A charred piece of earth and some bits of bones are the only signs of a dastardly killing in the name of honour. No other evidence remains of the spine-chilling crime to mar the rustic charm of Maalaipatti village, perched among the green mountains of the Western Ghats in Dindigul district. On July 28, 2008, a few days after being chained in a bathroom and treated like a rabid dog...

Acting swiftly against a glaring instance of untouchability in western Tamil Nadu, revenue and police officials on Wednesday directed caste Hindus of N Kumarapalayam village, near Dharapuram in Tirupur district, to remove two fences they had erected to prevent dalits from using public roads. About 150 families of caste Hindus erected barbed wire "untouchability fences" on Friday to prevent over 50 dalit families living in the Aandikattu Thottam village from...

A combination of factors led by state policy has enabled the southern State to become a notable achiever with respect to some key indicators of development. In 2001, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen recorded an eyebrow-raising fact in his book, “Development as Freedom”, that Tamil Nadu and Kerala had both achieved much faster rates of decline in fertility than China had achieved since it introduced its one-child policy. That same year, the international...

Many in India have embraced Christianity to escape the age-old caste oppression of the Hindu social order, but Christianity itself in some places is finding it difficult to shrug off the worst of caste discrimination. In the town of Trichy, situated in the heart of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a wall built across the Catholic cemetery clearly illustrates how caste-based prejudice persists. Those who converted to Christianity from the...

Chezi K. Ganesan looks every inch the high-tech entrepreneur, dressed in the Silicon Valley uniform of denim shirt and khaki trousers, slick smartphone close at hand. He splits his time between San Jose and this booming coastal metropolis, running his $6 million a year computer chip-making company. His family has come a long way. His grandfather was not allowed to enter Hindu temples, or even to stand too close to upper-caste...