Book Excerpt: If you liked ‘Thevar Magan’, do read this story from a time when the Thevars were a notified tribe

Author Bio: V Vijaysree

I translated an early short story of Ve La Ramamurthy (who plays the villain in Tamil movies these days, I am told) and it has been picked up by Exchanges, the Journal of Literary Translation same as my first translated story about Karukurichiar. Pretty excited about that since this short story is in Thevar territory !

IRULAPPA SAMI & THE 21 GOATS

In colonial India, the British passed the Criminal Tribes Act, which in essence, notified that people born into certain tribes or castes were criminals by birth. This piece of legislation gave the police power to restrict the movement of such tribes or castes, ghettoize them, and arrest them at will.   

In Tamil Nadu Thevars (constituted of Kallars, Maravars and Agamudayars) were listed as a criminal tribe in 1911. Thevars are considered a caste today. 

In a harsh landscape with few resources, these men resorted to banditry, even petty thieving, for survival. Adult males were required to report to the local police station for daily attendance. In some places, the men were even locked up every night. So it went, this cycle of punishment and crime. When the Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in independent India, things didn’t change immediately for members of these notified castes who, by then, had been stigmatized for decades.  

In the short story “Irulappa Samy and the 21 Goats,” a young man from the Thevar community gets a respectable job, which signifies hope and change for the next generation. Ve La Ramamoorthy, noted author and actor, says he has, in fact, written from life.  

Here is the story:

https://exchanges.uiowa.edu/f24spirit-venkataraman-ramamoorthy