Madurai: In the city of goddess Meenakshi, women power was in display with fervour at Tamukkam where around 13,500 college students, 4,500 of whom were college girls, converged raising the banner to save jallikattu.
In the temple city where young girls rarely participate in public protests as in metropolitan cities, college girls came out to display their enthusiasm, all of them doing so with the permission of their parents.
The college girls who had formed a WhatsApp group — ‘We support jallikattu’ — to constantly update on various developments related to the students’ protest, gathered at an arterial road today after they received a message in the group from 200 students camping overnight in Tamukkam on Tuesday, to show their strength in public.
“As Tamilians we know what jallikattu is. We want jallikattu” — the girls were seen raising such slogans repeatedly in unison at the protest site.
Students from almost all the arts and science colleges, who had abandoned their classes, came in a rally of two-wheelers to protest sites in Goripalayam,
Thalakulam and Simmakkal. Vehicle traffic came to a standstill in the city for nearly two hours during the rally. Witnessing the spontaneous outburst of the students, citizens of various places in and around Madurai staged protests to express their solidarity with the students.
In Alanganallur, the protest continued for the third day with the youth released by the police joining with the villagers in demanding that the Central government pass a special law for the conduct of jallikattu within this month.
While the protesting students refused to allow politicians including Naam Tamilar Katchi leader Seeman to join them, they spared former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri’s son Durai Dayanandhi only after he told them 'I am participating in the protest as a Maduraiite for a Tamil cause,”
The political vocabulary articulated by the girl students in the protest venue clearly expressed their social and cultural position to safeguard Tamil identity. “In the last two years, we have clearly understood that the Centre and state were not interested in safeguarding Tamil culture. If the Prime Minister Modi could make an overnight announcement on demonetisation of currency notes, why is he not taking similar steps to pass law to remove the bull from list of performing animals,” asks Aishwaraya, an engineering college student.
A group of students joined her stating the BJP government also cheated Tamil Nadu on the Cauvery water issue. “We are no more going to believe the politicians, jallikattu is our right and we will safeguard it at any cost,” they said.
The protest venue also saw students raising slogans against PM Modi, the TN Chief Minister, O Panneerselvam, actor Trisha and Subramanian Swamy. The students were seen continuing their protest till late evening.
A senior police officer who visited the spot said that it was a democratic right of the students to continue their protest in peaceful manner. The girl students opined that they were treated with dignity at the protest venue.
