The 69% Exception

Quota within quota: lessons to be learned from Tamil Nadu

- Shahina K K

THE Supreme Court of India, in its historic judgement on August 1, 2024, permitting sub-classification Ton within the Scheduled Caste category, referred to an article authored by Ravichandran Bathran that was published in the Economic and Political Weekly in November 2016. In Paragraph 141, the court states, "In Tamil Nadu, when an Arunthathiyar man and a Paraiyar woman-both the castes find a place in the Scheduled Castes (SC) list-eloped, the woman's family allegedly raped the women of the man's family in retaliation." The seven-judge bench relied on Bathran's article to justify the need for the sub-classification within the SC categories so as to argue that discrimination among and within the Dalit communities does exist in India.

Bathran, the man who has become a footnote' in the historic Supreme Court judgement, himself comes from the most downtrodden Chakliar/Arunthathiyar community in Tamil Nadu. Historically, the Chakliar/Arunthathiyar community was engaged in manual scavenging, a caste-based labour imposed on them. Bathran, a post-doctoral fellow, worked at the University of Southampton, South Africa. Despite being a scholar, Bathran runs a company for cleaning toilets. 'Going back' to manual scavenging was never a choice, says Bathran.

"I wanted to do research, but they shut the door on my face. I applied to around 10 universities to do research on manual scavenging. But none of the universities responded," he says.

He converted to Islam in 2022 and changed his name to Raees Mohammed. "As Ambedkar embraced Buddhism, I embraced Islam," says Mohammad. He runs the Kotagiri Septic Tank Cleaning Services Private Ltd, a company offering scavenging services in Nilagiri district.

Mohammed argues that the hierarchical layers of discrimination within the SC categories often go unnoticed because even some Dalit activists do not want to highlight them.

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