India@75: Perungamanallur, Jallianwala Bagh of the South

Perungamanallur, a village near Usilampatti in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu, is called the Jallianwala Bagh of South. On April 3, 1920, at least 17 persons belonging to the Piramalai Kallar tribe were killed when British police indiscriminately fired at them. The firing was to repress the agitation of the tribals against the British attempt to criminalise their entire community through black law called the Criminal Tribes Act of 1911. 

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It was part of the British attempt to suppress all forms of protest against them in different regions. The attempts by the police to forcibly take their fingerprints was resisted by the tribals. They blocked the police from entering their village of Perungamanallur. The police opened fire.  

All dead bodies were taken in a bullock cart and dumped in a huge pit dug on the riverbed. Hundreds of people were chained and made to walk many miles to the court in Tirumangalam. Police unleashed a reign of terror in the region for many days through torture and arrests. 

The tribe's cause was taken up by the Madurai-based Barrister George Joseph, the famed nationalist and trade union activist who later became an eminent editor and a dear comrade of Gandhiji. The Criminal Tribes Act contained many pieces of legislation the British government introduced in India in the 1870s. 

The first of these was brought in in 1871 which was applicable to tribes in the north and eastern India. In  1911 the act was introduced for Madras Presidency. At the time of independence, nearly 14 lakh people belonging to poor communities were criminalized by the Act across the country. 

The act was repealed after independence in 1949. Yet even 75 years after independence, many of these communities are haunted by their legacy facing stereotyping and discrimination from authorities and the rest of the society calling them 'ex-criminal tribes'.

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