Amidst the many trends over India's caste divide on Twitter, one trend caught the attention of many Twitterati. This trend was #RemoveUsFromScheduleCaste.
While we see the frequent demands for the reservation in the country, this new hashtag was demanding the exclusion of the community from the list of scheduled caste.
The community at the helm of this demand is Devendra Kula Vellalars from Tamil Nadu. The community is asking for regrouping and renaming - Pallar, Pannadi, Kudumbar, Kaalaadi, Muppar and Devendrakulathar - under one title ‘Devendra Kula Vellalars’. It has also asked for the removal of the community from the scheduled caste.
Devendra Kula Vellalar, or Pallar, is a part of the Scheduled Caste List in the state of Tamil Nadu.
However, some of the community members, led by leader Dr K Krishnasamy of the Puthiya Tamilagam Party, want Devendra Kula Vellalar to be removed from the SC list because they think that the tag acts as an imposed identity.
To voice their demands, Puthiya Tamilagam Party's Dr K Krishnasamy is holding a hunger strike between 9 am and 6 pm today at 10,000 places across Tamil Nadu.
And #RemoveUsFromScheduleCaste is the part of online agitation by the community.
Why is the party demanding the removal of the community from SC list?
As per the several tweets by the Puthiya Tamilagam Party’s youth wing leader Shyam Krishnasamy, people are demanding the removal as they believe it is a mistake to add a farming community in SC. The community also believes that the SC tag denies them the "upward mobility as a whole."
He also added that "Economic development and social status for a caste will never improve with social stigmatisation. Mere reservation might improve the lives of a handful, but schedule caste stigma denies upward mobility as a whole."
And thus to get away with the "stigma", the community wants to be delisted from SC.
