In for the Long Fight: A meeting with Perumal Murugan’s publisher

As Perumal Murugan awaits the Madras high court’s verdict on the petition filed in his favour by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Kannan Sundaram, publisher at Kalachuvadu Publications, spoke to Caravan staffer Serena Peck at the Delhi World Book Fair about the controversy around Murugan’s Madhorubagan (One Part Woman) and the author’s decision to give up writing.

Serena Peck: You stood by Perumal Murugan’s decision to take One Part Woman off the shelf and also to put the book back into circulation with his edits. You’ve said that you would not have had issue with keeping the original version in circulation, so what made you take this approach?

Kannan Sundaram: Since this affair started in December, I’ve had to balance between two positions. One is what I think should be done as a publisher, as a public intellectual. My position is that we should not have any discussion with the opposition party; there must be no compromise on this, or negotiation. He [Murugan] needed to leave the town [Namakkal] because the situation on the ground was very bad, and then face whatever happened legally or through public discussion. But, simultaneously, as his publisher, as his friend, when he took a separate, independent position, I tried to understand where that was coming from. I don’t think that, because he made those decisions, he’s a coward, and that what I’m doing is the only right thing to do. There can be two positions on this. And what he has done is also is a very different way of protesting. Renouncing, showing the other cheek, are protests too. It actually was more effective in the sense that his statement really shook the world. So, legally, I can print the book, but I thought that he felt that he and his family are in danger, and therefore he needs to do certain things. So I didn’t take a legal view or commercial view on this. I just agreed to go by his wishes. But even as I obeyed his wishes, many times I didn’t agree with him.

SP: Do you think other publishers are giving in to pressure when they should be standing by books and their writers?

KS: I think other publishers are facing certain legal procedures. Fortunately in India, the courts probably will give a decision in favour of freedom of expression. But the procedure itself is the punishment. So I cannot offer a comment on the publishers. But in the court’s procedure, certain clauses in the law are open to harassment. I think we have to address that problem. And I can’t say a publisher must go the court for ten years to stand by his author. That may be difficult, even impossible. Generally, I would say that publishers should stand by the writers and they should stand for freedom of expression, because without freedom of expression, there will not be a healthy publishing situation in India. Today, any party can go to a local police station and say that this artist or this writer has hurt their sentiments, and then the policeman can go arrest the writer and file an FIR. I think that’s quite a dangerous situation. Probably, leading lawyers and public intellectuals should approach the Supreme Court and ask for guidelines on how to handle these issues. There are clauses like 295A that are used to harass people. So those need to be dealt with properly.

SP: What exactly led Perumal Murugan to tender his apology?

KS: I may not know the whole story. I only know what I have observed and what he has told me. From what I could understand was that, at first, he felt he had a greater responsibility to his family and to his students, and he was not in a position to leave the town immediately. Second, he did not want to leave the place where he has lived for all these years. I know that some years ago he got a better job in a different part of Tamil Nadu, which he let go of because he didn’t want to leave this town. He basically writes only about the part of the state called Kongunadu. He wants to live among those people and write about that region, and that is what he has done all his life. He wanted to make his best effort to stay there. And third, I think he was deeply hurt that his own community turned against him, abusing him, holding a bandh against him, and he thought he should do all he could to keep the doors open, talk to them, and show them that he has no such intention in his mind. Those were the reasons that he was very keen to open a discussion and accept conditions that he was not ready to accept. The entire process sort of had him locked down, which led to that statement.

SP: Did you as a publisher have any threats directed at you?

KS: I did. My office got some calls, I got calls. My wife got some nasty postings on her Facebook page. I didn’t want to make that big of an issue out of it because I felt that the focus should remain on the writer. What he was undergoing was a hundred times more than what I was undergoing. But strangely, where I live, Nagercoil, is the only BJP constituency in Tamil Nadu.

SP: When the novel was first published in 2010 in Tamil, was there any opposition to it?

KS: The novel sold well, and there were a lot of responses to the novel that were of a literary nature. Especially from women readers. “Why did you end the story like this?” Not questions of hurt sentiments. He wrote two novels this year, opening up two possibilities to that controversial novel’s end, which we thought was a very creative way of responding to those criticisms. I never came across any woman reader who thought this book was insulting to women or anybody else. They could very well empathise with both the characters, Ponna and Kali. And some of them were angry. “Why did Kali have to die?” So then Murugan planned the two sequels, A, Kali dies, how does life proceed after that? Then B, Kali doesn’t die, and then how does life proceed after that? Those are two questions he kept open. That’s what the new novels are about. Both the novels have been published: Ardhanari and Alavayan.

SP: When did the opposition to the book actually begin? Was there a particular incident that sparked it?

KS: For the whole of November he wasn’t at Namakkal. He was at Sangam Residency near Bangalore, where he was finalizing Alavayan and Ardhanari, the sequels to Madhorubagan. Soon after he returned, a group of people came and took a copy of his novel from him. He got the feeling that they disagreed with the novel. After some time he called me, say around 8 December, and told me that he was getting abusive calls. Initially, I tried to play it down, because angry people of the [Gounder] caste, community calling him over his work was not anything new. That has happened before. Some people thought characters in his earlier novels were based on them and they were also angry. Every community, not just this community, feels like it has some inner secrets, you know. And when a writer reveals them, they’re ashamed or embarrassed. So those things have happened in the past. This is not anything new. It is not his first controversy, it wasn’t my first controversy, but nothing blew up to the extent it has now. That’s the only difference. I don’t think any writer feels free to write as he wishes in India today. All of them are a editing their work as they write, which I think is what we should be most concerned about.

SP: Are there any indications that the author will start writing again?

KS: His position is that a writer cannot write with fear in his heart. We have to wait for the Madras high court judgment; and since he has now transferred to Chennai, does he feel free to write what he wants to write or is his writing going to be scanned by culture vultures from now on? He’s a government servant, and in that context, there is a professor in Kerala whose hand was cut off for asking a dangerous question. So, those things are very real. And he has his wife and two children with him. So, it’s a very difficult question. But I hope that the high court judgment will put the matter to rest. Already the Hindutva groups are saying that they won’t go along with the court’s decision. It’s just like another Ram Janmabhoomi issue where public sentiments are more important. I think we are in for a long fight on this.