Gifts Received

Chinnappan Selvanathan Roche Vic has not received any gifts yet

Give a Gift

Chinnappan Selvanathan Roche Vic's Page

Profile Information

About me: I hails from a Dalit family in Odiyathur village, Mugaiyur Block, Villupuram District, Tamil Nadu. I am 6th child in my family of 7 children. (He has 3 brothers and 3 sisters). I am a Roman Catholic and belongs to the first generation Graduates in Dalit community. My father Chinnappan Selvanathan was a Headmaster of a Catholic School in 1940s; and my mother Mrs Kanickaimarywas an uneducated, but was sharing the Dalit Discriminations in the society to me when I was a child.

When I was in School, I has organized `Our Union’ with the students and involved in social work activities such as cleaning the school campus, the streets, the surroundings of drinking water points and doing hair-cutting for the school going children, etc.

In 1971, there was caste clash in my native place Odiyathur village, Tamil Nadu since a Dalit Christian contested in the local panchayat election. 16 houses were burnt down. All India Catholic University Federation (AICUF), Chennai reconstructed the houses, in which I also participated as a volunteer.

I also served as the Animator in a NGO, Animators for Community Development-ACD, Arakandanallur from 1978. In 1979, I went for a Training in REAL, Vedasandhur Taluk, Dindigul District where he worked along with Mr. Henry Tiphagne and Mr. Paulraj for a month. The REAL team also dealt with land rights issues during that time and redeemed the land from the Naidu community to the cobbler community in Alachambarai village.

Reason to start RISE:

From 1980, I worked as an animator in Integrated Rural Development Society-IRDS, Villupuram. In 1981, I married a Dalit Woman in Pondicherry. In the same year, there was a caste discrimination i.e. seating the Dalit Children separately and providing separate drinking water pots for the Dalit children in Ariyapalayam Anganwady Centre, Villianur Commune, Pondicherry. Since nobody took up the issue, I visited the area, intervened in the problem. During this process, I learnt that there is no Action Group in Pondicherry, hence decided to start RISE here.

After initiating RISE, apart from attending various training programmes on Social development in India, including Agrarian Question at Indian Social Institute (ISI), Bangalore in 1980 and new Trade Union Initiatives in FEDINA, Bangalore on Land Rights, Unionization of Un-organized Workers, I has also attended a 25 days training on `Liberation and Development' at INODEP, Paris, France in August 1986; Attended the IVth conference of the Via Campesina held at Indaiatuba, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil from 14th to 19th June, 2004 dealing with (1) Food Sovereignty & Trade (2) Agrarian Reform (3) Human Rights (4) Biodiversity & Genetic Resources (5) Sustainable Peasant Agriculture (6) Migration & Rural Workers and (7) Gender; also participated in the celebration of 20th anniversary of MST (land rights movement in Brazil) at ITAPEVA, Brazil; (ITAPEVA is the place where 20 years before MST organized their first action on capturing land from the big farm owners. 20,000 Hectares of land was captured). Attended an International Conference on Agrarian Reform at Valencia, Spain between 4th and 8th December 2004 and also participated in Indian Social Forums, Asian Social Forum, 2003 and World Social Forum, 2004. Conservation and management of forests for sustainable development, Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) 23-24 November 2011.
4,50,000 trees were planted in the Sangaraparani River bunds of Puducherry Region from 2010-2013 to reduce carbon emission supported by American Forests Global ReLeaf Forests, U.S.A

My Green Mission: To create awareness about environment, climate change, global warming and safe guard & restore community forest, natural resources, land, water, air