“Please do not refer to us as Dalits,” Ananthan Ayyasamy, a member of the Devendrakula Vellalar community, which is classified as a Scheduled Caste (SC), told me over the phone from Tamil Nadu during one of our conversations. I reached out to Ayyasamy, an entrepreneur and politician, after he posted on X following the suicide of an IIT Bombay student and the subsequent charging of a professor under the stringent SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Ayyasamy’s post highlighted an unusual situation. His community, the Devendrakula Vellalar (DKV), is included in the SC category, but a large section of its members wants to be removed from the list, even if that means giving up the reservation benefits attached to SC status.
Ayyasamy, who is the BJP’s district president in Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu, also pointed out that members of the DKV community have voluntarily adopted a principled position of not filing cases under the SC/ST Act.
India is not only a country of immense diversity but also one of striking contradictions.
While the country is seeking recognition among developed nations, there is simultaneously a growing demand among communities to be recognised as backward. The main reason, evidently, is access to reservation benefits in education and employment.
Independent India’s first SC list was issued in 1950 and was based on the list prepared in 1936. The 1950 list contained 607 communities, while that number had increased to 1,258 by 2022. In other words, over the past 76 years, even as India progressed economically and socially, more than 650 communities were added to the SC list. The country also introduced the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category in 1993.
Against the backdrop of continuing questions and debate over reservation benefits and the alleged misuse of the SC/ST Act, Ayyasamy’s September 20 post prompted me to look deeper into the issue.
Sahil Wakode, a student at IIT Bombay, died by suicide on September 18 after he was allegedly caught cheating during his semester examinations by Professor Suryanarayana Doolla, who was supervising the exam. Doolla was booked under the SC/ST Act after Wakode’s parents alleged caste discrimination and abetment to suicide.
Ayyasamy said he “strongly opposed” the charges brought against Doolla under the SC/ST Act. More significantly, he said the DKV community had “taken a principled, voluntary stand not to file SC/ST cases against anyone”.
“We have seen how cases under this Act are weaponised, and how that deepens enmity on the ground,” he wrote on X.
Ayyasamy, who comes from an SC community, is familiar with rural poverty and caste-related challenges. He is also familiar with the environment inside engineering institutions. He graduated from NIT Tiruchirappalli and earned an MBA from Arizona State University. He spent 22 years working in the US, eventually becoming Engineering Director at Intel, and holds several patents.
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu supported Ayyasamy’s position and shared his post on X. Tughlaq editor S Gurumurthy also spoke about the DKV community’s decision not to use the “PCR Act as it leads to caste conflicts.”
The Protection of Civil Rights (PCR) Act of 1955 prohibits and penalises “untouchability” in any form and complements the SC/ST Act.
Since the UGC Equity Regulations were introduced and subsequently shelved, there has been an ongoing debate over alleged misuse of the SC/ST Act and the financial relief distributed under it. The Supreme Court had diluted some provisions of the SC/ST Act over concerns about misuse, but the BJP-led NDA government subsequently strengthened the 1989 law through an amendment in 2018.
AMIT SHAH LAUDED UNIQUE EFFORT OF DEVENDRAKULA VELLALARS
There have been several cases of individuals voluntarily giving up reservation benefits, but the idea of an entire community seeking removal from the SC list and giving up the associated benefits is unusual. I therefore spoke to TR Jawahar, a veteran journalist and expert on Tamil Nadu. He has written the masterly series Time, Tide and Tamil for India Today Digital.
“Leaders, including Puthiya Tamilagam founder K Krishnasamy and Tamilaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam's B John Pandian have, at different points, argued that the [Devendrakula Vellalar] community should move out of the SC category,” Jawahar said.
I also came across an August 2015 article in The Times of India about Amit Shah, who was then BJP president, praising the “community’s efforts to uplift itself”.
But who exactly are the Devendrakula Vellalars, and why do they want to leave the SC category? Is this demand shared across the entire community or only by certain sections? And does politics play a role in the demand?
There is an important caveat before going further. Examining a community’s demand to be removed from the SC list does not suggest that people who require caste-based reservations should be denied those provisions. This article examines the specific aspirations and demands of the DKV community in Tamil Nadu.
WHO ARE DEVENDRAKULA VELLALAR OF TAMIL NADU?
According to The Times of India article published in 2015, Amit Shah praised members of the subdivided DKV community for their efforts to be recognised under the name Devendrakula Vellalar, which literally translates as the descendants of Lord Indra.
“I have heard of caste groups that try to get categorised lower down on the social status ladder to obtain benefits, but here is one that seeks social recognition as a caste of higher status,” Shah was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
In March 2021, Parliament passed a Bill merging seven sub-castes, including Pallar, under the name Devendrakula Vellalar to create a unified cultural identity, fulfilling a long-standing demand.
“The community was opposed to the term Pallar, and Devendrakula Vellalar is a Sanskritisation,” said KA Manikumar, a retired history professor at Tirunelveli’s MS University.
Manikumar explained the community’s traditional legend, according to which the sweat of Devendra, the king of the gods, fell on a plant growing in water. A child emerged from the plant and was considered the community’s original ancestor, giving rise to the name Devendrar or Devendrakula.
Devendrakulam represents the community’s lineage and identity, while Vellalar reflects its historical association with cultivation and farming.
In a research paper published in 2001, Manikumar wrote that members of the community who had once been landowners were reduced to agricultural serfs and “were found working in muddy paddy fields and living in segregated neighbourhoods as untouchable outcastes, when the British conducted land survey towards the close of the 18th century.”
The paper also documented episodes of caste and class violence that shaped the community and its responses, including the December 24, 1968, attack in which 44 members were burnt to death.
Their emergence “as a militant caste group and their growing solidarity to secure a rightful place in the state polity has been phenomenal,” Manikumar wrote.
Violence has also played a role in shaping the community’s politics.
“The deaths during the 1957 Mudukulathur riots, the incidents of 1995-Kodiyankulam, 1999-Thamiraparani/Manjolai and 2011-Paramakudi police actions convinced the community that neither the Congress nor the Dravidian parties would protect it. This led to the emergence of community-based parties,” Ayyasamy said. “The community is thankful to the BJP for the 2021 DKV name change.”
Caste-related clashes involving the community continue to be reported in isolated incidents, with Devendrakula Vellalars competing socially and politically with the Thevar and Nadar communities, both of which are classified as OBCs.
Ananthan Ayyasamy (left) with Zoho's Sridhar Vembu. Ayyasamy said Vembu was instrumental in his decision to return from the US to work in India. (Image: Ananthan Ayyasamy)
DEMAND TO MOVE OUT OF SC LIST DUE TO SELF-RESPECT, NOT AFFLUENCE
Scheduled Castes account for around 20% of Tamil Nadu’s population, with the DKV among the state’s three major SC groups. The community is estimated to account for 5-9% of Tamil Nadu’s population.
“Devendrakula Vellalars are concentrated south of Madurai and in the Cauvery Delta,” Ayyasamy said, describing it largely as an agrarian and farming community that reveres the cow.
According to Census 2011 data, DKV members are concentrated in southern and central Tamil Nadu, particularly in Ramanathapuram, Thoothukkudi, Tirunelveli and Virudhunagar. Significant populations are also present in Tiruchirappalli, Dindigul, Thiruvarur, Thanjavur, Theni, Madurai, Sivaganga and Karur.
I asked Ayyasamy to name some prominent members of the community who might be known beyond Tamil Nadu. He said he was not aware of anyone particularly prominent. “There are some IAS officers and high court judges but not anyone very prominent,” he said.
Ayyasamy stressed that the demand for delisting was not driven by wealth or affluence but by self-respect.
“Most of the community still lives in poverty. The demand to leave the SC list is not about affluence. It is about self-respect. That is also why the community does not want to rely on the SC/ST Act,” Ayyasamy told me over the phone during one of our several conversations.
One name repeatedly came up in discussions with both Ayyasamy and Jawahar: K Krishnasamy, founder-president of the political party Puthiya Tamilagam.
Krishnasamy has for years been campaigning for the DKV community to be removed from the SC list.
DKVs WANT TO BE CLASSIFIED AS OBCs; ULTIMATE GOAL TO BE IN GENERAL CATEGORY
“Our leaders couldn't object to the inclusion of the community in the SC list immediately after Independence,” K Krishnasamy said. “Since 1996, we have been urging state and central governments to move us from the SC to the OBC category.”
“This will be an upward mobilisation, and a new category could be created between SC and OBC to accommodate the Devendrakula Vellaliars,” Krishnasamy said, adding that the “ultimate goal is to move to the general category”.
“The aspiration is to ultimately move to the general category,” he said.
The proposal represents a gradual movement up the reservation hierarchy, from SC to OBC and eventually to the non-reserved category.
“We cannot take the entire community from being marginalised to an open category. After being in the OBC category for 10 to 15 years, the community will be better placed to move to the general category,” Krishnasamy told India Today Digital.
K Krishnasamy is a physician-turned-politician, former Tamil Nadu MLA and founder-president of Puthiya Tamilagam, a party with a support base among the Devendrakula Vellalar community. (Image: K Krishnasamy)
SC STIGMA PREVENTING OVERALL GROWTH OF COMMUNITY: DKV LEADERS
K Krishnasamy said the community’s overall circumstances had not improved sufficiently despite decades of SC reservation, arguing that the stigma associated with SC status had held it back. According to him, the SC label had caused more harm than benefit.
“Our people want to shed the Scheduled-Caste stigma. They might get some government jobs because of the reservation, but the SC stigma is a hinderance to our overall development. People can't do business because of that,” he said.
BJP’s Ayyasamy said that although the DKV community is primarily agrarian, it remains at the bottom of the food value chain, with merchants and traders taking a larger share of the profits. He said educational attainment has improved, but caste considerations continue to affect business opportunities, including in Tamil Nadu’s cities.
“Even in Madurai, restaurants carrying other caste names do well, while people avoid a DKV-run eatery once they identify the owner's caste. Government contracting is dominated by communities from the OBCs, with hardly any licenced SC contractors, and the community's professionals mostly remain salaried rather than becoming employers,” Ayyasamy explained.
He also pointed out that while reservation is commonly associated with SC communities, Tamil Nadu has a 69% reservation system for education and government employment. “Nearly every community in the state falls under some reserved category, so reservation is no longer a benefit that sets SCs apart,” Ayyasamy said.
Krishnasamy said DKV leaders formally approached the Prime Minister and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister in 2017, requesting that the community be removed from the SC category. A committee was subsequently constituted to examine the demand.
IS DEMAND TO DELIST DEVENDRAKULA VELLALAR FROM SC LIST FROM ENTIRE COMMUNITY?
Puthiya Tamilagam founder Krishnasamy said the demand to remove the DKV community from the SC category enjoys overwhelming support across the community, regardless of the political affiliations of its members.
BJP’s Ayyasamy also said the demand originated at the grassroots level and that politicians were compelled to support it as a result.
In India, as in much of the world, social issues are often closely connected with politics. To understand whether there was a political dimension to the DKV demand, I spoke to Chennai-based social and political analyst Ravindran Duraisamy.
“A large section of the DKV community believe delisting will lead to their social elevation, and are in favour of that,” Duraisamy said.
However, he said a smaller section of the community opposed the proposal to remove DKV from the SC list. According to him, the divide largely follows religious lines.
“Those opposing the delisting are mostly Christians and availing of reservation benefits. They believe that they are getting jobs because of [BR] Ambedkar,” Duraisamy said.
He said Christian members of the DKV community have traditionally supported the DMK but are now shifting their support towards C Joseph Vijay’s TVK.
In 2023, during MK Stalin’s tenure as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, the state Assembly passed a resolution urging the Centre to extend SC benefits to members of SC communities who had converted to Christianity.
“They will be socially uplifted if reservation benefits are extended to them in education and employment. Denying them all the benefits merely because they have converted to another religion is not fair. This is our stand,” Stalin said, according to a 2023 PTI report.
When asked whether he knew of another community that had made a similar demand to be removed from the SC list, Duraisamy cited Tamil Nadu’s Nadar community, which approached the British authorities in 1920 against reservation. The Nadars remained in the unreserved category until 1964, after which they were included in the OBC list.
The Chennai-based expert said the Devendrakula Vellalars’ demand was unusual in independent India and that no other community had made a comparable call for delisting.
“The DKVs might aspire to move to the general category, but it will take time. For now, they believe the community is capable of being delisted as SCs,” Duraisamy said.
The Scheduled Caste list has expanded considerably over the years, but removing a community at its own request on grounds of self-respect and social advancement would be unprecedented in India. While communities across the country have sought backward status to access reservation benefits, the Devendrakula Vellalars are seeking removal from the SC list and have also chosen not to invoke the stringent SC/ST Act. This, according to their leaders, is rooted in the same aspiration for social elevation and self-respect.
