One Part Woman’s Controversial Challenge to Hegemonic

Masculinity

Usha Mudiganti, Ambedkar University Delhi

In January 2015, Perumal Murugan announced that he will never

write again after he faced violence from a large segment of the small

town he lived in for having written Maadhorubaagan. The novel was

written in 2010, was read, reviewed and critiqued by Tamil readers

and had hardly hurt the sentiments of the readers of the book. If it did

hurt any reader, clearly it was not to the extent that the hurt would

attract the attention of national media. However, the English

translation of the novel – titled One Part Woman – brought it into the

glare of national media. The translation was published in 2013 but

controversy about the book surfaced in the latter half of 2014 and

violent protests erupted only in 2015. Such a delayed reaction to

being hurt by a fictional reference to an age-old practice goes against

the definition of a reaction, which carries a sense of urgency to

respond to the action. This ‘reaction’, manifesting 5 years after the

publication of the book and nearly 2 years after it was translated into
English, seems manufactured. In this paper, I attempt to argue that the

‘reaction’ to Perumal Murugan’s novel stems from an anxiety that

One Part Woman, challenges hegemonic masculinity.

In the evocatively written novel, Perumal Murugan deftly interweaves

many complex emotions such as love, marriage, intimacy, duty, ritual,

superstition, infertility, sexuality and betrayal, to tell the tale of a rural

couple – Kali and Ponna. The only irritant regularly tackled by Kali

and Ponna in their seemingly harmonious marriage is queries and

opinions about their childlessness. Within a few months of their

marriage, Ponna’s mother-in-law starts her on a course of herbal

remedies to facilitate conception. A few years later, Kali and Ponna

realise that the villagers have labelled them as ‘the impotent one’ (83)

and ‘the barren woman’ (115). By this point, Ponna is ready to do

almost anything to have a child and Kali joins her in various prayers

and rituals. Kali had by then fended multiple suggestions that he re-

marry to ensure the continuation of his lineage. Finally, both their

mothers remind them of an age-old ritual practised in their

community – this is a social sanction, given to a married and childless

woman, to cohabit with a stranger during the last night of the

festivities of the Ardhanareeshwara temple at Tiruchengode. It is

suggested that Ponna should participate in the festivities that year to

try her luck at conception. The first fissure occurs in their marriage

when Ponna gets tempted to try this avenue to repair their childless

state and tells Kali, ‘If you want me to go for the sake of this

wretched child, I will.’ (108) And the story ends ambiguously with

Kali breaking down and crying, ‘All of you have gotten together and

cheated me’ (239) when he discovers that his family had arranged for

his wife to participate in that ritual without his knowledge.

The controversy around the book largely revolved around two factors.

The first one is indignation by the caste which supposedly practiced

this ritual connected to the Tiruchengode Ardhanareeshwara temple

and Murugan was accused of misrepresenting the ritual. The second

one was anchored on the anxiety of mixing of castes – the origin of

that anxiety lay in the supposition that if, indeed, this caste had

practised the ritual mentioned above then the ‘purity’ of the caste

would be questionable. The accusation of misrepresentation can quite

simply be countered with a clarification that fiction has no legal or

ethical binding to record facts. And the second objection could be

debated with the stating of a reference to Chapter IX, verses 59-63 of

Manusmriti, for it has sanctioned Niyoga as a way to bear a child or

heir when a woman’s husband is impotent; with some injunctions

about caste and kinship which the man and woman are expected to

adhere to while performing Niyoga. In 2003, Amol Palekar directed a

Marathi movie named Anaahat which dealt with this practice. The

main injunction to the woman and her partner while practising Niyoga

is to remember that their action is in the interest of Dharma and that

both of them are performing a duty. Neither the protagonists of

Anaahat nor Ponna of Maadhorubaagan strictly follow that

injunction. However, Palekar’s movie was shown at the International

Film Festival of India that year and got an average reception. It

definitely did not raise any hackles and has mostly been forgotten.

Why, then, did One Part Woman create such a controversy?

A few explanations offered by scholars, critics and friends of

Murugan are connected to Murugan’s activism and allegiances rather

than with his writing and this novel in particular. In the public support

the academic community, his publisher and his friends gave to

Murugan, they talked about Murugan taking on the powerful private-

school lobby in their town in an effort to cleanse the corruption in

primary educationi. While that could be the reason for the sudden rise

of hostility towards a local who was a fairly well-known writer, it

does not justify the support to such hostility by a significant portion of

the consumers of media debates.

I argue that the seed of the controversy lies in the characterisation of

Kali who is a departure from the Hindu grahasta. Kali is not

committing himself to his ‘dharma’ of ensuring that his lineage would

continue. He is shown to be a steady and skilful farmer and is a caring

and affectionate son. He is also passionately in love with his wife.

Moreover, he clearly does not think that he needs to prioritise

fatherhood more than his emotions. While this ‘modern’ man seems

to be a delineation of the current norm, the character of Kali is a

challenge to hegemonic masculinity in many ways. Within the realm

of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM), it is accepted

that the gender of men does not ‘derive from a fixed, inner trait or

core’ (Hearn, 9). Murugan’s portrayal of Kali – who chooses his

relationship with his wife over the culturally assigend duty of a

progenitor who will ensure the continuation of his family’s lineage –

can be read as a departure from hegemonic masculinity. Moreover,

Ponna, who seemingly ‘performs’ her gender roles as they are defined

by her society, defies established patriarchal practices by acting

against her husband’s wishes. However, Ponna’s defiance reiterates

patriarchy, for she goes against the wishes of her husband to facilitate

the continuation of their lineage.

By reacting negatively to a traditionally sanctioned custom to procure

an heir to his ancestral land holdings, Kali ushers a modern idea – that

of prioritising the desire of the individual over his duties towards his

family and community. His family and his community would expect

Kali to fulfil his dharma of ensuring that his family lineage continues

through the ‘production’ of a male heir to the family’s holdings. Kali

is expected to not think as an individual but should be a ‘dividual’ – a

word coined by McKim Marriott. In Men and Masculinities in South

Asia (2006), Caroline and Filippo Osella state that:

Marriott argues that in Hindu India people don’t think of

themselves and others as individuals (unified beings who are

separate, each one from the other, and indivisible) but as

 dividuals. An individual is indivisible, something which

cannot be divided; a dividual can. A dividual then is a person

who is made up of lots of strands, is a person who can be

divided, and is able to pass on parts of the self to others. (10-

11)

Marriott’s observation can be illustrated by many instances in the

novel where Kali is being pressured to try every socially acceptable

method to ensure that he has an heir and he counters these

suggestions. When his brother-in-law and best friend, Muthu, is

attempting to convince Kali to give permission to Muthu to take

Ponna to her natal house so that she can participate in the festivities at

the Tiruchengode Ardhanareeswara temple that year, Kali confronts

him by asking Muthu if he would have sent his wife to a stranger if he

were in Kali’s position. Muthu responds in the following manner:

Mapillai. Don’t call him a stranger. Who remembers faces?

All men are gods that night. Think of him as god, you might

even feel happy about it. Isn’t it a great blessing if our child

comes from god? Haven’t you heard people remark, “This

 child is a boon from god”? Those children were born exactly

this way, mapillai. (Emphasis added. 138)

Through these remarks, Muthu tries to convince Kali to accept a

proposal which has social sanction and by calling this desired child,

‘our child’ (138), he shows that it would belong not just to Kali and

Ponna but to the entire family. By accepting the proposal, Kali would

not only gain the status of fatherhood but will also fulfil his

‘reproductive’ duty as a Hindu grahsta who has ‘fathered’ a child for

the family. Also, Ponna’s participation in the festival would be a

secret, shared only among the natal families of the couple. If Ponna

conceives, they would both get rid of the dreadful labels of infertility

they had been given by the village community. If he had accepted the

proposal, Kali would have made his family happy and would have

gained socio-religious benefits too. However, with his refusal to agree

with his family that a child is crucial for his happiness and by

prioritising his emotional bond with Ponna over his ‘duty’, Kali

establishes himself as a modern heterosexual man in a

heteronormative relationship in a nuclear family – a Western ideal of

masculinity rather than an Indian one. Kali, in fact, tries to close the

conversation with Muthu in the following manner:

“You are so old-fashioned, Muthu,” snapped Kali. “Earlier, a

woman could be with however many men as long as they

were all from the same caste. Even related castes were fine.

But if she went with an “untouchable”, they excommunicated

her. Is that how it works today? We insist that a woman

should be with just one man from the same caste. Then how

would this work? More than half the young men roaming

about town are from the “untouchable” castes. If any one of

them gets to be with Ponna, I simply cannot touch her after

that. I am happy lying around here. I don’t want a child so

desperately. Moreover, all of you will call me impotent and

laugh at me. So let it go.” (139-40)

His objection throws into relief some of the various anxieties he has

about his situation. Not only does it reveal the ushering of the

‘modern’ man who believes that a woman should be with only one

man but also proves that caste identities were becoming more rigid in
practice. Simultaneously, it also brings to fore his anxiety about

masculinity.

Through various instances in the novel, Murugan has portrayed Kali

as a socially adept, vivacious person who starts withdrawing from the

communal life of the village after he is labelled ‘the impotent one’

(83). While he refuses to get agitated about being childless, he is not

unaffected by insinuations of impotency. One of the first suggestions

made to him, to prove that he is capable of fatherhood was to re-

marry. Kali promptly rejects it. His rejection not only reiterates his

position of a modern, monogamous man in a Western

heteronormative relationship, it is also in sync with the romantic

notion of man and woman being conjoined as one entity in the form

of the Ardhanareeswara. Kali is, in fact, named after a female goddess

– the aggressive form of Parvathi, who constitutes the left half of the

Ardhanareeswara while Shiva occupies the right half. This joining of

the male and female forms to make one entity does not really leave

room for another being – a child – to complete the unit. Kali’s sense

of satisfaction with his marital relationship goes against the grain of

the generational wisdom of their community. In fact, his community

was indicating that his masculinity was deficient owing to their

inability to have a child. Kali comes across as someone who is ready

to live with derogatory labels but would not compromise on the

harmony of his relationship with his wife. However, the harmony too

is a one-sided perception. While Ponna is happy with Kali, she

sharply feels the lack of a child; especially because childlessness bars

her from full participation in the communal life of the village. At

various times, she cries out for a child and finally reacts in the

following manner:

“I don’t know what you will do and how. I want a child right

away”. This was not a doll he could get immediately from

the shop, was it? He tried to soothe her, but to no avail.

“Go somewhere and get me a child!” Ponna raged. “I don’t

care even if it is from an untouchable woman. I don’t care if

you have to buy one for money. I don’t want anyone to be

able to say that this property of ours has no inheritor. Go

now!” And Ponna physically pushed Kali out of the

barnyard. (231)
Ponna’s desperation for a child leads her into throwing infantile

tantrums and into declarations which indicate that she is ready to

overlook rigid practices of caste to be a mother. While their

community would readily romanticise the biological paternity of the

child, if Ponna conceived during the temple festivity, her decision to

go to the temple festivities challenges the chauvinistic hegemonic

masculinity that started taking shape along with the nationalist

discourse and is still being aggressively promoted by post-colonial

India to counter the colonial constructions of Indian masculinity.

The perpetuation of the deliberate creation of the stereotype of the

Indian man as being effeminate by the British served in creating a

homogenous prototype of an Indian man. In Colonial Masculinity

Mrinalini Sinha states that, ‘[i]f in the past effeminacy loosely

characterised all the inhabitants of Bengal, in the second half of the

century it was used quite specifically to characterise the Indian middle

class, or a section of this class identified as babus.’ (16) Further,

Sinha clarifies that while on the one hand the concept of Bengali

effeminacy referred to the group known as babus, ‘on the other hand,

the concept of Bengali effeminacy was also greatly expanded to

include the politically discontented middle-class ‘natives’ from all

over India’. (16) This declaration of effeminacy based on seemingly

innate traits was a departure from the traditional practice among

Hindus in India of men being defined through the performance of

gender at various life stages in accordance with religion or through

the customs of the regions they belonged to. During the 19th century,

the Indian man was described and defined as the very opposite of the

idea of British masculinity which was being consolidated through the

nineteenth century. Nivedita Menon mentions the ‘[d]eep anxieties

about masculinity and modern national identity... in the newly

emerging male, Hinduised nationalist public sphere in Uttar Pradesh

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries’ (xxiv) in her introduction to

Sexualities (2007). Tanika Sarkar notes in Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation,

that by the mid-nineteenth century even the educated middle-class

Indian made deprecatory jokes about Indian men. She states that the

body of the Indian man was perceived to be, ‘... the visible site of

surrender and loss, of defeat and alien discipline.’ (202) Sarkar posits

that at this point the ‘unmarked’ body of the Indian woman ‘gained a

redemptive, healing strength for the community as a whole’ (203).

Simultaneously, Sarkar argues a new Hindu masculinity was

emerging in the writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. She asserts

that in Anandmath, Bankim was depicting the new Hindu in the

following manner:

He is the embodiment of a rigorous, disciplinary schedule

that will eventually transpose discipline from an external

ethico-religious authority to a self-monitoring ethical agent

who has internalized certain reinterpreted concepts of Hindu

knowledge and devotional practices; these are Bankim’s

explanations of anushilan dharma and bhakti. The process of

training that incorporates such knowledge, dispositions,

physical capabilities, and devotion, replacing the privileges

of birth and ritual expertise, distinguishes the new Brahman

—the ideal patriot and nation-builder—from the Hindu of the

old, unreformed Hindu authorities. Inherited and normative

control are replaced with hard-earned leadership; Brahmanic

authority is revived as intensively cultivated hegemonic

aspiration. This represents Bankim’s return to a higher plane,

perhaps, but a return nonetheless. The imagined Hindu nation

 cannot, even in the imagination, be made and ruled by agents

who are not male and upper caste. (Sarkar, 175-6)

In Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism, Chandrima Chakraborty also

argues that Bankim’s ‘essays delineate how ascetic practices, such as

celibacy, meditation, devotion to a deity, and physical culture—when

reframed as work for the nation—constitute Hindu martiality’ (41)

and goes on to state that ‘ascetic nationalist martiality as hegemonic

masculinity emerges in Bankim’s Anandmath and Devi

Chaudhurani... as a goal rather than the lived reality of ordinary men’

(41). Further, she goes on to argue that Bankim turned ‘the colonial

discourse on its head by arguing that Indian effeminacy is a direct

result of English education, colonial employment, British

historiography, and colonial policy’ (47). Through his writings,

Bankim fashioned a new ideal of Indian masculinity. Chakraborty

describes this new ideal of masculinity in the following manner:

The traditional Hindu masculine archetypes of the Brahman

(priest) and Kshatriya (warrior) are merged to institute

ascetic martiality as normative Hindu masculinity, which

 then universalizes the caste-specific duties of the priest and

the warrior as Hindu dharma. Bankim’s innovative answer to

the British stereoptype of the effeminate and apathetic native

is articulated in terms of a single ideal of cultivated

manliness: ascetic nationalist martiality. (56)

Chakraborty further argues that Tagore, in his writings, etched a new

ideal of masculinity, in which he associates friendship with manliness

to promote the idea of a more heterogenous nation. She goes on to

posit that Gandhi demonstrated that human nature is mutable and,

therefore, colonial notions about Indian masculinity as effeminate,

apathetic, despotic can be overturned by staging different forms of

masculinity. Chakraborty states Gandhi’s position in the following

lines:

For the sake of the health of the nation, he urges

brahmacharic couples to have sex only for the purpose of

reproduction or abstain from sex altogether. The notion that

non-procreative sex is bad and that there is a need for

 conjugal austerity to bring forth a strong male progeny is

implicit (132).

Chakraborty points out that ‘[t]his new husbandly code of honour,

while it includes the potential to transform men’s individual, personal

lives, thus also functions to stifle women’s voices. Such rewriting of

masculinity for the nation continues to deny women sexual agency

and subjectivity independent of the roles assigned to them by

patriarchy’ (134). On the other hand, Caroline and Filippo Osella

point out, in Men and Masculinities in South Asia, that ‘[w]riters such

as Asish [sic] Nandy have valorized Gandhi as promulgating ‘soft’

Hindu masculinity, which refused the British-style brutal subjugation

and repudiation of the feminine but instead incorporated it into the

self; androgyny here was superior to masculinity’ (20).

In its very title, Maadhorubaagan – a name for Shiva in the

Ardhanareeshwara form – the novel seems to invoke and celebrate

this androgynous form of masculinity. However, Kali and Ponna are

not Gandhi’s ‘brahmacharic couple’ who would practice ‘conjugal

austerity’. Kali is not an illustration of any of the models of Indian

masculinity discussed above. Kali’s character flies in the face of the

ideal of masculinity promoted from the 1920s onwards by the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and complemented by the

Rashtra Sevika Samiti, founded in 1936. Chakraborty delineates it as

follows:

... Samiti activities reveals that the predominant purpose of

disciplining Hindu female bodies and psyches is to ensure

the birthing and nurturing of strong heroic sons for the Hindu

community-nation. Domesticity’s role in ensuring the birth

and sustenance of the Hindu rashtra is clear, for what counts

or is celebrated as life is the potential political future, angry

Hindu men. It makes explicit the fact that the nation demands

heterosexuality and reproduction as prerequisites of good

citizens. (193)

Perumal Murugan’s protagonist, Kali, is clearly not the ideal good

citizen by the standards which got formed during the rise of

nationalism and continue to be promoted by powerful sections of

Indian society. He is happy being a steady farmer and a good husband

but refuses to do his duty as a progenitor. And Murugan’s evocative

writing makes the reader empathise as much with Kali for his sense of

betrayal and a lover-like feeling of hurt as with Ponna for risking her

harmonious marriage for a chance at motherhood. The novel can be

read as a depiction of the ‘modern’ man who is focusing on his erotic

relationship more than on his ‘dharma’ as a Hindu grahsta. I believe

the entire controversy around the novel emerges from the depiction of

Kali as a credible and evocative description of a masculinity which

prioritises desire over dharma.

i
This was stated by Dr. Rajan Krishnan in the meeting titled “In Solidarity with Perumal Murugan
against cultural vigilantism and censhorship organized by SAHMAT on 17 January 2015.

Works Cited

Chakraborty, Chandrima. 2011. Masculinity, Asceticism,

Hinduism:Past and Present Imaginings of India. Ranikhet:

Permanent Black.

Hearn, Jeff. 2015. Men of the World: Genders, Globalizations,

Transnational Times. Los Angeles: Sage.

Kazmi, Nikhat. “Anaahat: The eternity of sex”.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Anaahat-The-eternity-of-

sex/articleshow/237337.cms (accessed on 9 December 2015).

Kumar, Vinay. “Writers, academicians come out in support of Perumal

Murugan”. http://www.thehindu.com/books/writers

academicians-come-out-in-support-of-perumal-murugan/

article6796826.ece Web. (accessed on 19 January 2015).

Manusmriti. Chapter IX, 59-63. http://www.sacred

texts.com/hin/manu/manu09.htm. (acessed on 9 Dec 2015).

Menon, Nivedita. 2007. Ed. Sexualities. London and New York: Zed
 Books Ltd.

Murugan, Perumal. 2013. One Part Woman. Trans. Aniruddhan

Vasudevan. New Delhi: Penguin.

Osella, Caroline and Filippo Osella. 2006. Men and Masculinities in

South India. London: Anthem Press.

Sarkar, Tanika. 2011. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community,

Religion and Cultural Nationalism.Delhi: Permanent Black.

Sinha, Mrinalini. 1995. Colonial Masculinity: The ‘manly

Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth

century. Manchester: Manchester UP.

Thapar, Romila. “The real reason for hurt sentiments”.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-real-reasons-for-hurt-

sentiments/article6987156.ece (accessed on13 March 2015).

Bio-note: Dr. Usha Mudiganti is an assistant professor in the School of

Liberal Studies of Ambedkar University, Delhi. Her research interests

include the construction of gender in India and its representation in

literature, cinema and popular culture. She also critically engages with the
changing norms of childhood across cultures and its depiction in literary

texts.