If you thought the practice of an oddly attired government servant reading aloud the specifics of a property attachment to the accompaniment of the beating of a drum in the middle of a crowded village square was a medieval ritual now found only in period movies, ask the District Court, Palakkad.
The court says this form of communication, officially called 'tom tom', is still in vogue in Kerala in this internet age.
In an official RTI reply given to rights activist Boban Mattumantha, the District Court says that various courts, including itself and those under it – additional district courts, sub courts, and munsiff courts – have together collected a total of Rs 56,600 as 'tom tom' charges from creditors, mostly banks and financial institutions, from January to October this year.
Each creditor who secures a court order to attach the property of a debtor is asked to pay Rs 100 as 'tom tom' charges. The court dispatches a couple of officials who would, to gather a crowd, do an odd kind of band performance in the vicinity of the marked property. In Palakkad alone, such 'tom tomming' had happened 566 times in the first 10 months this year.
'Tom tom' is an onamatopoeic word, derived from the sound that is made when a drum is beaten.
Though called 'tom tom', the existing ritual that loudly proclaims the attachment of a property and its subsequent auction does not have anyone beating a drum any more. Instead, to draw attention, the court official strikes hard on a plate. The court, however, has no records to establish when the plate replaced the drum.
If situations from pop culture can be used as a historical guide, the drum was used till at least 1986. Sathyan Anthikkad's popular Mohanlal-starrer 'Sanmanasullavarkku Samadhanam', which was released that year, begins with a 'tom tom' ritual with drums.
Mattumantha said it was shocking that the courts were sustaining such a primitive and obsolete practice. During the reign of the kings, when pigeons and men on horseback were the best communication tools available, 'tom tomming' was a sound way of passing on royal edicts to subjects.
"It were the British courts that adapted this method to publicise the takeover of the properties of people who had defaulted on payments. It is incomprehensible that even in this age of communication we are persisting with this ritual,” Mattumantha said.
It is not just the incongruity of such a mode of communication in a modern world that bothers Mattumantha. He is more worried by the cold-bloodedness of the practice.
Tom tomming works both as a shaming mechanism as well as a warning ritual. It causes public humiliation for the debtor. At the same time, it warns the public of the disgrace they would suffer if they fail to clear their debts on time.
Mattumantha says there is a better understanding of the factors that cause bankruptcy.
"Insolvency is now looked upon with sympathy than contempt. We now know for instance that farmers are pushed to penury by factors beyond their control. We have had innumerable instances of people, including farmers, preferring to kill themselves than live through the ignominy of their properties being seized by the state or banks," Mattumantha said.
"Even after this realisation, to persist with such loud and public proclamations of failure is to unnecessarily slight a person on the verge of disintegration," he said.
Still, information regarding attachment of properties and auctions should be made public. "But for this, is it necessary for us to beat on plates and cause a crowd to gather. Don't we have umpteen means to communicate the message in dignified and sensitive ways," he said.
Moreover, the beating of plates is now associated more with a show of gratitude than loud proclamations of doom. During COVID, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had exhorted Indians to come out of their homes at dusk and beat their dinner plates in honour of health workers.
