Shivamogga: It’s a sad truth. The dead have little place in several villages of Shivamogga district. While families, which own land, perform the last rites of their deceased on their properties, the landless bury their dead on river banks, where they are often washed away in rain.
When Ramaswamy, 60, of Sugur village died on Thursday, his landless family could find no place to bury him as the common ground allotted for burial is occupied by bagair hukum cultivators. A protest by activists and family members later, he was finally buried at 11.15 pm amidst tight security.
A decent burial or cremation for their dead remains a mirage for many landless families in these villages, which have no common burial grounds. The worst affected are the Dalits as most don’t own land. With no end in sight to the sorry situation, activists of the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti refused to bury a Dalit woman, Guthyamma, who passed away in April, for 24 hours, demanding a common burial ground.
Going by the district administration, there are over 100 such villages in Shivamogga district. In Sugur village the landless families are forced to bury their dead on the banks of the Tungabhadra. But when the river overflows in the monsoon, this becomes impossible to do.
Said Manjappa, a Sugur villager, “We are forced to bury our dead in the upper region of the river bank. Many bodies that are buried during summer get washed away in the river during the monsoon. Also, the spot where the body is buried becomes inaccessible, making it difficult to perform the annual religious rites.”
Alarmed by the growing unrest, the district administration has now directed the tahsildars to identify villages that do not have burial grounds and sanction ‘gomala’ for burying the dead.
