July 1, 2023 was a significant day for the residents of Indira Nagar in Anandavadi village of Tamil Nadu’s Ariyalur. For years, their locality was addressed as ‘Keezhatheru’ (‘lower street’) or ‘Adi Dravidar Theru’ — terms that are often used in a stigmatising way to refer to neighbourhoods where Dalits reside. On Saturday, July 1, the residents installed a new signboard at the entrance to their hamlet with the name ‘Indira Nagar,’ nearly a year after it was officially renamed in the revenue department’s records following sustained efforts led by Anusuya Saravanamuthu, a 28-year-old civil engineer from the neighbourhood.
Anusuya said she wanted to end the casual use of street names with casteist overtones that she had heard used to refer to her village since her childhood. Speaking to TNM after the new signboard was installed, Anusuya said, "For them (caste Hindus), it is always ‘Keezhatheru’, ‘Adi Dravidar Theru’, ‘Para Theru’, or ‘Dalit colony’. They never refer to our areas with dignified terms."
It was in 1994 that around 100 Dalit families were allotted plots in the Indira Nagar locality near Anandavadi village in the Sendurai block of Ariyalur. According to Anusuya, the road construction and building works were completed in 2000, and the settlement was named Indira Nagar. However, over the years, this name slipped into oblivion and the area came to be known as ‘Adi Dravidar Theru’, as that was how outsiders insisted on addressing it. Anusuya said that even though a section of residents had voter IDs and ration cards that mentioned the locality’s name as Indira Nagar, their Aadhaar cards ended up calling it ‘Adi Dravidar Street’ despite the applications referring to it otherwise.
Speaking about her determination to change the way her neighbourhood was referred to, Anusuya said, “When I was very young, they addressed our street name in such a [demeaning] way, and I was not able to do anything. After graduating, I moved away for work. When I returned home in 2022, I was hurt to find people still using caste names for our street.” Intending to change this, Anusuya collected signatures from local residents seeking an official name change in the revenue department’s records, and submitted it to district officials during a grievance redressal programme in August 2022. In October 2022, the Ariyalur district administration officially recognised the street as Indira Nagar.
But Anusuya’s struggle did not end there. It took a few more months of persuasion for the Anandavadi village panchayat to finally pass a resolution on February 28 this year to officially change the street name. "From February to June, I had to run pillar to poster to finally have this name board installed. The panchayat officials showed no interest till now. But, today is significant, as officials from the panchayat office finally gathered here and installed the name board," Anusuya said on Saturday.
Villupuram MP Ravikumar congratulated Anusuya in a Facebook post, in which he wrote: "The residential areas of the Scheduled Caste community have been registered in revenue records with their caste names. They have always been identified as Colony, Slum, Keezhatheru, and Pallatheru. It is these names that appear in all official documents including Aadhaar and passport. It is an arrangement with the nefarious intention of knowing the caste of persons belonging to SC communities without looking at their caste certificate." He also urged the state government to address the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK)’s demands to remove caste identifiers from the names of streets and residential areas.
Anusuya seconded Ravikumar’s thoughts and explained how her street name added to the caste discrimination she faced in educational institutions and workplaces. “The address proofs we carry everywhere let others identify our caste location which eventually enabled caste Hindus to treat us in a poor way,” she said. “I do not have any problem saying my caste name out loud, but people with a casteist mindset use our street name to identify our caste location to discriminate against us,” she added.
“We welcome this move and would like to see non-Dalit residents from the surrounding areas refer to our street in the future,” said Pachaimuthu, a resident of Indira Nagar. "Even Dalits sometimes don't understand why such street names with caste identifiers are problematic. They think of it as their identity, but these names often worsen discrimination," he said.
A section of anti-caste activists in Tamil Nadu have been seeking the removal of caste prefixes and identifiers in the names of residential areas, streets and villages for years. In 2022, Chief Minister MK Stalin ordered Greater Chennai Corporation to remove caste identifiers from the names of all roads and buildings in the city.