Driven by necessity: Where every lash brings money

CHENNAI: The scars seared into his skin by years of self-inflicted 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 in their bowls. "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 Chennai-based NGO Suyam Charitable Trust, brought their discrimination to the attention of the state. When they arrived at the hillock, they discovered they had to share space with another community engaged in

begging

. "This is where beggars like us are dumped," says Natarajan, absent-mindedly running a hand across the lash marks on his arm. "But we aren’t complaining. At least no one is asking us to leave," he adds.

V Natarajan, who is the leader of the clan of beggars (TOI photo by A Prathap)
Just then, a brawl breaks out. A three-year-old from Natarajan’s clan had tottered across the mud 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. We do it to survive," he says, watching his men resolve the fight. One of them takes out his whip, the sight of which 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 Rs100 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 and shrugs. "That’s what our ancestors taught us," he says, showing off his only inheritance -- a whip.

Children in Kanniamman Nagar
But the tradition of the community whipping themselves in only a century-old. "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 Natarajan's community along with a similar group in Madurai and parts of 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 Pradesh, 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.

S Ramalingam, the oldest member in Natarajan's clan, shows a self-inflicted wound on his forearm.

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 love for nature is mirrored in their local tribal laws that have now become popular folklore. S Ramalingam, the oldest in Natarajan’s clan, remembers one such law. “My father used to tell me to pluck fruits and berries only from the trees that flower in abundance,” he recalls.

At dusk, when the women return with infants tied around their chests with ragged pieces of cloth, all of them hand over their day's earnings 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 Rs3,000-Rs3,500 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 Mariammal has eight children, the last ones a pair of twins. She is 29 years old.

Marimmal, 29, with her twins.

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.