THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘Pavangal,’ the Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ was one of the sparks that led E M S Namboodiripad to Marxist ideology, author and MP Shashi Tharoor has said.
According to Tharoor, Nalappattu Narayana Menon made a transformative act by translating ‘Les Miserables’ into Malayalam. “This was no simple transference of words; it was a cultural transplantation. And the soil of Kerala received it not just with curiosity, but with revolutionary gratitude,” he said.
The work had a profound impact on Kerala politics, he said. “So profound was this impact that E M S Namboodiripad, the first chief minister of Kerala and a stalwart of Indian Communism, openly credited ‘Pavangal’ as one of the sparks that led him to Marxist ideology.
“The fire ignited by Hugo burned brightly in young political minds of the time. The novel stirred a generation not merely to weep, but to act,” he said.
Tharoor was speaking at the launch of ‘Pardon My French,’ book shelf at DC Books store here on Thursday. He also had a conversation with French Ambassador Thierry Mathou at the event.
‘Pavangal’ changed the very trajectory of Malayalam literature and social thought. “For the first time, readers here encountered a literary hero like Jean Valjean - broken by systems, redeemed by compassion, awakened to justice. It lit the torch of conscience in countless readers,” he said.
The book offered prominent modern novelists Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, O V Vijayan and others a new idiom of empathy, a new narrative possibility, a new lens through which to view the oppressed and the invisible, he said.
According to Tharoor, reading French literature is to step into a world where beauty and pain walk hand in hand. “The moral complexity of Camus, the passion of Hugo, the subtle defiance of Colette, the psychological depth of Duras... these are not just artistic achievements, but guides to understanding the human condition,” he said.