The Madras High Court on Monday expressed anguish over the practice of maintaining different burial and cremation grounds for different caste groups professing the same religion.
When entry to temples had been made possible for all irrespective of their caste, why couldn’t common burial/cremation grounds be established, it wondered.
Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad broached the subject during the hearing of a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up on the basis of a recent news report about a Dalit’s body being lowered from a bridge in Vellore district for the last rites, as caste Hindus had blocked access to the cremation ground.
Additional Advocate General P.H. Arvindh Pandian told the court that the news report did not state the correct facts since the properties through which the Dalits wanted to take the body were actually privately owned. He added that the Dalits of Narayanapuram in Vaniyambadi taluk were actually interested in allotment of land for a crematorium.