UP IN ALMS INSIDE CHENNAI’S BEGGING INDUSTRY
DRIVEN BY NECESSITY: WHERE EVERY LASH BRINGS MONEY
Sholaga Tribe, Origin Identified By Madras Univ Report, Awaits ST Certification
Ekatha.Ann@timesgroup.com: 29.06.2018
The scars seared into his skin by years of selfinflicted whipping in his youth and the number of children he fathered later fetched V Natarajan money for years and now the title of the leader of a clan of beggars.
At 39, Natarajan knows he is too young to be called ‘pedu moopar’ — the title given to the community’s leader, usually the eldest. But for the 45 families who stay on a hillock in Kanniamman Nagar, around 12km from Avadi, tradition is something they are trying to break free of. For the past 70 years, members of this clan, who identify themselves as Sholagas, have moved three states, lashing themselves with ‘saatai’ (a whip made of tightly wound jute fibres) to win sympathy and coins. “We didn’t move by choice,” says Natarajan. “We were forced out by residents and panchayat heads. They say we pollute their land,” says Natarajan.
In 2010, the group found a home in Kanniamman Nagar after Natarajan, with the help of an NGO, brought their discrimination to the attention of the state. When they arrived, they had to share space with another community engaged in begging. “This is where beggars like us are dumped, but we aren’t complaining. At least no one is asking us to leave,” he says, absent-mindedly running a hand across the lash marks on an arm. Just then, a brawl breaks out. A three-year-old from Natarajan’s clan had tottered across the path that divides the two settlements. The groups don’t see eye-to-eye. “They think we are lowlives. For them, begging is a business. For us, it is survival,” he says, watching his men resolve the fight. One of them takes out his whip and the sight makes the other group back off. “We don’t want trouble. We prefer solving issues on our own,” he says.
The 45 families under Natarajan have around 350 children. While the older children, he says, go to a government school, infants and toddlers accompany the women to beg in the city. Some of them carry drums to draw attention to their babies, the older men carry whips. Mari, who estimates his age to be 79, is among them. Sporting dark glasses, he usually begs outside Perambur railway station, making around ₹100 a day. “When I bleed, I wipe my blood on some of these babies for more sympathy,” he says. When asked why the community uses torture, he scratches his matted grey hair. “That’s what our ancestors taught us,” he says, while showing off his only inheritance, a whip.
But the community is a sub-sect that was created only in the 1900s. “The group is part of the Sholaga tribe that was forced out of the hills in southern Karnataka after the Forest Act in 1878 made them trespassers in their own land,” says S Sumathi, head of anthropology department at Madras University. Her department was given the task of proving the communities in Madurai and Tiruvallur belong to the Sholaga tribe, which the government had refused to accept because of lack of documentation. As a result, none of them have schedule tribe certificates, depriving them of reservations in education and jobs in the government sector.
When the act banned shifting cultivation, foraging, grazing and hunting in the forests, around 1,000 Sholaga families were displaced. Some moved to Andhra, while others settled in Madurai and Tiruvallur. In a land and culture alien to them, all of them took to begging for a livelihood. “No clan or community engages in or encourages begging. For them it is a means of survival,” says Sumathi, who submitted a report last month confirming the communities’ Sholaga origin. Various parameters such as kinship, migratory pattern, dialect and belief system were taken into account. “They don’t think in terms of lineage because they rarely have any story to say or boast of, but they think like a clan and function as one unit,” says Sumathi. The community is endogamous, they speak a mix of Telugu, Kannada and Tamil (confirming their migratory route), their gods are not brahminical and their beliefs are intertwined with their eco-system. Their sense of kinship and clear political structure is distinctive. At dusk, when the women return with infants tied around their chests with ragged pieces of cloth, all of them hand over the earnings of the day to Natarajan. He counts the money and splits it into 10. “We have a register. The money is given to 10 families,” he says. The community collectively makes ₹3,000-₹3,500 every day. “We get more when children are sent to beg on weekends,” says Natarajan, who has seven children. Not everyone in his community begs. Men and teenagers who drop out of schools make money by digging wells. Women stay at home and bear babies who are used to beg. Natarajan’s sister Mari, 29, has eight children, the birth of her twins a year ago was a cause for celebration
as a child means more revenue. While the leader of the neighbouring settlement refused to talk to TOI, Natarajan agreed on one condition. “We are not criminals and we aren’t beggars by choice. We want to get out and want people to know our story,” he says.
DRIVEN BY NECESSITY: WHERE EVERY LASH BRINGS MONEY
Sholaga Tribe, Origin Identified By Madras Univ Report, Awaits ST Certification
Ekatha.Ann@timesgroup.com: 29.06.2018
The scars seared into his skin by years of selfinflicted whipping in his youth and the number of children he fathered later fetched V Natarajan money for years and now the title of the leader of a clan of beggars.
At 39, Natarajan knows he is too young to be called ‘pedu moopar’ — the title given to the community’s leader, usually the eldest. But for the 45 families who stay on a hillock in Kanniamman Nagar, around 12km from Avadi, tradition is something they are trying to break free of. For the past 70 years, members of this clan, who identify themselves as Sholagas, have moved three states, lashing themselves with ‘saatai’ (a whip made of tightly wound jute fibres) to win sympathy and coins. “We didn’t move by choice,” says Natarajan. “We were forced out by residents and panchayat heads. They say we pollute their land,” says Natarajan.
In 2010, the group found a home in Kanniamman Nagar after Natarajan, with the help of an NGO, brought their discrimination to the attention of the state. When they arrived, they had to share space with another community engaged in begging. “This is where beggars like us are dumped, but we aren’t complaining. At least no one is asking us to leave,” he says, absent-mindedly running a hand across the lash marks on an arm. Just then, a brawl breaks out. A three-year-old from Natarajan’s clan had tottered across the path that divides the two settlements. The groups don’t see eye-to-eye. “They think we are lowlives. For them, begging is a business. For us, it is survival,” he says, watching his men resolve the fight. One of them takes out his whip and the sight makes the other group back off. “We don’t want trouble. We prefer solving issues on our own,” he says.
The 45 families under Natarajan have around 350 children. While the older children, he says, go to a government school, infants and toddlers accompany the women to beg in the city. Some of them carry drums to draw attention to their babies, the older men carry whips. Mari, who estimates his age to be 79, is among them. Sporting dark glasses, he usually begs outside Perambur railway station, making around ₹100 a day. “When I bleed, I wipe my blood on some of these babies for more sympathy,” he says. When asked why the community uses torture, he scratches his matted grey hair. “That’s what our ancestors taught us,” he says, while showing off his only inheritance, a whip.
But the community is a sub-sect that was created only in the 1900s. “The group is part of the Sholaga tribe that was forced out of the hills in southern Karnataka after the Forest Act in 1878 made them trespassers in their own land,” says S Sumathi, head of anthropology department at Madras University. Her department was given the task of proving the communities in Madurai and Tiruvallur belong to the Sholaga tribe, which the government had refused to accept because of lack of documentation. As a result, none of them have schedule tribe certificates, depriving them of reservations in education and jobs in the government sector.
When the act banned shifting cultivation, foraging, grazing and hunting in the forests, around 1,000 Sholaga families were displaced. Some moved to Andhra, while others settled in Madurai and Tiruvallur. In a land and culture alien to them, all of them took to begging for a livelihood. “No clan or community engages in or encourages begging. For them it is a means of survival,” says Sumathi, who submitted a report last month confirming the communities’ Sholaga origin. Various parameters such as kinship, migratory pattern, dialect and belief system were taken into account. “They don’t think in terms of lineage because they rarely have any story to say or boast of, but they think like a clan and function as one unit,” says Sumathi. The community is endogamous, they speak a mix of Telugu, Kannada and Tamil (confirming their migratory route), their gods are not brahminical and their beliefs are intertwined with their eco-system. Their sense of kinship and clear political structure is distinctive. At dusk, when the women return with infants tied around their chests with ragged pieces of cloth, all of them hand over the earnings of the day to Natarajan. He counts the money and splits it into 10. “We have a register. The money is given to 10 families,” he says. The community collectively makes ₹3,000-₹3,500 every day. “We get more when children are sent to beg on weekends,” says Natarajan, who has seven children. Not everyone in his community begs. Men and teenagers who drop out of schools make money by digging wells. Women stay at home and bear babies who are used to beg. Natarajan’s sister Mari, 29, has eight children, the birth of her twins a year ago was a cause for celebration
as a child means more revenue. While the leader of the neighbouring settlement refused to talk to TOI, Natarajan agreed on one condition. “We are not criminals and we aren’t beggars by choice. We want to get out and want people to know our story,” he says.
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