MADURAI: Tamil writer Imayam’s short story Pethavan (The Begetter), which created a stir in the State after it was found to have foretold a real life tragedy in Dharmapuri in 2012, will soon be made available for global readers as a major publishing house is set to bring out the English translation as part of a novella series.
As an interpreter of caste maladies, Imayam, a Dalit from the Vanniyar dominated pocket, has touched a raw nerve in some sections of society and has been a target of hate mails and threats from casteist politicians, who pick on his writings. The literary and intellectual worlds in Tamil Nadu, however, recognised his understanding of the prevalent caste dynamics, particularly in the context of matrimonial alliances, after the death of the father of Divya, a Vanniyar girl who eloped with Ilavarasan, triggering a riot in November 2012. For the climax of Pethavan, which was published two months earlier, was similar.
As one who has helplessly watched young people, who dared to marry or even fall in love outside their caste, dying suddenly and has grown up hearing about diktats of unofficial caste panchayats, Imayam wrote the story based on a real-life incident, in which a bold man let his daughter marry the Dalit boy of her choice and fled to an unknown destination, defying the caste panchayat’s order to kill the girl.
But he made the main character in his story, which first appeared in the Tamil magazine Uyirmei, commit suicide and not run away. Two months later when Divya’s father killed himself, provoking widespread public anger, the intellectual world did not miss the similarities with the Pethavan climax. It was popularly suggested that the predicament of Divya’s father could had been the same as that of the story’s main character, Pazhani, who kills himself as he did not want to follow the orders of his caste leaders and kill his daughter Bhagayam for being in love with a Dalit.
The suggestions were enough for him to earn the wrath of leaders playing caste politics. But Imayam’s fame and name spread to the neighbouring states and his story was translated into Telugu and Malayalam. Tirupathi University even prescribed the story’s translated version as a text book. A student group from Pondicherry University tried to stage a play based on the story but was asked to put it off on the pretext of elections.
Now that the elections are over and the Dharmapuri constituency was won by the party whose supporters were accused of torching houses in the aftermath of the death of Divya’s father, Imayam told Express: “Caste feelings are going up nowadays when compared to yesteryear, both among the uneducated and educated populations. Not just that more caste-based parties are coming up, they get popular support, too. Besides, even other parties select candidates based on their caste, knowing which caste group is dominated in which area.”