Sivakami Palanimuthu’s Inspiring Life Story
November 4, 2023
While in college, Sivakami Palanimuthu secretly nurtured a dream of becoming a writer. This was after her short story was selected for publication by a popular Tamil magazine in 1975, in a competition for college students.
Due to her “strong academic background, combined with my other skills and my father’s dream”, she was selected to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), she said in an interview with Martha Selby at Harvard University last month. The interview was also published by the university’s Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute.
From 1980 to 2008, as an IAS officer —India’s top civil service rank—Palanimuthu, a Dalit, served the Government of Tamil Nadu and the Government of India in various administrative capacities.
About 17% of India’s population are Scheduled Castes. They are known as Dalits, a Marathi term for depressed classes first used by Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890), a social activist and writer from Maharashtra.
In 1989, while in government service, Palanimuthu wrote her first novel, Pazhiyana Kazhidalum, which she sent anonymously for publication. “I tried to depict the caste hierarchy that exists in the Indian villages and its visible and yet intricate links with the village economy and human relations,” she states in an essay on Tamil Dalit Literature.
“Mainstream literature has boycotted me because I believe that only Dalits can write about issues concerning them and that only women can write on feminist issues. It is not just a question of experience but perspective,” Palanimuthu told Y. Supriya, a lecturer in English in Vijayawada, India, in 2017.
In 2006, Palanimuthu translated the novel into English as The Grip Of Change. The semi-autobiographical story is about Thangam, a low caste Dalit widow. Thangam “symbolizes all dalit women who are brutally treated by the upper-caste land lords but forced to maintain silence and never raise their voice,” writes Supriya. The novel vividly describes the plight of Dalit women who are “victimized by the upper-caste Hindus as well as their own men.”
Palanimuthu, who writes her novels in Tamil, has published five novels, four short story collections, five essay collections and two poetry collections.
During the 1990s, while in the IAS, Palanimuthu started a Tamil monthly magazine Pudhiya Kodangi, publishing stories and poetry by Dalits and other oppressed-caste writers. While the magazine nurtured the growth of many writers, her own “interest slowly drifted from literature to the living characters/human subjects” of her work, the “women, Dalits, tribals and the transgendered communities,” she told Selby.
Palanimuthu got an opportunity to serve the Dalits as Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu, Adi-Dravidar (Ancient Dravidians) Welfare Department. This was a turning point in her life. While drafting policies to benefit the Dalits, she realized that their implementation would be blocked by fellow IAS officers who align with powerful politicians to oppose such policies. So, she worked as “an outsider”, resorting “to activism, like a character in my novel”, which she “considered as being truthful both to me and to my writing,” she told Selby.
Palanimuthu wrote a pamphlet on Dalit Land Rights and Tribal Land Rights, printing and distributing five thousand copies for free. She founded the Dalit Land Right Movement, visiting villages to spread awareness of the issues. In 2006, in large part due to her efforts, the Tamil Nadu Government set up a scheme for the free distribution of two acres of land to the landless poor.
In 2007, as part of her Women’s Front initiative and while still a government employee, she organized a conference on Women and Politics, attended by over 250,000 women.
This pushed the major political parties in Tamil Nadu to organize seminars and rallies on women’s issues. The next year, Palanimuthu organized a conference to discuss the grievances of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Government Employees, attended by 20,000.
While Palanimuthu liked the importance attached to the IAS, she “started feeling the pressure of political domination in day today administration as well as in deciding the career paths of officers like me”. In 2008, she quit the service and entered politics. Her father, an independent candidate, was elected a member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.
In 2009, Palanimuthu unsuccessfully contested the national parliamentary elections from Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, as a candidate of the Bahujan (Scheduled Castes) Samaj Party. Later that year, she founded her own party, Samuga Samathuva Padai (Party for Social Equality), based on B.R. Ambedkar’s writings and political strategies. Ambedkar (1891-1956)—a Dalit by birth, but who became a Buddhist, renouncing Hinduism—served as the Chairman of India’s Constitution drafting committee and Independent India’s first Law and Justice minister.
The Samuga party now appears to be inactive; it last held a Women’s Conference in 2018, according to her X, formerly Twitter, profile.
Palanimuthu grew up in Perambalur, a small town in Tamil Nadu where Dalits make up nearly a third of the population. She began her primary schooling at the state-run Adi-Dravidar welfare school for Dalits and Scheduled Tribes, but later moved to a private school run by Christian missionaries.
She topped her class academically, was a good athlete and a student leader. She won prizes in essay and oratorical contests at the inter-school and inter-collegiate competitions and was a favorite of teachers, receiving “guidance and support throughout.”
During 2017-18, Palanimuthu, a mother of two, was a Fullbright Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, doing research on “Effective Participation of Women in Political Process and Governance”.
Gita Ramaswamy, a publisher based in Hyderabad, India, states that Palanimuthu’s writing is “refreshing and self-critical with a bold modern voice that unapologetic in acknowledging her roots (as a Dalit) out of which she has grown and evolved successfully.”
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