[Reader-list] Update on Kudamkulam - Report by Lalita Ramdas after phone conversations with Meera Uday Kumar

[Venugopalan K M]

Report by Lalita Ramdas after phone conversations with Meera Uday Kumar
Dear Friends - one more update - this time from Nagercoil where Uday's wife
is running a small school.

Just spoke at length to Meera at Nagercoil and to Pushparayan at
Idinthakarai. Here are the facts as told to me:

1. All media access to Irindakarai has been blocked, although the ticker on
NDTV is saying that DGP denies this and says OB vans are being allowed.

2. From Meera on the phone just now from the school: she spoke to NDTV a
while ago and we are watching to see if her interview is carried. Till 10
am no interview with Meera carried on NDTV

The school has been badly damaged. The compound wall has been destroyed in
many places.

The library vandalized totally. The KG class furniture was thrown out and
broken. Windows and doors smashed. The lab was saved because of a grill
door, but they tried and smashed other doors and windows. Other damage in
the upstairs classrooms.

The school caters to 280 children coming from the neighborhood, and NOT
from affluent Families. The school has been nurtured and built with love
and care , class by class, year by year, to provide a creative and
different educational experience for kids from underprivileged backgrounds.

Meera had asked for police protection when the movement took on momentum,
because of threats she had received. The protection was provided. But
yesterday the lone policeman who came in the morning, disappeared and did
not return.

This is shocking. This is an attack on innocent children. We are hearing
that supplies of milk and food are being prevented from reaching the school.

Today they have had to close the school, there is a lot of debris blocking
the entrance and the planned parent teacher meeting cannot be held. The
parents are totally supportive,and there has not been a single absentee in
the last weeks.

As Meera asks to the people and leaders of the state, and the people of the
country and decent human beings everywhere: what have we done wrong? Why
take it out on the children? All we have done is to ask for renewable
sources of power. IS THAT CONSIDERED A CRIME? IS THAT ANTI NATIONAL?

Please circulate widely. Is this democracy? And is this now the way non
violent, peaceful protest and dissent will be treated in our country?
-- 


You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up
a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on
the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR



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