Is Vanniyar caste being sidelined?
The Vanniyar community, which testified before the Commission, stated that the only distinction between the Vanni and the Scheduled Castes was the community's stairwell status. We saw the Vanniyar living in cramped, filthy conditions in the villages we visited in the districts of Tennarkkadu and Trichy, and in some sections of the thanjavur district, they were dependent on wealthy landowners. On the streets of important mansions, their deplorable living circumstances may be noticed. In such circumstances, children's education is terribly neglected. Dropping out of school is becoming increasingly widespread, according to the Sattanathan Commission report on the Vanniyar's living conditions.
A few decades ago, the bulk of tamil Nadu's Vanniyars were illiterate and made fingerprints by rubbing cartwheels on their hands. In many places, such a situation still exists. Seeing the Vanniyar's shame, I abandoned my profession as a doctor and began mobilizing all of the Vanniyar's split associations in the hopes of obtaining a separate reservation for the Vanniyar. Over the last 42 years, we've had a lot of wins and a lot of disappointments on our path to social justice and one of them is this.
The legal struggle for the 10.50 percent Vanni internal quota has been won... but not the war. What is lost in one domain may be gained in another? We are not included in this domain beyond that. We were declared to be doomed. That is all there is to it. The High Court's decision, in this case, is not without flaws. There are numerous flaws with it.