Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Study reveals Tamil Nadu low on romance


Study reveals Tamil Nadu low on romance

DC | G. Jagannath | 4 hours 16 min ago
Picture for representation only.
Picture for representation only.
Chennai: Lo, the Tamils are not such romantic people.
A study based on the National Family Health Survey revealed that only 2.6 per cent of the marriages in Tamil Nadu were inter-caste weddings as compared to the national incidence of 10 per cent. The state appears at the bottom among the southern neighbours in terms of being socially ‘liberal’ despite its long Dravidian political influences.
Worse still, among the hottest socio-political debates now going on in Tamil Nadu is whether inter-caste marriages happening out of romance are bad for the people — the backward Vanniyar-dominated PMK insists they are bad while the Dalit party VCK is all for it.
Releasing the study titled, “Dynamics of inter-religious and inter-caste marriages in India”, authored by Kumudin Das, K. C. Das, T. K. Roy and P. K. Tripathy, VCK president and Chidambaram MP Thol. Thirumavalavan said it was quite common to expect a state like Tamil Nadu with its progressive social reform movements to have a much higher average of inter caste marriage than the nation’s average.
“But shockingly, the state’s average is only better than Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan at the national level,” he said.
Thirumavalavan said after the Dharmapuri attack on dalit settlement, PMK founder Dr S. Ramadoss launched a virulent campaign against dalits stating that youths from the community were targeting caste Hindu girls and they lured them in guise of love marriages to extract money from the girl’s family by blackmailing.
“The study reveals that only 1.66 per cent of upper caste women marry men of lower castes,” he said.
VCK general secretary D. Ravikumar said of the Rs 750 crore earmarked for all the five marriage assistance schemes in the 2012-13, only `8 crore has been allocated for Dr.Muthu­lakshmi Reddy Ninaivu Inter-caste Marriage assistance sch­eme.
“Dr Ramadoss claims that most of the caste Hindu women victims hail from Cuddalore. In 2011-12, 186 women from the district availed financial assistance from the scheme in Cuddalore. Of the 186 women, 184 were from dalits and two from Brahmin. This proves Dr Ramadoss’ argument is false,” he said.

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