Thiruvananthapuram: 53-year-old K.S. Elangovan stands guard at the eastern entrance of Rehabilitation Plantation Limited’s sprawling Kulathupuzha Estate, on the far-eastern side of Kollam district grazing the Tamil Nadu border. Elangovan is on duty, but he is also waiting for at least one of the candidates fighting it out for the Punalur constituency to walk up the dust road towards the ‘3000-odd’-acre rubber plantation. Over 50 days of campaign have passed, but not one has visited.
If they come, he will not trouble them with any of the innumerable problems the workers face. He will have only one request to make. “Please do something to get us a caste certificate. Without the certificate, our children are not getting admission to good professional colleges and our youth are finding it impossible to secure good jobs.” Nonetheless, the apathy of the political class is surprising; there are nearly 6000 votes within RPL.
Elangovan was among the first batch of Tamils who were repatriated back to the country from Sri Lanka as part of an agreement between Sri Lankan Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike and her Indian counterpart Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964. In the late 19th century, during the British rule, Tamils were shipped to Ceylon to work in its coffee and tea plantations. But their number swelled worrying the Sinhalese. The Srimavo-Shastri Pact of 1964 was an attempt to defuse a growing ethnic tension.
The repatriation began in 1972. Elangavon reached RPL in 1976 with his parents when he was 14. Each repatriated Tamil family was given a ‘family card’ containing all their personal details. The caste portion in the family card of the first batch of families repatriated was left blank. More than three-quarters of those repatriated came in the first batch. Only a minority, those who came later, had family cards with caste details filled.
This did not pose a problem for a long time. All repatriates, irrespective of the blank caste column, were granted a scheduled caste or OBC certificate. But things changed in 2006. That was when the state government began to strictly implement a Supreme Court verdict in 1986, which said that caste certificate should be given only to repatriates who had reached India before 1950. The repatriates in RPL came after 1970.
Suddenly, job aspirants within the repatriate community and students seeking admission to reputed colleges were denied caste certificates. Jobs were lost, dreams were shattered. The denial was carried out blindly. “There were many instances where a person denied an SC certificate had a brother or sister whose family card proved their SC status,” said Kandan Perumal, a retired worker.
