10 panchayat men held for shunning family for 70 years

For more than 70 years, 25 families from the nomadic Tiramli Nandi community in Ahmednagar district have been ostracised by their caste panchayat.

Fed up with this boycott, a 19-year-old girl from one of the ostracised families has now registered a case against the panchayat with the Shrigonda police, which subsequently arrested 10 of the panchayat’s members for meting out the discriminatory treatment. It all allegedly began even before Independence, when the girl’s great-grandfather married a Maratha girl. This triggered protests, with the then panchayat subsequently boycotting the family concerned.

Finally, after all these years, the 19-year-old girl, Mangal Bapu Gaikwad, a first-year student of BA at Maharaja Shivajiraje Shinde College in Srigonda, lodged a police complaint against the 10 panchayat members.

Ms Gaikwad’s grandfather and father did not maintain ties with the community as a result of her great-grandfather being ostracised.

Another relative of hers was apparently boycotted by the panchayat on the grounds that the person had married a sibling. In total, 350 members related to the families stand ostracised by the panchayat at present.

Rajesh Mantonde, police sub-inspector, Srigonda, said, “We have asked the panchayat to take these families back within the fold of the caste, but they refused. Hence, we have arrested them under Indian Penal Code sections related to promoting enmity between groups, intentional insult provoking breach of peace, criminal intimidation and a criminal act committed by several people.”

The 10 arrested members of the panchayat were identified as Uttam Phulmali, Shetiba Kakade, Anna Bapu Phulmali, Subhash Phulmali, Tatya Avad, Uttam Shetiba Phulmali, Gulab Kakade, Saheba Kakade, Rama Phulmale and Gangaram Male.

Ms Gaikwad told The Asian Age, “We are not invited for functions like marriages, engagements, social programmes and even funerals. Nobody from our community talks to us.” She added, “The gravest problem we have been facing all these years is that nobody from our community is ready to marry youngsters from the 25 boycotted families, even though they have more than 25 girls in the age bracket of 20-35 years.”

Ms Gaikwad further said, “In our community, girls hardly study and are married off before they are 22-23 years of age. We also have more than 30 boys who are between 25 and 40 years old, when boys here are mostly married before they turn 25.”

She added, “We are not allowed to marry within the community as we are considered to be related to each other.”

Ms Gaikwad said, “Elders from both the families have requested the caste panchayat to include us in the fold of the caste and have even offered monetary compensation for the same. But the panchayat has refused to accept us. There are many other boycotted families whom the panchayat has taken back into its fold in return for money. But our money has not been accepted. That is why we decided to approach the police.”

She added that, at first, a member of the panchayat had intimidated her against approaching the police. But she stayed unfazed and lodged a complaint nonetheless.

Arun Jadhav, a member of Lokadhikar Andolan, a voluntary organisation that is helping the boycotted families, said, “We held a dharna in front of the collector’s office and the police superintendent’s office demanding that the caste panchayat revoke the order to boycott these families. The superintendent of police also met the caste panchayat members, but they refused to listen to him.”