MADURAI: The progressive forces across the country have stood up in support of Tamil writer Perumal Murugan when the reactionary forces seeking a ban on his book Madhorubhagan and forced him to go on self-imposed exile, but people hardly knew about few other Tamil writers who were also ostracised for questioning the caste norms.
Dalit writer Durai Guna and subaltern writer Ma Mu Kannan from Pudukottai district who came to participate in the protest meeting organised by the Freedom of Expression Struggle Movement to express solidarity with these writers on Saturday said that their lives were in constant danger because they questioned the caste system. Durai Guna and his family members were forced to leave Kulathiranpattu village, Pudukottai district because he wrote a novel Oorar Varaintha Oviyam depicting discrimination faced by Dalits in the village.
“I didn’t write social history of events that happened a 100 years ago. My novels narrated the every day discrimination faced by my community now,” said Guna to Express at the function.
He claimed that the local CPI (M) workers acted in connivance with caste Hindus of the village to ostracize him. “The Caste Hindus decided to ostracize my family only after consulting the local communist party members in August 2014. They were present when the village panchayat took the decision,” claimed Guna who was also a CPI (M) worker and a member of the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Association. Guna’s father was also a communist. Durai Guna was motivated to write the novel after he saw an incident of a temple priest attacking a Dalit boy for touching the holy ash in the village temple.