.
With no land to call their own, many live in appalling conditions. I visit one such settlement -- Rettakuttai -- where some 40 Irula families and dalit huts huddle at the very edge of a refuse dump and fetid swamp. Here they have existed in pathetic squalor for 35 years, performing menial tasks for the nearby tourist town of Mahabalipuram and jostling for space. They too will be relocated shortly.
In contrast, at Nemeli where some Irula families have been resettled, the community has set down their thatch huts in a neat and orderly fashion. Their faces are wreathed in smiles as they greet us warmly and declare they are very happy even though they are bereft of most possessions and water supply is available only in the next village They now have a homeland.
Selvi, an Irula herself, and another field worker of the ITWWS, also named Annie, tell me how the land has been bought in the name of the self-help groups that have been formed by the Irulas. Three names have been registered. One is of Pushpa who exemplifies the spirit and lack of gender bias that the Irulas enjoy, unlike the meenavars who have a patriarchal society.
It is Pushpa who recounts the violence and social conflicts they face. How the women were forced to use their saris to rig up some temporary shelter after the tsunami for nursing mothers. Although she is illiterate she does not lack confidence and Selvi tells me how just the day before she had stood before a microphone and addressed a gathering in Mahabalipuram about her community’s needs and plight. She focused on the issues brought to the fore by the tsunami -- water, food and shelter.
Muniamma, also one of the members in whose name the land is registered, is learning about savings and loans.
While a balwadi has already been set up, there are now plans for a community centre, a school and a herbal plantation where the Irulas can tap into their traditional skills of gathering medicinal plants.
These Irula families have finally found a new home.
(Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.)
InfoChange News & Features, May 2005