Meet Raees Muhammad, a post-doc who cleans septic tanks in Tamil Nadu

A well-learned man in Tamil Nadu has taken up the responsibility to clean up the septic tanks in the state, and he has been doing it for the past three years.

A former assistant professor in Madras University and a post-doctoral fellow who worked in the University of Southampton, South Africa— Ravichandran Bathran, now known as Raees Muhammad, has hailed the SC verdict on sub-categorisation of SC/STs for jobs and admissions.

The many omissions of a concept: Discrimination amongst Scheduled Castes is the title of a research paper by Muhammad which was included by CJI D Y Chandrachud in the footnote of Section D in the verdict that was announced on August 1. Muhammad hails from Kotagiri in TN's Nilgiris district and is reportedly known as 'septic tank bhai'. He adopted Islam in 2022;. “Like Dr B R Ambedkar adopted Buddhism, I adopted Islam,” Muhammad told The Indian Express.

In 2021, Muhammad decided to start Kotagiri Septic Tank Cleaning Services Pvt Ltd. “I realised there are people who employ Arunthathiyars (scheduled caste community from Tamil Nadu) and make money out of their back-breaking work. I felt, why not start a company?”, he said referring to his plans to prevent people from entering septic tanks.

Arunthathiyars, Muhammad says, have been facing discrimination and violence in Tamil Nadu and hopes that sub-categorisation of SCs for reservation will serve some benefit to the community.

“If someone has to enter a tank and clean it, I do not let my workers do it. I do it myself,” he asserted. Muhammad worked to build his company and today pays his cleaners and drivers Rs 30,000 and Rs 40,000, respectively. With an annual premium of Rs 15,000, the employees at his company also have a group medical insurance.

He says that the root case of the caste system emerges from toilets, and quoted Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek: “As Zizek says, the structure of the toilet is very telling of the culture of a place. In India, toilets were once placed outside the houses. Toilets were always associated with people who were untouchables and outcastes."

Muhammad before starting his company, ran a YouTube channel called 'Dalit Camera'. He said that his mother and father worked as sweepers and supported him in everything. His wife Karpagam Allimuthu is a councillor of the Kotagiri Town Panchayat.

“The teaching job was not fulfilling for me. I always wanted to do more for my community. I realised it’s important to mobilise Arunthathiyars,” Muhammad stressed adding that the Arunthathiyars are in dire need of community leaders.

Muhammad also holds a PhD in ‘Language, Caste and Territory: Language spoken by scavenging castes in South India’ from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.

“The category of Dalit does not help in engaging with the issue of sanitation…the universal appeal of the nomenclature of Dalits could not account for sub-caste politics, and in due course the category of Dalit became a synonym of the middle-class SC category,” Muhammad wrote in a paper titled Economic and Political Weekly in 2016.

“This is a landmark judgment. It’s revolutionary because I believe it will start a discussion on atrocities on the most untouchable of castes in the caste system,” he said referring to the apex court's verdict on sub-categorisation.

He further said, “Arunthathiyars can now call the discriminatory practices against them, including those carried out by other Dalits, illegal. The judgment recognises that inter-caste atrocities among Dalits are common."

Addressing a question on whether he plans to get back to teaching, Muhammad said, “I don’t think so. Always, the last two buckets of excrements in the septic tank have to be cleaned by hand – my people’s hands. Till caste exists, caste occupations will continue. There is a need to rebel against that."