On July 15, 2016, the high court of Tamilnadu dropped all charges against the celebrated and highly awarded author, Perumal Murugan. A few weeks earlier, several members of a Hindu caste group stated that Murugan had allegedly derailed and offended the sentiments of their community, especially their women. The allegations were based on Murugan’s novel “Mathurobugan” (One Part Woman), wherein the plot revolves around a married couple, Kali and Donna, and their unfortunate journey in bearing a child. The book showcases the pressures of society on a couple that seem to stray away from marriage norms by naught of their own will. Because of their failure to conceive, Ponna is pushed to participate in the chariot festival of the god Andhareeswara, where married men and women are permitted to have intercourse with strangers. This particular portrayal of the festival was the inciting incident in the allegations against Murugan, leading to his authorial demise. After the accusations and subsequent coercion to sign an unconditional apology proposed by the caste groups, he announced his literary demise on a Facebook post.
When scouring the grounds of the Chennai book fair two years ago, I grabbed a copy of his most recent work, “Songs of a Coward.” For 19 months, he had been in exile, and his new work was a direct result of the mental turmoil he had faced. Murugan, a praised prose writer, had switched to poetry. This switch is explained in a letter he had written before the release of “Songs of a Coward.” In the letter, he explains that poetry was the medium that had saved him. A possible interpretation could be that meaning is supposedly more complex to derive from poems, and with poems, Murugan could hide his thoughts and emotions.
Reading a few poems from the collection, it is evident that the experience had left a perennial scar on his writing. The judiciary had, in progressive terms, for the most part, recognized his right to expression. Despite the judgment, the intellectual constraints the author had been placed in are explicit. An influential political writer of modern times had successfully been placed in a jail of his own mind. In facing threats against himself and his family, his writing is bound to be distorted to escape society’s opinionated torture. The book “One Part Woman” showcases the obstacles that a married couple has to face and questions the attainment of childbirth and the skewed view of sexuality that is actively and passively forced upon them.
History is recurrent of the boundless imagination of artists, writers, and creatives everywhere for their ability to rebel. Murugan’s writing style involves questioning the systems we encounter daily, whether caste or sexuality, in creating abhorrent yet subtle images that force the reader to think the same. However, the artist is tortured not only by their own mind, popular cliches, and the systems they constantly try to fight. There have not been many writers out there who do what Murugan does. Still, as a writer and student, it is heartbreaking when he writes in the letter, “A censor is seated inside me now. He is testing every word that is born within me”.
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