Caste or CAA, resist anything that divides: Perumal Murugan

The well-known writer was at an interaction held by St Joseph’s College (Autonomous) in the city

Perumal Murugan, talking about the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, said, “we must resist anything that divides us.”

The writer was at an interaction held by St Joseph’s College (Autonomous) in the city.The session was structured as a reminiscence, wherein Murugan spoke about his childhood and how he started off as a writer.

Having grown up in the years after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Kamaraj introduced the country’s first
mid-day meal scheme,
Murugan says, “Those days, when they sent you to school, they didn’t say study and come; they said eat and come.”

He said that at the time, when a child failed a grade,
he or she was taken out of school and pushed into the traditional occupation. He said his sister dropped out after the seventh grade and his elder brother after the ninth grade.

“They were watching to see when I would, but I had taken interest in studies even as a kid, and I never did,” Murugan says.

Murugan, a respected writer in Tamil Nadu, shot to international prominence in 2015 after a controversy created by fringe elements who found the book obscene, wherein they burned copies and called for a ban.

Troubled, he put out a Facebook post that said, “Perumal Murugan the writer is dead… Leave him alone”.

But this withdrawal from literature was temporary, and he was writing again soon. Publications like the New York Times and Guardian, which had picked up his story during the controversy, now reviews his every new book that is translated into English.

As a young writer, Murugan had stage fear, so he moved away from taking up teaching even after a Masters in Tamil Literature, instead joining a prominent newspaper as a sub-editor.

But pay as a sub-editor was poor, it could barely put two meals on the table a day. “I told my editor that if I went back to my village and worked with buffaloes, I could make Rs 1,000 a day. He took offence.”

He finally resolved to start teaching after the epiphany that something you learn would be incomplete without discussing it with others.

Asked how his students respond to his writing, he says, “The criticism from my students is mostly caste-related. Because in government colleges, 60-70% comes from Dalit castes. ”

The first writing he put out, he claims, was terrible, but “only by going through that stage can you get to the next.”

He said the 1990s was the time when a lot of experimentation was being done in Tamil literature.

“The Soviet Union had fallen, and it was the time when post-modernism, feminism, magical realism and Dalit voices came up in Tamil,” he says.

When a member of the audience asked Murugan about his thoughts on CAA, adding that he can choose to not answer, the writer said, “You are right, it is better not to answer.” But he added, “Whether it is caste or CAA, we must resist anything that divides us.”