'There have been many Brahmins supportive of the Dalit cause.' "Sagaran" as quoted by Sri Vagne.
One was Gopalakrishna Bhaarathi whose drama in Tamil "Nanthanaar" was made into a popular film starring a real-life Tamil Brahmin as a haughty, cruel, wicked and tyrannous landlord and a Dalit as the long-suffering submissive slave-like victim. ("Aiye, mikka kadinam; um adimai, aiye mikka kadinam!")
"What did the Brahmins do for the Dalits, (so that) they should reciprocate them? -- Prasad1, Veteran.
മാബലി നാടു വാണീടും കാലം
മനുഷ്യര് എല്ലോരും ഒന്നു പോലെ.........
ദുഷ്ടരെ കണ്ണ്കൊണ്ട് കാണാറ് ഇല്ല
വഞ്ചനയ് ഇല്ല ചതിയും ഇല്ല.........
In my early days I was taken to visit a Brahmin family's paddy farm situated within walking distance from our agrahaaram. It was reached by a two-foot-wide tamped-down earth-bund built between two paddy-fields. We went bare-footed and bare-bodied, as was the usual practice, with a little turban to keep out the sun's rays.
The farm was quite huge, and seemed to stretch as far as my young eyes could see. It required a substantial labour force. These, mainly cheruman (dalits), were housed in their own self-contained little village on higher ground among the fields.
The residential terrace-homes formed three sides of a square, enclosing a broad tamped-down hard clay playground where several children were enjoying themselves in games. Behind the housing units were the workers' own adjoining vegetable patches where they grew produce for consumption, for gifting, and for exchange. Beyond were groves of sugarcane, banana, coconut, arecanut, mango, tamarind, palm, and other trees planted by the Brahmin landowners for the workers' harvesting and consumption.
Workers were also allowed to rear their own chicken and goats, either individually or as a co-operative, and keep tame pets such as parrots and other birds, cats and dogs.
Some distance away was a school building and, adjoining it, an extension which served as a single-bed clinic for the visiting vaarier skilled in traditional aurvedic medicine. The school building also served as a practice-hall for workers playing or children learning to play musical instruments like kombu-kozhaal, chenda, kinnaaraam, flute, maththalam, and dancing like kolaattam, kai-kotti-kali, kummi, krishnaattam.
The open fields, after harvest, were sites of kite-flying and other outdoor amusements.
Festival times such as ohnam, vishu, kaarthigai, sree-krishna jayanthi, ther-ottu, uri-adi were joyous occasions when everyone joined in, both dalits and brahmins, and their families. Brahmins took these opportunities to distribute money and gifts to dalits on these occasions.
All in all, every need of the dalits, including family life, work, food, shelter, health, education, money, games, amusemnent., entertainment, were conscientiously cared for by the land-owning brahmins.
Disputes among dalits which could not be resolved by the headman, were brought to the land-owner for hearing and adjudication, or by way of appeal against the headman's decisions.
Complaints included wife-snatching, seduction and enticement, molestation of boys, girls and women, theft, destruction of property, usury, drunken fights, decamping with money or goods or women, pain and suffering inflicted on fellow-villagers or their children, or their possessions such as chicken, goats.
(Postscript: On a post-war visit to the same site, I found that the Independent India government, under its land re-distribution scheme, had seized all the land, subdivided it into miscroscopic uneconomic slices and distributed them to the dalits.
Lacking a common water supply, adequate seed grains, fertiliser, equipment and repair tools, the new ambitious dalit landowners had fallen into the clutches of rapacious foreign dalit moneylenders, mortgaged their land, lost it and were itinerant beggars. The cut-up land was neglected, overgrown with weeds and thorny hedges and unfit for cultivation without heavy capital investment.
A surprising number of new toddy-shops, well patronised, had sprung up on the land! With seductive young barmaids.)
S Narayanaswamy Iyer