The Gypsy Goddess (24 page)

The convicted landlords, already out on bail, announced their decision to challenge the order. When they went to the High Court, we laughed to ourselves. This was an old joke: for a minor stomach ache, a
mirasdar
had to run to Madras. Even there, the case dragged on and on for a further three years.

In the big city, we saw the final hearing of the case stretch for sixteen long days. Day after day, the judges would come and take their seats and listen to the arguments from both sides. The prosecution which was the police and the defence which was the landlords and then again the prosecution which was us. The judges asked question after question. Some of us who went there were already getting impatient. We wondered why they could never make up their minds. We marvelled at the words that came out of their mouths, always English, always in a steady tone, like a thresher at work. Sometimes, sitting in the court, grass grew within our heads and sometimes, we sensed snakes mating. Their English could shoot like darts, it could curl and coil around itself.

Muthusamy, who knew some English, would translate for us at lunchtime. ‘They are talking about the massacre.' ‘They are talking about seeing the massacre.' ‘They are talking about what happened during the massacre.' ‘They are talking about what happened after the massacre.' We stopped asking him for translations. Seeing their placid
faces, we often had a feeling that nothing related to death was being discussed. ‘How can they sit for so long in one place and silently listen?' asked Raman, and then he said, ‘See, even my buttocks have fallen asleep on this bench.'

The state minister for agriculture was the minister of Harijan welfare – it was the government's way of acknowledging that we grew the food that everybody ate. These things went together, like gift and gratitude. Minister Sathyavani Muthu was like us, from one of the outcastes. This was their way of saying that even ‘untouchable' people had come up in society.

The state was going to give us some money for our dead relatives. The state was going to support the voluntary organization that wanted to rebuild our homes. The organization had taken money from the refinery at Narimanam in East Tanjore, and, because he still ruled over these villages, sought blessings and approval from Gopalakrishna Naidu. We reasoned it out by saying, ‘Everyone who has taken on a body, has taken up a begging bowl.'

Years later, we think that it was a mistake. The landlords would show pictures of our new homes to the judges and claim that Gopalakrishna Naidu built this for us. The photographs would carry the lie to its logical end. All these acts of compensation and compassion cut deep into us.

These were knives that found every inch of our flesh. We were angry not only because we wanted to avenge the dead.

It is said that wisdom and learning are contained in a measure of rice. For our food, our fists fought the earth. For our freedom, our fists froze the air. Now, we saw them tamed by handcuffs. We spend our days in jail, eight of us ending up in prison for agent Pakkirisami Pillai's death. But, the landlords, with blood on their hands, walk the streets with their heads held high. Congress leaders garland them.

Sadly, along the way, we see our party leaders use public platforms to please and provoke others. When Muthusamy went to Madras, he heard the Communist leader ASK Iyengar speak about the greatness of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. ‘She has nationalized banks and she has promised to eradicate poverty. We must support the Indian National Congress,' ASK said. We know that the Congress in Kilvenmani is not Indira Gandhi. It is Gopalakrishna Naidu. The politicians and the police are only puppets on his strings. We know it is a mistake to support the Congress.

When the Land Ceiling Act came, the landlords of Tanjore started their protests. They refused to pay land revenue,
they refused to crop. They cried about the reforms. They asked to be exempted, and when it did not work, they started opposing the act. They figured out ways to work around it. Fraud would win where fights could not.

They grew used to complaining. They said they lacked proper transport facilities to take the levy paddy to the government warehouses, so they wanted the government to come and collect it instead. They fussed about little things. They behaved like moody, foolish cattle that require lots of cajoling. They established the right connections to the politicians to see that they were saved. Like vermin and rodents, they knew their way around. They were either members of the Indian National Congress or DMK, and because feudal funding fed these parties and kept them running, politicians took orders from
mirasdars
. Reforms and land redistribution, promised eloquently on paper, were never put into practice. They dug their way into every corridor of power, they worked to appropriate the voices that criticized them.

Even Periyar EVR, whom the entire state held in the greatest regard, who had vociferously condemned this massacre, was not out of their grasp. Patronage and caste connections helped them purchase proximity. We heard that Gopalakrishna Naidu had managed to meet Periyar when he had come to Nagapattinam and was receiving visitors at a school building. We felt let down. We found little
to trust in Periyar's rhetoric of Self-Respect, the DMK's Tamil nationalism, or in the Congress promise to eradicate poverty.

While Indira Gandhi keeps making these promises, the shops run out of kerosene, the state runs out of coal. There is scarcity of petrol and diesel. There is a 75 per cent power-cut in Madras, the newspapers say. There is a 99 per cent power-cut in our villages.

Paddy is at nature's mercy. Failure of monsoons means drought and famine. Cyclonic winds means ruined crops. Excessive rain means rotten crops.

In between, the nation went to war with Pakistan. In between, there were reports of how the Naxalites were taking over the Western Ghats. There were reports of how the Naxalites were taking over the trade unions. Spinning mills were shut down. Factories were locked up. The country was in a state of emergency.

The Paddy Producers Association continued its crimes. Our party, as usual, opposed them. What one sought to do, the other sought to undo. Because the Communist Party held its meetings on new moon nights, the Paddy Producers Association held its meetings on full moon nights. That is how they behaved in every aspect. Often, we got drunk because we needed to stay tough. Between the bald
heads and the braided tufts, there was little else any god could do.

Rumours, like bats, reached the remotest places. Someone said, ‘Gopalakrishna Naidu's elder brother's son is getting married to the daughter of the brother of a judge of the Madras High Court.' Someone said that advocate Seshappa Iyer was responsible for this match-fixing. Our fate was sealed.

Even without the marriage we had little hope. The court in Tamil Nadu's capital city was nowadays known as the Tamil Naidu High Court. The chief justice was a Naidu. Seventeen landlords involved in that case were Naidus. They had all been represented by Thambaiah Naidu. We were all untouchables in their eyes. Listening to our case was going to be a ridiculous, empty gesture. The accused would enjoy justice as a favour.

We try hard not to lose the little hope we have.

The Madras High Court outdid Gopalakrishna Naidu.

Justice Venkataraman and Justice Maharajan argued that if the main intention of the mob had been to cause hardship to Kilvenmani, they should have torched all the huts in all the streets on which we lived. Because only the
huts on one of the streets were set on fire, they concluded that the attack was retaliatory – to avenge the death of agent Pakkirisami Pillai – and not deliberate. We consoled ourselves that we were lucky that these judges were not part of the mob that rampaged through Kilvenmani.

Letters of Gopalakrishna Naidu to the chief minister were quoted word by word in the judgment to prove that he had been implicated in this massacre only because he was an enemy of the Communists. The judges held that we had found it difficult to contain our urge to make him the villain of this episode.

This court rejected all our testimonies. They found everything we said to be faulty, unreliable, contradictory, smacking of falsehood, lacking in credibility and an afterthought, so they refused to accept any of it.