Inside Delhi's Madrasi Camp, the fear of a community disintegration

The Hindu

17-05-2025

Each home in Delhi's Madrasi Camp sports a drishti bommai (a black mask with exaggerated features such as bulging eyes and red lips). Invariably, at the entryway to each single-room home are two lemons covered in red powder to keep the 'evil eye' away.
But Yennu Malai, a 50-year-old resident of the camp, laments that 'bad luck' has fallen upon everyone over the past year. The camp, which was established between 1968 and 1970 in the shadow of the Barapullah drain, will be demolished for the upcoming restoration and cleaning project of the 16-kilometre nallah, a Mughal structure dating back about 400 years.
Sitting cross-legged on a cement slab in front of his home, Malai, a vegetable seller, looks over his shoulder at the soon-to-be demolished Madrasi Camp in south Delhi's Jangpura-B, near the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station. He has called the locality home his entire life.
Malai, talking to his brother-in-law and sister, questions the government's logic, angry, but also chuckling at the irony: 'My ration, voter, and Aadhaar cards say Madrasi Camp, and suddenly, they want us to pick up everything and leave. How is this justice?' Malai is referring to the May 9 Delhi High Court order to demolish Madrasi Camp starting June 1. The HC has also directed government departments to ensure proper rehabilitation of the eligible residents of the unauthorised colony.
Madrasi Camp has 370 shanties, and families living in 189 of them have been found eligible for rehabilitation under the Delhi Slum and Jhuggi Jhopri Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy, 2015. They will be given housing in Narela, about 40 km from their current location.
The public toilet in Madrasi Camp is barely functional, and residents relieve themselves on the train tracks, a minute's walk away. The odour of the sewage from the drain on one side and garbage-collection facility on the other, is overpowering, but residents say that over the decades they have built a community here, based on a common culture.
Forced to move out
During the rainy season in 2024, a public interest litigation was filed in the HC on the flooding in parts of Nizamuddin East and Jangpura. The court had ordered agencies such as Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Archaeological Survey of India (ASI, which maintains the Barapullah), Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and Public Works Department (PWD) to clean up the oversaturated drain.
On September 1, 2024, the MCD demolished a few homes in the locality and removed all street vendors from the area. An official in the MCD says, 'This was done as people were hindering the cleaning of the Barapullah drain.' A week after, residents of the camp were issued eviction notices by Delhi government's PWD. This was later halted by then Chief Minister Atishi and the matter was taken up in the HC.
On May 9 this year, a Bench of Justices Pratibha Singh and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora heard a bunch of applications filed by Madrasi Camp dwellers seeking the court's intervention in their relocation to Narela. 'The rehabilitation of the Madrasi Camp dwellers is essential for the de-clogging of the Barapullah drain. None of the dwellers can claim any rights beyond the right of rehabilitation, as the land is public land, which is encroached upon,' the court said. The court has given the dwellers time between May 20 and May 31 to shift out of Madrasi Camp, following which, demolition will begin from June 1.
Among those who now live in fear of the future is Kutan, a 55-year-old resident of the camp, who says his father and grandfather walked from Chennai to Delhi in 1968 because they couldn't afford a ticket. Kutan speaks about how his family found a home in Delhi after leaving Chennai, where they worked on 200- to 300-acre farmlands on the city's outskirts for meagre money.
'One day, my father decided not to work for the rich, so the family just left home in search of a job. They came to Delhi and found work as labourers. Slowly, they uprooted our entire family from Chennai, who came here. The city was unfamiliar, things were fast, no one rested,' Kutan says, as he waters his plants.
Each home in the camp has a few pots and plants. People say they have constructed their houses brick by brick and gradually made them homes with plants, colourful walls, kolam (white designs on the ground), and pictures of deities.
Kutan's family did odd jobs to sustain themselves. With the money he earned, he got all four of his children married. They live in Chennai, and now he feels that his last option is to move back. Like him, many in the camp are contemplating doing this.
Fixing his blue and green checkered kaili mundu (lungi), Kutan says, 'I would like to stay in Delhi till the time I can work on my own. I don't want to go back and be a burden on any of my children.' He laughs while saying that every time he goes back to Chennai, he must get kaili mundus as gifts for friends in Delhi.
Madrasi Camp has houses almost glued together, with very little natural light permeating through the narrow alleys. Most of the women in the camp work as cleaners in some of Delhi's most valued real estate. The men are cooks, rickshaw-pullers, vegetable sellers, and workers in government jobs.
For many, the move to Narela will result in a loss of livelihood as it takes nearly three hours to travel from there to their current places of work. Buses are infrequent; there is no metro connectivity; and other transportation is expensive with an auto charging about ₹500 for the journey.
Narayan, 30, (name changed to protect privacy) works at the Uprashtrapati Bhawan, the vice-president's house, in the housekeeping department. Standing near a pile of garbage, while swatting a fly away from his face, he says that three generations of his family have lived in the camp and worked around the area. He will not be able to move to Narela, he says, but is also daunted by the rent in south Delhi that ranges from ₹10,000-₹15,000 for a room.
A community of their own
Many in the camp have been allotted houses in DDA's beige flats for the EWS (Economically Weaker Sections) in Narela, on a 99-year lease. Residents claim the houses are no better than the jhuggi-jhopri (hutment) cluster they are currently living in.
However, there are some who have not been allotted flats. Valar Madi, a 45-year-old domestic worker who has been living in Madrasi Camp for 17 years, is one among these people. While fixing her gold mookuthi (nose ring), she says, 'My husband just passed away and I have a young child. Here, I did not have to worry about rent, so whatever I earned went into his education and our survival, but now they are telling me I will not be given a house, because my voter card was deleted.'
As Madi tears up, the women gather around her. They console her and say she can come and live with them. Sarayana, 43, has been allotted a home. Her husband too is no more, and she and her daughter live together. Just like Madi, she feels that her community in the Madrasi Camp is her support system. Playing with the pallu of her saree nervously, she says, 'Ever since my husband died, the women here have kept me occupied and happy. They make sambar that reminds me of my village near Viluppuram district.'
In the evening, the women gather around the temple, which has a tall idol of Karthik and smaller idols of Ganesha and other gods. As the women pray, the children play cricket or cycle around. The children switch easily between Hindi and Tamil. They sit on the road to study.
Bembi, now 60, was only 5 when her parents boarded a train from Kallakurichi in Tamil Nadu to the New Delhi Railway Station. Hindi was a language her family struggled with for many years. Now, Bembi sits in her red cotton podavai (saree), eating corn from a kadhai (pan). Her hair is oiled neatly, and her gold earrings shine bright.
With her sit six of her best friends, as they chat about how their day went. This is how they learnt Hindi. 'We were young, and our mothers worked as domestic workers. Our fathers were labourers or drivers, so when they came home, we'd sit with them, and learn simple Hindi words every day,' Bembi's friend, Parvathi, 60, who was her neighbour in her village, explains, her hands dancing to express herself better. Once the settlement (basti) took root, the pejorative 'Madrasi' was how other Delhiites began to refer to it.
Bembi and her friends discuss what they're cooking for dinner. One is planning to make dosa; another rajma-chawal. Their food habits have adapted too.
Politics around the demolition
Over the past eight months, the camp has been at the centre of high political drama and conflict between the various civic agencies and political parties that hold a stake in Delhi. During the initial State actions in September 2024, the then ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had blamed the BJP for the demolitions. They protested with a section of the residents. Meanwhile, the BJP, with another faction of the residents, put the blame on AAP. During the Assembly election in the Capital this February, leaders from both parties visited the camp, promising support. However, residents say after the BJP's win, there has been no support from the party that formed the Delhi government.
Meanwhile, the residents of the camp protested alongside leaders from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Furthermore, Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Karti P. Chidambaram wrote to Chief Minister Rekha Gupta seeking her intervention to stop the demolition of Madrasi Camp in Jangpura. 'These families, many of whom have lived in this area for decades, have recently been served demolition notices by the DDA. While alternative flats have been allotted in Narela, this relocation poses a grave threat to the residents' livelihood, education, and cultural roots, particularly for the children,' he wrote.
All the children of the camp study in the Delhi Tamil Education Association's (DTEA) Lodhi Estate school for a fee of ₹250 per month. According to the school's officials, for over a century the school has been catering to Tamilian families living in Delhi. They are taught Tamil along with Hindi and English, and stay immersed in the culture of their home State.
A teacher in the school says, 'The children are taught keeping their Tamilian identities in mind, and the parents like this. If they are shifted, many are likely to discontinue their education.' The school had also written to the authorities requesting them not to demolish the camp, or to move residents near any of the seven DTEA branches.
Residents are now gradually packing their bags, scoffing at the media attention which they believe is leading nowhere, and making plans to rent homes closer to this area so that they can continue their current jobs. Many are considering moving back to their villages, even though they have never lived there. Malai says, 'Even if I move, who says I will be able work and adjust there. I will be leaving the home my parents built, the one I got married in and my children grew up. They are not just taking my house, but my community and livelihood.'
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Edited by Sunalini Mathew