A judge has ruled in favour of a Tamil writer, who had withdrawn from the literary scene after facing protests and death threats from members of a far-right Hindu group over his novel Madhorubhagan, which features a woman trying to get pregnant at a controversial Hindu public fertility ritual.
Announcing his return from self-imposed literary exile, Perumal Murugan said: “I will get up.”
The writer had dramatically announced his death as a creative artist last year, and withdrawn all his Tamil writings from bookshops after copies of his books were burned and the town of Tiruchengode, where the novel is set, held a one-day strike to protest the novel’s publication.
In a landmark ruling after petitions to press criminal charges, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul of the Madras High Court defended Murugan’s freedom to express himself.
In his 150-page judgment, the judge wrote: “Perumal Murugan should not be under fear … He should be able to write and advance the canvas of his writings. His writings would be a literary contribution, even if there were others who may differ with the material and style of his expression … We conclude by observing this: ‘Let the author be resurrected to what he is best at. Write.’”
Murugan, who has not written since the controversy began, said: “The judgment gives me much happiness. It comforts a heart that had shrunk itself and had wilted.”
Protests against Madhorubhagan – published under the title One Part Woman in English – were co-ordinated by the Hindu extremist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The actions ran over 18 days in 2015 in Tamil Nadu. RSS members argued that the book was an offensive interpretation of Hindu scripture, and was insulting to the Hindu deity honoured in the fertility ritual.
The RSS has strong ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party. Since the BJP came to power, extremist fringes of the RSS have become increasingly aggressive: “One of them threatened to cut off (Murugan’s) hand in a public meeting,” said A R Venkatachalapathy, a historian and close friend of Murugan. “The threat of violence is very real.”
Murugan’s silencing is part of a wider trend of censorship in India under the Modi government, critics say. Last year, dozens of writers returned their awards to protest the “climate of intolerance” encouraged by the BJP. A string of political appointments have been made at universities. Textbooks have been altered to feature nationalist interpretations of Indian history, and violence against Muslims and minorities has increased.
Indian governments have always been sensitive to religious sentiments in the country, being the first to ban Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, before the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa the following year. But under the BJP government, book banning has taken on an ideological flavour, and writing that insults or offends Hindus has been systematically stamped out.
The Madras high court’s judgment marks a shift in this trend, and is a direct affront to the BJP’s incursions into literature and art.
“For the first time in the last year-and-a-half (Murugan is) feeling happy. For the first time, there is light on the horizon,” said Venkatachalapathy.
“Everybody is thrilled,” said Kannan Sundaram, Murugan’s publisher. “The court has asked him to come back to writing and feel free to write as he wishes. The judge has said there is need to make any changes (to his book). Not only that, the court has asked people to tolerate (his work), to learn to accept it. They have really done as much as they can on this issue,” he said.
Since last year, Murugan’s writings have only been available in foreign languages. Tamil copies of his books were removed, because the writer feared for his life and for his family’s safety.
“Under duress, he was forced to file an apology, and promise to withdraw the book. He felt he couldn’t function as a writer, that he couldn’t be honest as a writer,” said Sundaram.
“It is a wonderful judgment and Murugan is seriously considering announcing his comeback as a writer,” Sundaram said. “We don’t want to push, but he’s thinking about it now.”
Murugan: returns from self-imposed literary exile
