Salesian champion of washermen community dies

By Robancy A Helen

Kallakurichi, April 8, 2025: A Salesian priest, who championed the cause of the poor, especially the washermen community, died of heart attack on April 8. He was 54.

Father Arul Valan was preparing to receive the Tamil Nadu government officials from Chennai to distribute lands to more than 90 Thurumbar families near Kallakruchi when he complained of acute chest pain.

He was rushed to the government Hospital in Sankarapuram.

His funeral will be held on April 9, at Dominic Savio, Tirupattur.

Father Valan was born on May 31, 1970, and made his first profession as a member of the Chennai province of the Salesian congregation on June 11, 1988. He was ordained a priest on September 2, 2000.

Father Valan began the Thurumbar Liberation Movement in 2003 and strived to restore human dignity and rights to the most oppressed Puthirai Vannar (Thurumbar) community of Tamil Nadu.

For more than two decades, Father Valan had worked for the rights of the most marginalized Dalit community. Puthirai Vannars are the last and the least in the caste-based hierarchical Tamil society.

Father Benjamin Chinnappan, founder of the Dalit Solidarity Network, mourning the death, recalled working with Father Valan for the advancement of the Thurumbar communities.

Thurumbars wash the clothes of the Dalits. Because they clean the clothes of the untouchable Dalits, they were previously viewed as unseemly.

Father Valan was the co-founder of the Thurumbar Liberation Movement Tamil Nadu along with Sister Alphonsa.

The movement helped Thumbars to find dignity as humans. It became their voices.

They conducted door-to-door visits to religious houses to educate the children of these washermen. Though Father Valan was a heart patient, he traveled day and night, visiting the people, sleeping in their places and telling them about their human dignity and rights, Father Chinnappan recalled.

Father Devasagayaraj M. Zackarias, former executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, Office for Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, said Father Valan’s death is “a tremendous loss not only for the washermen people but for all the people who work for the development of the marginalized.”

The movement emerged as a response to the atrocities and untouchability perpetrated on the Puthirai Vannar community, which spread through Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram districts, Father Zackarias explained.

In 2003, caste-bonded labor rescued three Puthirai Vannar families from Kuruvimalai village in Tiruvannamalai district. The Catholic parish in Sathiamangalam village, Villupuram district, actively discriminated against the Puthirai Vannar families.

These incidents snowballed into the formation of many sangams (associations), which later emerged as the Thurumbar Liberation Movement.

A Sangam consists of 15 to 20 villages. They hold monthly meetings to solve their problems. Trainings are held for the members—women and children in particular. Children receive education scholarships. It is active in Villupuram, Cuddalore, Tiruvannamalai, Vellore, and Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu.

Father Valan, Father Zackarias said, was a powerful fighter who created a dawn in the life of the Thurumbers, who are politically, economically, and socially marginalized in society. His passing away is a shock for all of us.

“We cannot summarize his activities and struggle movements in a few lines. He never hesitates to invite leftists to the protests in the Villupuram district, which support the Washermen community in Tamil Nadu. I have engaged in ideological discussions with him over the course of several days,” he added.

Savarirajan Arockiam, a member of the Communist Party of India in Villupuram, said Father Valan’s memory will live for generations among the oppressed people living in the slum.

Before taking the Thurumber ministry in 2004, Father Valan was an assistant parish priest in Saint Anthony’s Church, Veeralur, and Sacred Heart Church, Polur, of the Vellore diocese, Tamil Nadu.