Supreme Court order on SC sub-quotas: DMK hails it as ‘nod to Dravidian model’

Chief Minister M Karunanidhi steered the Act that provided 3% internal reservation to the Arunthathiyars within the existing 18% quota for SCs. The Act followed sustained demands by the community, highlighting their under-representation in government jobs and educational institutions.

This sub-quota for Arunthathiyars apart, Tamil Nadu’s reservation policy, allowing for 69% overall quota accommodating various backward classes, has over the years been held up as a model of inclusivity and social upliftment.

In 1951, there was 16% reservation for SC/STs and 25% for OBCs. The Karunanidhi regime in 1971 increased the OBC reservation to 30% and SC/STs to 18%. In the late 1980s, his government conferred 20% reservation to Most Backward Classes (MBCs) in a radical move, carving them out of the OBC category.

The current reservation breakup of the state includes 30% for BCs (including Christians and Muslims), 20% for MBCs, 18% for SCs, and 1% for the ST community.

Karunanidhi’s 2009 sub-quota for the Arunthathiyars, which ensured him a loyal vote bank among them, also faced challenges in the Madras High Court, but was not stayed due to pending litigations on the same lines before the Supreme Court.

While the dominant SC community of the Parayars is concentrated in northern Tamil Nadu and the Pallars in the south, Arunthathiyars are largely scattered, with their highest concentration in Western Tamil Nadu.

Prominent Dalit figures like Thol Thirumavalavan and Neelam Centre leader and filmmaker Pa Ranjith are Parayars.

Among the seven Dalit MPs of the DMK alliance, there are no Arundhatiyars, though as per M Mathivannan, a prominent Tamil writer who often writes about the Arunthathiyar community and is president of the Tamil Nadu Sakkiya Arunthathiyar Sangam, nearly 70% of the votes of the community go to the DMK.

“Despite their efforts at assertion since 1916, the Arunthathiyars have been denied mainstream political and social representation. They have embraced Ambedkar and Periyar as icons,” said Mathivannan.

There are many reasons why Arunthatiyars have remained the most underprivileged among the Dalits, the primary one being that under British rule, they got mainly roped into scavenging jobs in urban areas. The Parayars and Pallars, in comparison, had more interactions with the British and many converted to Christianity for education and livelihood, besides beneficial schemes.

To this day, Southern Tamil Nadu has a good number of schools, many set up by missionaries, while the Arunthathiyar-majority areas lag behind in educational facilities.

Perhaps because of their social position under British rule, many Arunthathiyars joined armed protests against the Raj. They were also at the forefront of Tamil Nadu’s anti-Brahmin movement.

K A Manikumar, a history professor and an expert in state’s caste dynamics, said the Supreme Court order was a well-deserved recognition for underprivileged sections like Arunthathiyars.

C Lakshmanan, a Dalit researcher who used to teach at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai, however, fears the order will cause schism within the SCs, to the advantage of political parties hoping to use them.

The Constitution aims to annihilate caste, Lakshmanan said, and any affirmative action should be group-oriented rather than individual caste-specific. “Tamil Nadu has 76 individual castes within SCs. Is it even practically possible for the state to address each sub-sect’s demands for reservation?” he said, arguing that the state should prioritise educational and socio-economic conditions rather than sub-caste divisions.

Lakshmanan said that the order may also help the BJP due to the segregation of Dalits. The Pallars in the south are already behind it through the Puthiya Tamizhagam party, which is an NDA ally

However, D Ravikumar, the MP of Dalit-centric VCK (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi), which is an INDIA ally, welcomed the Supreme Court order and asked the Tamil Nadu government to appoint a commission to study the socio-economic status of communities in SCs.

Madras High Court retired judge K Chandru also welcomed the Supreme Court order as a win for the Arunthathiyar community