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Reading Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman within the Spectrum of

Translation, Worship and Censorship PRIYANKA TRIPATHI IIT Patna

Article · October 2018

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSLATION
VOL. 30, NO. 2, JUL-DEC 2018

Reading Perumal Murugan’s

One Part Woman within the Spectrum of
Translation, Worship and Censorship
PRIYANKA TRIPATHI
IIT Patna

ABSTRACT

Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman (2014), originally titled

in Tamil as Maadhorubaagan (2010) was translated into
English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan and has recently won
Sahitya Akademi award for translation. Though the novel in
Tamil was in print and circulation for about four years, it was
its English translation that garnered controversy wherein
certain fractions of the Indian society accused the novel of
being blasphemous and morally offensive. Set in the early 20th
century, the novel narrates the life of a married but childless
couple, Ponna and Kali and their ardent desire and desperate
attempts to have a child of their own. As a last resort to
conceive, Ponna, the wife, decides to have consensual sex with
someone else on the one night when it is permitted at the
Ardhanarishwara temple during the Chariot festival. Such
recollection and representation of the ritual by Murugan
infuriated the “culture fundamentalists” who believed in the
hegemonic patriarchal notions of protecting the sanctity of the
mythic Indian woman in particular and the Indian culture in
general. Interestingly, instead of curbing the creative
expression of the writer and subsequently the book, in most of
the cases, one finds that these controversies and censorship
has played the role of being the appendices that have made the
book, worthy of being published and, of course, being read.
Rejection or ban, therefore, has acted as a prelude to the
dialogue between the rigid ideologies of the state and radical
expression of the writer. In the light of the above statement, the
proposed paper intends to reread One Part Woman, the
86 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

English translation of Perumal Murugan’s Tamil novel within

the context of his declaration, “Perumal Murugan, the writer
is dead”, the controversy after, his resurrection as an author
after the Madras High Court verdict1 in 2016 stating, “Let the
writer do what he is best at: write” and the ongoing debate on
freedom of expression.

Keywords: Censorship, translation, culture, Ardhanarishwara,

state, freedom of expression

Societal pressure which forces a writer to withdraw from

creative writing altogether is a powerful censoring force, more
dangerous than the repressive state, precisely because of its
unidentified constituency. Countering it becomes a fight with
shadows in a twilight zone (Chandran 2017)
In a country like India, where language and culture both
alter at regular intervals with respect to distance and time, it’s
difficult to arrive at a conclusion where one language or culture
could eclipse the other. Salman Rushdie in the ‘Introduction’ to
his book Vintage Book of Indian Writing published in 1977
made a startling remark that didn’t go down well with the
literati of regional languages. In his claim, he said that Indian
English writing was much more developed than writings in
other Indian languages. He also asserted later that the reason for
the same was less “metropolitan experience” (Chandran 2017:
89) in the sense that regional literature had its limited reach
whereas literature written in English had a much larger reader
base. Translation of these regional texts into English has not
just been a monotonous exercise of changing a text from one
language to the other rather it has been a creative process
through which the trio of the writer, the reader, and the
translator have been immensely benefitted. If the writer found a
wider platform to showcase his writings, the reader got
familiarised with a world/worldview that was inaccessible to
him due to the lack of proficiency in a particular language. In
an article published in Financial Times, fiction editor R.
Sivapriya at Juggernaut Books, a digitally oriented Indian
publishing house, comments, “The most experimental and most
MANTO’S VERSIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD 87

ambitious novels I’ve read tend to be translations… If you

claim you are publishing the best and most interesting Indian
fiction, a large part of it has to come from the Indian
languages.” In the same article, there is an important
observation from author and critic, Nilanjana Roy, who says
that the literary “snobbery” that previously favoured English-
language fiction is eroding. “There is a sense that Indian
languages are no longer the stepchildren languages… They may
not get the global attention they deserve, but there is a lot of
confidence in the Indian languages – a feeling that they can
hold their own” (Kazmin 2016). In the same vein, giving
importance to the English translation of regional literature, from
Mini Krishnan, publishing consultant at OUP states,

I publish translations of Indian writing because in them lie our

own histories, our sense of identity and belonging; because we
need to breathe our native breath; because it is our historical duty
in a largely illiterate country to preserve our words, our worlds,
and slow their disappearance. In the indigenous writing of the
subcontinent lay the memories and history of a people who
are rapidly losing their languages. What better service than to
retrieve and reinterpret a body of work which is emotionally
important for India? (Mishra 2016)

However, one must assert that not all translations will meet the
intentions with which it has been translated. One such
translation was Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman published
in 2014 and translated into English by a noted scholar
Aniruddhan Vasudevan. Originally published in Tamil as
Madhorubhagan, it is the story of a loving but a childless
Gounder couple in the temple town of Tiruchengode, Ponna and
Kali and their eagerness to have a child of their own. It is
important to note here that when the original novel came out in
2010, it was well received by the readers, so much so that
Penguin decided to publish its English translation. The English
translation surely met the aim of what is earlier mentioned to be
a “metropolitan experience” of bhasha literature as it opened to
rave reviews, but as it reached more and more readers, a
88 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

particular section of cultural fundamentalists got offended.

They blamed the novel’s content to be disrespectful towards
local women in particular and Tamil society and culture at
large. Such accusations made Murugan’s life a nightmare for a
transient period. In this regard, A. R. Venkatchalapathy made a
relevant observation on the change in the political equations of
Tamil Nadu that irked the Hindu fundamentalists and caste
purists. With AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam) marking its presence in the Legislative Assembly
elections in 2011, caste and patriarchy assertion became a part
of Tamil Nadu’s social garb (Venkatachalapathy 2016: 108).
Riding high on violence in the name of religion and cultural
predilections, right-wing fundamentalists and caste
supremacists created such controversy and agitation on Perumal
Murugan’s book, Madhorubhagan (One Part Woman), that he
had no choice but to announce on his Facebook page, one not so
fine day in 2015, his obituary of a sort that stated,

Friends, the following announcement will be on this Facebook

page for two days. After that Perumal Murugan will withdraw
from all social networks. Thanks to all those who supported him
on social networks.
This is P Murugan on behalf of the writer Perumal Murugan.
Writer Perumal Murugan is dead. He is not god so he will not
rise from the dead. He does not believe in rebirth. Hereafter only
the ordinary teacher P. Murugan is alive. Thanks to all the
magazines, associations, readers, friends, writers and human
beings who supported Perumal Murugan and fought for his
freedom of expression. The issue will not end with
‘Madhorupakan’. Other associations and individuals can raise a
question about any of his works. Therefore Perumal Murugan has
come to the following decision. He announces firmly that:
(1) Except for the edited and collected works by Perumal
Murugan all his novels, short stories, essays, poems and other
writings are withdrawn by him. No books of his will be
available for sale.
(2) The publishers of Perumal Murugan’s books like
Kalachuvadu, Natrinai, Adayalam, Malaikal, Kayal Kavin
are requested not to sell his books. Perumal Murugan will
fully compensate the loss incurred.
MANTO’S VERSIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD 89

(3) All those who have bought his books are free to burn them.
Any loss incurred will be compensated.
(4) I request that Perumal Murugan is not invited to any literary
programmes.
(5) As he is withdrawing all his books he requests organisations
based on caste, religion or part not to indulge in any
agitation.

Leave him alone.

Thanks to all.
P Murugan
For Perumal Murugan

(cf. Kannabiran 2015: 77)

For someone who had once said in an interview by Akila

Kannadasan, “I am a writer first. I started teaching since I
couldn’t make a living out of writing. Writing is my jeevan
(life). Teaching is my jeevanam (bread and butter)” (“Of desire,
despair and hope”), this cadaverous situation must have been
worse than death itself. Despite the fact that only a small
section of society indulged in this act of intimidation, somehow
silence of the government on the issue of his safety, when he
was facing threats of all sorts coupled with aggression of his
own people, made Murugan believe that the writer in him was
no more alive. Speaking with K Srilata at the launch of his
book, a collection of poems entitled, Mayanathil Nitkum
Maram (A Tree that Stands in the Crematorium) he recalled his
days after the controversy on his book took place, and said,

Between December 2014 and June 2016 I couldn’t so much as

scratch a line in the first three months. As though the fingers of
my heart had become numb. I couldn’t read a thing. Even when I
turned the newspaper my eyes would scan the print but my mind
would not absorb a word. I’d flip through the pages like an
illiterate person and fold it away. I consoled myself that there
were things to do in this world other than reading and writing.
And I did my best to turn my attention to them. But it was
impossible. It was then that I realised the full meaning of the
Tamil phrase, ‘nadaipinam’, ‘a walking corpse’. (Srilata 2016)
90 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

What is remarkable here is the datum that by reimagining the

creative discourses and recasting rigid social and cultural
identities, Murugan tried to offer riveting insights into the
cultural contours of the society that existed ages ago. These
rigid rabble-rousing protestors failed to appreciate his rich
sense of history and the fact that he was not only a writer but
also a doctorate in Tamil Literature with more than two decades
of teaching experience. In an extensive detail on such practice,
Venkatachalapathy writes in his article that in the pre-electricity
times, many childless couple sought to such solutions. In
today’s time, this may seems to be immoral and to certain
extent exotic but in those times women did indulge in
consensual sex in a carnivalesque atmosphere and the children
born out of such ritual were referred as samikoduthapilalai
(God-given children). He further states,

Such practices are by no means unique. Any anthropologist

would attest to similar practices in many pre-modern societies
with no access to assisted conception. Classical Hindu traditions
refer to this practice as niyoga – it’s even termed niyoga dharma,
an indication of its religious sanction. Noted scholars such as A.
Sivasubramaniam, A.K. Perumal, and S. Theodore Baskaran have
vouched for the existence of such practices in other parts of Tamil
Nadu. (Venkatachalapathy 2016: 107)

In One Part Woman, Kali’s mother informs Ponna and Kali that
their family has been cursed by Pavatha (female deity of the
jungle) and therefore they should offer her sacrifice etc. so that
she can be pleased. They must also climb the varadikkal (barren
woman’s rock), located on the hills of Tiruchengode to be
blessed with a child. When all this attempt fails, she also
suggests Kali to send Ponna the Ardhnareeshwara temple on
the eighteenth day of the chariot festival when consensual sex
by any woman and man is sanctioned. She says, “All men who
set their foot in Karattur on the eighteenth day are gods. It is
god who is giving this. Who knows which god comes with what
face? It is the nature of gods not to reveal their faces” (Murugan
2013: 96). Such is the societal pressure to bear a child that the
MANTO’S VERSIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD 91

couple fails to be on the same page regarding this. Generally,

it’s the woman who is blamed for not bearing a child. To quote
some references from the text, “For seven years now, there had
been a talk of second marriage-both openly and secretively. As
a result, many people had become the objects of Ponnayi’s
hatred” (p. 10), “That is just how some cows are. No matter
what you do, they never get pregnant. Just quietly change the
cow. If you say yes, I can fetch you one right away” (p. 10). It
is she who is primarily made to bear the brunt of unpleasant
remarks and insinuations. Ponna is in the dilemma of what
Kannabiran appropriately puts as, “In a society where
barrenness is a curse, should Ponna step out of the confines of
monogamy to beget a child in a legitimate and patriarchy
sanctioned “transgression?”” (Kannabiran 2015: 78). Kali is
unable to accept it as a ritual in which a man has to send his
woman to an unknown man, just for the sake of child. In his
younger days, he had himself gone to the temple on the
eighteenth day of the chariot festival, but he never thought of
himself as a god. He was also sure that Ponna would not agree
to such proposition but when she does, he is devastated. To
quote,

Do you remember how your mother and mine were whispering all
night to each other last year when she had come to invite us? Do
you know what they were talking about?...I didn’t tell you only
because I wasn’t sure how you would take it…Will you listen to
your mother and mine and go on the day when the god
retreat?...She murmured: ‘If you want me to go for the sake of
this wretched child, I will.’ His hold around her relaxed. This was
not the answer he had expected. He moved away from her
(Murugan 2013: 107-108)

As the events unfold, Ponna visits the temple during the chariot
festival. The novel ends abruptly as Kali discovers that Ponna
has gone to the temple despite him not being very willing of it.
He yells, “You whore! You have cheated me! You will not be
happy. You have cheated me, you whore…” (Murugan 2013:
240)
92 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

Beneath these perceptible layers of human emotions and

misery, various conjectures related to caste, gender, culture,
religious and moral dictums can be established. The case
against Perumal Murugan was taken up in the court and his
right to write was kept intact. In 2016, Madras High Court
comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Pushpa
Sathyanarayana gave verdict on Murugan’s case stating,

Whether the society is ready to read a particular book and absorb

what it says without being offended, is a debate which has been
raging for years together. Times have changed. What was not
acceptable earlier became acceptable later. “Lady Chatterley’s
Lover” is a classic example of it. The choice to read is always
with the reader. If you do not like a book, throw it away. There is
no compulsion to read a book. Literary tastes may vary – what is
right and acceptable to one may not be so to others. Yet, the right
to write is unhindered... The author Prof. Perumal Murugan
should not be under fear. He should be able to write and advance
the canvass 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. The answer cannot be that it
was his own decision to call himself dead as a writer. It was not a
free decision, but a result of a situation which was created. Time
is a great healer and we are sure, that would hold true for Perumal
Murugan as well as his opponents; both would have learnt to get
along with their lives, we hope by now, in their own fields, and
bury this issue in the hatchet as citizens of an advancing and
vibrant democracy. We hope our judgment gives a quietus to the
issue with introspection on all sides. Time also teaches us to
forget and forgive and see beyond the damage. If we give time its
space to work itself out, it would take us to beautiful avenues. We
conclude by observing this – “Let the author be resurrected to
what he is best at. Write.”2

It is at this juncture that one has to analyze the liaison between

the literary texts and the whole process of censorship. Murugan
had to leave his hometown but eventually the kind of
recognition he received post-ban and burning of his book is just
unfathomable. One can appropriately quote Venkatchalapathy
in this regard who writes,
MANTO’S VERSIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD 93

Despite publishing primarily in alternative and little magazines,

recognition has been steady in coming. Three of his novels have
been translated into English, and one each into Polish and
Malayalam. In the wake of the controversy, more translations are
in the offing. The Season of the Psalms was shortlisted for the
prestigious Japanese Kiriyama Prize. His name was tipped for the
2014 Sahitya Akademi award… Ironically, this author who
shunned the limelight came into public glare. (2016: 108)

In most of the cases, be it Samaresh Bose’s Prajapati, Taslima

Nasrin’s Lajja or the very recent Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s
The Adivasi will not Dance, any act of censoring the text and
the author has actually opened up vistas in which the writer and
his/her creative content and intent both have found its grasp and
acceptance. To say the least, the whole route of censorship has
acted as a prelude to the dialogue between the rigid ideologies
of the State and radical expression of the Writer. The writer or
an artist may not aim/long for political correctness. In the
context of Indian women writers, Ammu Joseph (2006) in her
article, ‘The Censor Within’ discusses the “good girl
syndrome” (p. 303) for women writers who are constantly
struggling with what can they write and what they can’t, if at all
they have written, whether it can be published or not. Certainly,
this term can be rephrased as a “good writer syndrome” wherein
a writer is incessantly conscious of his writings in terms of
socio-political acceptance. One has to remember that even in a
writer’s creative and emotional expression, it’s the narrative
that holds the possibility of “being” as it’s not interpreted by the
reflection upon the writers’ imagination alone. Though said in a
different context, Strauss’s terms “exoteric (public)” and
“esoteric (secret)” can be an appropriate rubric for the
interpretation of meaning in a given text. In the age of
censorship, if writing becomes a liability to be fulfilled, it will
lose the spontaneity that is quintessential to a classic writing.
Mini Chandran makes an important remark in this context
which is very much in line with Madras High Court judgement
on Murugan. She writes, “The writer’s partner in the creative
act – his/her decoder and confidante – is the reader. Censorship
94 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

debates hardly acknowledge the personality of the reader; this is

a paradox considering the fact that the debate is always about
the impact of the work on the reader” (2017: xxxii). Derrida’s
entire model of meaning “deconstruction” is based on
multiplicity of meaning in a text/sign. One should also
understand that the writers do not just write to subscribe or to
endorse a particular ideology or sentiment; it is rather an
amalgamation that definitely includes common concern. The
novel was published years ago and was in circulation but the
kind of soaring sales it led to after Murugan made the headlines
is beyond imagination of any regional writer. In an age of
intolerance, Murugan’s tolerance was appreciated as he was
supported by the writers. Just to name a few, he was
interviewed by the famous journalist Barkha Dutt for NDTV
that said, ‘A Writer Resurrected’ and by Arnab Goswami on
Times Now entitled ‘The News hour Debate: Fringe Forced
Him To Quit.’ In a very stimulating debate on dissent, Salil
Tripathi, in his article, ‘In Search of Tolerance’, brings in his
references from colonial times to the postcolonial one, from
Gandhi to Rushdie to Govind Nihalani and carves their ideas in
such a way that despite being a voice of dissent one can’t help
but wonder at the power of tolerance as well. He emphasizes
the virtue of tolerance in a democratic society and expects that
there should be room for the ideas and ideals of all. If people
don’t learn to tolerate, the society will strike a perpetual war
with itself (Tripathi 2016).
Therefore, looking for any sort of homogeneity is no less
than a crime, as one’s adaptability depends upon their
experiences, shared ethos etc. What is legitimate, acceptable in
one culture may differ from other. Thus, translation undergoes
an entire reconceptualization process to bring in the nuances of
the original with least lapses, either in terms of grammar,
syntax and certain untranslatable features that are unique to the
original. However, despite such a carefulness, censoring is a
sword that is hanging above the author’s neck, sometimes, if
not always.
MANTO’S VERSIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD 95

NOTES

1. Madras High Court judgement regarding Perumal Murugan,

accessed on 22 May 2018, available online:
<https://www.thehinducentre.com/multimedia/archive/02922/Per
umal_Murugan_Ju_2922046a.pdf>.
2. Ibid.

REFERENCES

Chandran, M. 2017. The Writer, the Reader and the State: Literary
Censorship in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Joseph, A. 2006. The censor within. In Brinda Bose (Ed.), Gender &
Censorship. Women Unlimited.
Kannabiran, K. 2015. Storytelling in the time of hate: Deciphering
law(s) through literature. Economic and Political Weekly, L/20,
76-83. Available online:
<https://www.jnu.ac.in/sites/default/files/
12th%20Dr.%20Ambedkar%20Memorial%20Lecture.pdf>.
Kannadasan, A. 2015. Of desire, despair and hope. The Hindu, 02 Jan.
Available online: <http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/
namakkalbased-author-perumal-murugan-talks-about-his-novel-
madhorubhagan/article6748836.ece>.
Kazmin, A. 2016. Regional Indian language authors finding wider
audiences. Financial Times, 27 Sep. Available online:
<https://www.ft.com/content/839465ce-3ed3-11e6-8716-
a4a71e81 40b0>
Mishra, B. 2016. Conversations: Mini Krishnan and Bhanumati
Mishra on publishing Indian translation. The Critical Flame: A
Journal of Literature and Culture, 45. Available online:
<http://criticalflame.org/conversations-mini-krishnan-and-
bhanumati-mishra-on-publishing-indian-translation/>.
Murugan, P. 2013. One Part Woman. Trans. Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
Tamil Nadu: Penguin Books India.
Srilata, K. 2016. Perumal Murugan: The before and the after. The
Wire, 17 Dec. Available online:
<https://thewire.in/books/perumal-murugan>.
Strauss, L. Strauss on G. E. Lesang. Leo Strauss on Esotericism &
Exotericism. Available online: <https://archive.org/details/
LeoStraussOnEsotericismExotericism>.
 96 PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

Tripathi, S. 2016. In search of tolerance. In K. Satchidanandan (Ed. &

Intro), Words Matter: Writings Against Silence (pp. 206-216).
India: Penguin Books.
Venkatachalapathy, A. R. 2016. Who killed Perumal Murugan. In K.
Satchidanandan (Ed. & Intro), Words Matter: Writings Against
Silence (pp. 105-115). India: Penguin Books.

DR. PRIYANKA TRIPATHI

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH,
DEPT. OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES,
IIT PATNA.
E-MAIL: <PRIYANKATRIPATHI@IITP.AC.IN>

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