PO.MU.IRANIYAN Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This land is the home to the oldest language, culture and civilization. From the time immemorial, it has had the culture of describing a person, based on his occupation and place of residence. Thus, they formed a community, which slowly evolved into a caste. The castes and sub-castes have increased tremendously and so is the discrimination based on caste. Resultantly, now-a-days, certain downtrodden communities are being denigrated by misappropriation and misrepresentation of their indigenous dance, art forms and culture simply by using their names and caste identity without their consent. Such practice cannot be permitted to prevail in society and it becomes a bounden duty of the government to ensure that all the people are treated equally in all means. With this preface, this court wishes to proceed with this case.

(2.) The petitioner claiming to be the General Secretary of Vanavengaigal Peravai, which is an organisation functioning to promote the welfare and social upliftment of the people belonging to 'Kuravar' community, has come up with this public interest litigation to issue a Writ of Mandamus (i) directing the second respondent to issue appropriate proceedings to ban the conduct of cultural programmes, which denigrate the social status and reputation of the people belonging to Kuruvar community; (ii) directing the third respondent to give necessary instruction to all his subordinates not to grant police permission for conduct of Aadal Paadal programmes having "Kuruvan-Kurathi" dance, in any form in the State of Tamil Nadu; and (iii) directing the first respondent to take effective steps to the extent possible to purge obscene "Kuruvan-Kurathi" dance videos from the Internet (websites) i.e., Youtube, Facebook, etc and also ensure no broadcasting of such videos in any television channel.

(3.) According to the petitioner, in his Vilangudi village, Madurai District, during festive times, there has been a practice of conducting stage dramas and Aadal Paadal programmes, in which, there has been a frequent casting of tribal couple i.e., Kuravan-Kurathi. In early times, those stage dramas portrayed moral stories from their holy epics and the Aadal Paadal programmes contained traditional dance and divine songs embodied with good social messages. However, later, the same have been discoloured and flooded with vulgarities. Further, there has been unfettered usage of obscene words and gestures of double entendre.