Veerappan makes , throughout the text, an impassioned plea against any form of violence that is unmediated by a sense of justice. The most revealing instance is his advice to those who practise politics of militancy: ‘You plant bombs in buses, in roads, in houses. Who get killed? Women and Children. Two-year, four-year old children, with their limb being tore away, cry out for their parents. My heart burns. This is not right. It is sinful. Poor like us get killed… If we too kill people who are already tormented and murdered by the police and the government, what will be their fate?’

I have nothing positive to hope for from RGV’s Veerappan bio or from a Sholay remake. But I have heard good things about Chhal.

speaking of which, Veerappan sounds like he was pretty badass, in a Robin Hood kind of way. but who did he kill? why did he kill elephants? where did all the money go? how did he maintain such a killer ’stache?

thanks for updating re: the ’stache. but my question still is: where did the profits go? there have been a lot of ‘freedom fighters’ that supposedly took from the rich on behalf of the poor but really were corrupt and power/money hungry. hugo chavez in venezuela is a perfect example of that. i’m wondering if the 120 people he killed were just workers guarding for the more powerful, which if it were the case, wouldn’t put him on much higher moral ground than those that ‘plant bombs in buses’.

not to knock the guy. i hope my suspicions are invalid.

You’ve misread me. I’d go on, but if you prefer to regard V. as a camp figure and object of moral disgust rather than consider what his appeal was to us, I won’t detain you.

Now the truth of the matter is that in the case of someone like Veerappan or Madonna, the persona is more “real” than real. The trope of a dacoit as the outlier tragic figure in south asian mythology is quite well documented. Veerappan fed entirely into that trope and his “appeal” to the masses was priviliged on it. Hence, the futility of the government to bring about his demise.

That is just how I see it way the heck from the outside. But I have never lived in the area or talked to the people or read the local press or listened to the popular memory. I am very interested in what you can say about him. Perhaps you can answer tsk’s question as well.

And I think that’s really pretty snotty for a scholar. I guess it must be nice to view V’s as an instance of type dacoit and a moustache joke, rather than thinking of the relationship btw the state and the disenfrancised, the Dalit critique of environmentalism, caste, TADA, ltte, naxalites, Thamizhness, etc. I’ll leave it there because honestly, anything else I say will come off as rude.

India’s very own October surprise

Tamil Nadu police have shot Koose Muniswamy Veerappan dead. One of India’s most wanted criminals has finally been dispatched to meet his maker.

In this age of terrorism and suicide-bombing, Veerappan’s sanda…