: Go Ahead Love: Why a Lawyer Dedicated 20 Years to Unite 200 Inter-Caste Couples #IndiaNEWS #Activism In 2003, when Se Gunasekar was working as an auditor, the news of a gruesome honour killing was

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Go Ahead Love: Why a Lawyer Dedicated 20 Years to Unite 200 Inter-Caste Couples #IndiaNEWS #Activism
In 2003, when Se Gunasekar was working as an auditor, the news of a gruesome honour killing was sweeping the nation.
In a village in Virudhachalam, a town in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district, a young couple was forcefully taken to the village cremation ground, where they were beaten up and tied. They were forced to drink poison, and then their bodies were burnt while making sure that they were cremated separately from one another.
The crime that the victims — 22-year-old D Kannagi and 25-year-old S Murugesan — had allegedly committed was that they fell in love while studying at Annamalai University, despite being from different castes. While Kannagi belonged to the Vanniyar community, Murugesan was from the Dalit community. Possibly aware that her father, a panchayat president, would not accept their union, the two eloped in May that year.
When Kannagi’s father found out, he launched a manhunt for the couple. To maintain their safety, Murugesan had put his wife up at a relative’s house, while he stayed in another’s. But soon, he was found out and tortured till he gave up Kannagi’s location. In July 2003, the two were brutally murdered in front of their village.
It took 18 years for the courts to deliver a verdict in the matter. In September last year, 13 accused were convicted, with Kannagi’s brother, who had hatched the entire conspiracy, being given the death sentence. Her father and two policemen who had acted as perpetrators in the murder were sentenced to life.
“But it’s possible that if the couple had been given a safe place to stay, this wouldn’t have happened,� Gunasekar, now an advocate opines in conversation with The Better India.
Years before the Cuddalore incident occurred, he had been helping arrange inter-caste weddings across Tirupur, where he currently resides. But the case stirred within him a deeper need to address why caste had created such barriers that two people were no longer allowed to fall in love.

Where love has no boundaries
At the time, a senior lawyer by the name of P Rathinam was fighting the case on behalf of Murugesan’s family. Gunasekar says this advocate was like his guru. Inspired to do something about the safety of inter-caste couples in Tamil Nadu, Gunasekar began pursuing law at the age of 40.
In 2011, after completing his law degree, he started a society named Ambedkar Periyar Inter-caste Married Couples’ Association. Here, he helped arrange and perform several inter-caste weddings for couples who came to him for help. For this, he divided his own home into two sections — one for him and his family, and one as a safe house for these couples.

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