Dalit Camera is a RU-vid platform bringing the voices of those which are neglected and suppressed. Subscribe the channel .
Twitter: @dalitcamera x.com/DalitCamera
Instagram: Dalit Camera / dalitcamera
Facebook: / dalitcameradc
Contact: +91 8220705729
Email: dalitcamera@gmail.com
Chunduru is in Guntur district, a developed village, compared with other Dalit hamlets -- both villages were beside the railway tracks. The Dalits worked as gangmen in the railways and as coolies in the agriculturally prosperous village. So they were able to earn a little, and managed to educate their children to whatever extent. There were jobholders in the village; there were some 8 M.A.s in the village even back then.
In everything, as you know the ways we try to assert our self-respect-wearing shoes, the way of going to college-they couldn't tolerate that. There was a police picket in the village, there had been some conflicts happening, just as in Lakshimpeta. So on that day, the police told the Dalits that: The Reddies and Naidus (Kapus) are planning to attack you; we can't save you (the Dalits) from them, so leave the village.
So they all ran away, but the attackers were waiting in their tractors in the fields! They had made the police tell the Dalits that they should run away, while they lay in ambush in the fields which fall on the way. There they killed them (the Dalits), and they did it in such a way - they cut them down, chopped them-separating the heads, hands, legs- stuffed those parts into gunny sacks and threw them into the Tungabhadra drain canal which runs through there and stamped them into the mud.
It took four days to find all those (bodies). The bodies had swollen so much and when they were taken to the Tenali government hospital, such big insects crawled onto the legs of those around. The doctor who performed the post-mortem was a Dalit. He couldn't digest that scene, and hanged himself after going home that night. His name was Ravichandra, the doctor who did the post-mortem. He couldn't take the brutality.
They had killed eight, but later there was this incident involving someone called Parishuddha Rao (a resident of the Malapalli). He regularly attended prayer meetings (in the church) and did nothing else; he had done his B.A, and had appeared for the B.Ed entrance exam, but was unemployed and indulged in no youthful pranks unlike others of his age. He used to talk of his younger brother being employed with pride.
When he saw his younger brother's corpse, which had swollen so much, he suffered from a heart attack and died.
To demand the arrest of all the killers an agitation was started. A protest tent came up in Chunduru, and the agitation was organized by the Dalit Mahasabha. Yes, it was again the Dalit Mahasabha (which organized it). So when the agitation was on, a police officer called Meena, SP Meena, arrived on the scene. He alleged that there were Naxalites among the protesters, and that was dangerous, and said that the protest camp should be vacated. He ordered firing.
He ordered firing on the protest camp! On the protesters who were demanding the arrest of the killers. So in the police firing, one Anil Kumar, (a very conscious youth) who was also a graduate and was leading the protest-- he was shot dead.
While the Chunduru Reddies directly killed 8, those killed indirectly were the doctor who committed suicide, Parishuddha Rao who died of heart attack after seeing his brother's corpse and Anil Kumar who was leading the protest, in the hunger strike camp, and was specifically targeted by the police and shot in the heart.
The agitators had planned a 'Chalo Delhi' programme to press for justice. When they reached Delhi, one Dalit woman died as they were trying to cross a road. So, that brings the total death toll to twelve. The total number of those who died due to the Chunduru massacre, directly or indirectly, was twelve.
Dalit Mahasabha, which was united during Karamchedu, split into two or three factions by the time of Chunduru. It had become three Dalit Mahasabhas. There was the Dalit Mahasabha led by Kathi Padma Rao, another by Bojja Tharakam, and another led by Babu Rao, who was from Prakasham district. These three had got divided as three Dalit Mahasabhas.
In Karamchedu, the Kammas alone had attacked the Dalits, but in Chunduru the Reddies and Kapus, co-opting the backward classes, attacked the Malas and the Madigas. Then, the Dalit movement was not as strong as during Karamchedu; the backward classes too had separated, they were not coming together (with the Dalits) because of the fast changing social landscape.
• #Karamcheduincident, #...
6 окт 2024
