Murugan, the writer, is alive again
in rebirth. An ordinary teacher, he will live as P. Murugan. Leave him alone.”
Rarely in the annals of creativity will we find such a public announcement of literary suicide. Why did Murugan resort to this extreme step? Essentially, he was left with no other option. Those opposing him were not open to reason. Their modus operandi was to threaten, intimidate, use violence and drum up hysteria against anyone who had the temerity to slight their notion of what is socially right or permissible in terms of creative expression. Almost none of them would have read the works of Kalidasa, Bhartrihari or Vatsyayana to understand the degree of freedom sanctioned in Hindu literary tradition. Nor would they have been familiar with the fact that the great Shankaracharya defeated his intellectual opponents not by threatening to kill them, but by shasthrath or discussion. With the government refusing to protect him, and with the examples of what happened to Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M. M. Kalburgi before him, Murugan decided to just die as a writer.
But judicial intervention has made Murugan rise from his literary grave. In a landmark judgment delivered on July 5, 2016, a division bench of the Madras high court comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana, decisively pronounced:
Hindutva fringe groups may think that they are omnipotent today, but they should never underestimate the power of Indian democracy, especially the judiciary “Let the author be resurrected to do what he is best at: Write.” Recognising that the novel refers to a social practice, if at all it ever existed, to somehow solve the problem of a childless couple, the learned judges said, “The novel shakes you, but not in the manner its opponents seek to profess. It jolts you, because it succinctly depicts the pain and sufferance depicted through the words of this childless couple. That is the takeaway from the novel.”
“No one reading the novel” the judges said, “would be persuaded to draw a definite conclusion as sought to be canvassed by the opponents of the novel that the endeavour of the author was to portray all women coming to the car festival as prostitutes. This is a complete misreading of the novel and its theme.” Pronouncing that the so- called settlement arrived at with the intervention of the state authorities had no “binding force or obligation”, the court, annulling all cases against Murugan, directed the state to provide him adequate security so that he could continue to write fearlessly. Finally, in an admonishment of historical proportions against those seeking to stifle creative freedom, the judges thundered: “If you do not like a book simply close it. The answer is not its ban.”
Hindutva fringe groups may think that they are omnipotent today, but they should never underestimate the power of Indian democracy, especially the judiciary. Perumal Murugan, the writer is alive again, and may all creative people continue to have the freedom to “jolt and shake” society, notwithstanding what the Hindutva brigade feels.
The writer, an author and former diplomat, is a member of the JD( U)