In Tamil Nadu, many shades of intolerance

Tamil Nadu largely stayed out of the national intolerance debate that raged among artists and writers. In the absence of religious polarization, that debate did not resonate here but intolerance took on a big avatar as organizations, big and small, representing communities mounted campaigns against individuals.
The most symbolic was that of Tamil writer Perumal Murugan being hounded by a dominant caste group over alleged derogatory allusions in his book `Madhurobhagan' (One Part Woman) to certain promiscuous practices in a temple in Tiruchengode of Namakkal district.
Murugan, a teacher at the government arts college in Namakkal, has since shifted to Chennai saying he felt insecure and even posted a disturbing message on Facebook that Perumal Murugan, the writer, was dead.
Tiruchengode was again in the spot light in mid-September with a young woman police officer Vishnupriya hailing from a scheduled caste committing suicide allegedly due to harassment by her supe rior officer while investigating the murder of a dalit youth Gokulraj who was apparently seen chatting to an upper caste girl and done to death by caste fanatics.
Perumal Murugan's publisher Kannan Sundaram believes intolerance has been on the rise in Tamil Nadu for many years, not just in 2015, due to the rise of majoritarian casteism. No political party or movement in the state has a clear perspective of freedom of expression, he reckons. “For instance, people who supported Perumal Murugan's freedom to express a point of view, are now at the throat of Tamil actor and playback singer Silambarasan alias Simbu over his Beep song,“ he says.
“I have no problem with protest meetings, processions, show of black flags or even burning of effigies, but approaching the police to arrest Simbu and using rulings to remove content from YouTube curtails freedom of expression,“ he says. Kannan points to how the state's literary milieu often works in a rigid framework and wonders if anybody can write an honest, critical biography of icons like Annadurai, Karunanidhi, Jeeva, Kamaraj, Periyar or Jayalalithaa in Tamil without being threatened by court orders or mobs on the streets.
Art historian Nanditha Krishna, president of the C P Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, has a different take. “I thought Perumal Murugan's book was a beautiful work of literature. However, one community felt that it was denigrating them. Although I did not get the message that anyone had been denigrated in that book, in a multi-cultural and highly sensitive society like India, one should refrain from m a k i n g re m a rk s about other religions, castes and communities (including one's own),“ she observed.
Touching on the recent episode of a French student of Sri Lankan origin being assaulted by some faculty loyal to the state government when he raised questions about the measures taken to tackle floods, Nanditha said she disapproved of such vigilante inci dents. “If somebody feels that they are being insulted, please file a defamation case. There is a law in this country and the law should be followed. If everybody took the law into their hands, we would have anarchy ,“ she says.
Political commentator Gnani Sankaran says in Perumal Murugan's case, it was intolerance of a casteist fundamentalist group, not the public. In folk singer Kovan's case, it was intolerance of the powers that be that he was arrested for lampooning the CM. Simbu's beep song was not an issue of intolerance as much as indecency in the public domain, he said.
Tamil writer Ashoka Mi tran believes Perumal Murugan's novel is not offensive but some characters are identified by their caste. He says it is difficult to dissociate religion and caste aspects in India.“I don't agree that 2015 only was year of intolerance, which is actually the hallmark of societies across the world. Other times also there have been riots, violence and ex-communication is still prevalent,“ he says.