Mathorupagan & Reality Check

Perumal Murugan’s Mathorupagan is the latest addition to the long list of books and other art forms that have been subjected to strong opposition in India for offending the sentiments of a community.

While the opposition for Mathorupagan was projected as a suppression of 'Freedom of speech' by the media and fellow writers,  realitycheck, a blog, has attempted to give a different perspective on this issue. With a contrived example of a toothpaste advert that could possibly result in a defamation suit, realitycheck points out the limits of free speech in a fictitious story.

“I take out an ad in the newspaper saying that there is proof that Colgate toothpaste causes oral cancer. Assuming The Hindu newspaper in a valiant hurrah to my right of expression publishes the ad. I will end up with a lawsuit by evening. Why should Colgate sue me for this and not publish a book explaining in detail why my claim is wrong?” 

- Reality Check India

One of main points in the mentioned post is that the vivid description of the offending event and the precise details like cast name, especially without a lack of a substantial evidence makes the protesters case stronger and even justified.

“There is no ambiguity in the book. The Vaigasi Visagam festivities, the chariot being pulled around town, the little details like the four streets, the various deities, descriptions of the fair, and on and on. The last day of the function he writes was “full of women over 30″ and on that day “all women are prostitutes”. The caste names also leave no room for ambiguity – it is about the womenfolk of Kongu Vellala Gounders.”

-Reality Check India

But after reading the book I felt that certain details, especially the usage of caste name, are not as precise as mentioned above. The edition I am referring to here is the third edition of the book, published in November 2012 by Kalachuvadu in Tamil.

To start with, to say that it is about the womenfolk of Kongu Vellala Gounders appears to me as a perceived thought. There is no direct mention in the book that the controversial ritual was practised only among the women of this caste. The family of the lead characters, Kali and Ponna talk about this ritual resulting in Ponna participating in it. Kaali and his relatives, at various points in the book, are casually addressed only as Gounders and not Kongu Vellala Gounder. 

Today, in popular notion, Gounders may be synonymous with Kongu Vellala Gounders. But the story is not set in contemporary times. There are subtle, but clear, evidences that the story is happening circa 1945. Even to infer that the Gounders referred by the author is in fact Kongu Vellala Gounders, based on the backdrop of the story, one should know the demography of the type of Gounders lived in and around Thiruchengode area around that time.

Currently there are more than one type of Gounders and it appears that not all Gounders are Kongu Vellala Gounders. The current list of Backward Communities approved by Government of Tamil Nadu has listed both Gounders and Kongu Vellalalars separately. Also the list has mentioned another caste Urali Gounder or Oorudaya Gounder in the district of Namakkal -- the district where the story takes place. But said that these data are most likely compiled in recent times and one has to know what type of Gounders lived in 1940s in that area to infer which Gounder was implied in the story. So, when the book mentions only the caste as Gounder, to state that “it is about the womenfolk of Kongu Vellala Gounders.” seems to be only an interpretation of realitycheck.

This difference in the caste name may seem trivial, but for those who haven't read the book in full and has read only realitycheck's post might incorrectly conclude that, the author has used this specific caste name. A quick look at the comments section of the above mentioned article will support this point. In spite of me pointing, in the comments section of the article, that there is no mention of Kongu Vellala Gounder in the book, a commenter still insisted that it is about Kongu Vellala Gounders. To quote “he has explicity used caste names, in detail..the main character is a Kongu Vellala Gounder”.

Realitycheck, in response to my comment, used 'THAT CASTE'  instead of the specific caste name. I believe this is probably because realitycheck agrees that Kongu Vellala Gounder was not used in the book.

“...The story did not involve Kali/Ponna making a secret pact or that she slyly did this on her own. But that it was a normal social practice in THAT CASTE as handed down by the old ladies. It may or may not have involved other castes, but that is not relevant. It may have dissipated the matter if storyline had Ponna participating with other community women.”.

-Reality Check India

But still, to say that it is a practice in 'THAT CASTE' seems to me, again, as an inference rather than what has been actually said. 

To quote from the book: In an instance where Muthu, Ponna’s brother, persuades Kaali to send Ponna to the event, he describes this as 'nothing new and it is only an age old practice'.  

“இது ஒன்னும் புதுசில்ல மாப்ள. காலகாலமா வந்துகிட்டு இருக்கற வழமொறதான” 

- pp 117

Though Muthu mentions it as an age old practice, he does not say whether it is a practice only among their community, or their family or the festival goers or among the people of the district. So to say that it is a common practice in 'THAT CASTE' is only an assumption. Even when Murugan narrates the event, he first describes it as 'any consented men and women can have intercourse on that night'. And in the next paragraph he says, 'no unmarried woman will be sent to the event. Women over 30 can be seen.'

“...கொண்டடத்தின் உச்சத்தில் வரைமுறைகள் எல்லாம் தகர்ந்து போகும். அந்த இரவே சாட்சி. இணங்கும் எந்த ஆணும் பெண்ணும் உறவு கொள்ளலாம்...திருமணமாகாத பெண்களை யாரும் அனுப்பமாட்டார்கள். முப்பது வயதுக்கு மேற்பட்ட பெண்களை எங்கும் காணலாம்.  ” 

- pp 87

Even here, Murugan does not associate the specified caste to the event.

I can understand if it is argued that the narration shows 'married women' or 'women over thirty' or 'any women or anyone attending the festival' in bad light. But to narrow it down to a certain caste seems inappropriate.

Similarly, reading the snippets and quotes may not always provide us the context. In the absence of a context, words can carry different meanings. The quote 'all women are prostitutes' from the book sounds quite offensive on its own. But in the context, where a prostitute, living in a street of prostitutes, who expects no customers on that day, says 'Who is going to see[visit] us today? Today, all women are prostitutes', the tone may be different. It is in this context that this quote is used in the book. 

“...இறக்கத்துக் கோயிலுக்கு எதிரே இருந்த தேவடியாள் தெருவில் அன்றைக்கு கூட்டமேயில்லை... 'இன்னக்கி நம்மள எவன் பாக்கறான். எல்லாப் பொம்பளைங்களும் இன்னக்கித் தேவடியாதான்' என்று அவர்கள் பேசிச் சிரித்துப் போனார்கள்.”

--pp 87 

Not everyone who might be offended by the first quote may feel offended when they read it in the context. Similarly, the meanings of these quotes might change when it is read in entirety. 

The point here is neither to dissuade people, communities from getting offended nor to argue that Mathorupagan is not as offensive as it has been criticized. But it is to show that that different people can interpret the same work differently. My inference or understanding of the story is different from that of realitycheck's (realitycheck indeed read the Tamil version of the book before writing the article). So I believe one should go through the full content himself\herself, be it a movie or a book, before feeling offended. If not, one may end up being offended by someone else's perception of the content rather than his or hers. This is highly likely in case of books, for a book does not always attain its meaning at the hands of the author but in the minds of the reader.

Still Counting the Dead

One of the problems with books on conflict reporting are in understanding the impartiality of the author. If the author belongs to one of the groups involved, they risk being biased towards their own people. But, being a complete outsider also has its own limitations -- trying to be neutral, the author may fail to relate with the conditions of the affected people.

'Still Counting the Dead' is a reportage on the last days of the Sri Lanka - LTTE civil war based on experiences of some of the Tamil survivors -- both civilians and rebels. Frances Harrison, the book’s author, is neither a complete outsider nor belong to one of the affected groups. Harrison's experience as a BBC Correspondent in Sri Lanka between 2000 and 2004 and the work she had done in the Tsunami affected areas of coastal Sri Lanka has given her a first hand experience of interacting with Tamils and watching the rebel Tigers in their own backyard.

Harrison limits the scope of the book to, "...an account of victory from the perspective of the defeated." Having said that, Harrison does not take anything away from what the Sinhalese soldiers and civilians also had to experience during the war. She acknowledges their suffering at the hands of the Tigers. But, for her, to report any Sinhalese's suffering is beyond the purview of the book.

The survivors interviewed in the book, come from different walks of life: an UN aid worker, a Tamil Journalist, a front line LTTE fighter, a Doctor, a Nun, a shopkeeper and many more. Though not all of these survivors were part of 'The Movement' -- a term used by locals for the LTTE, it becomes obvious, during the course of the read, that the day to day life of these survivors were entwined with the rebels irrespective of whether they support the movement or not.  

The LTTE, unlike other terrorist organizations, was not just armed rebels. For almost two decades, they had been the de facto administrators of the rebel controlled regions. As Harrison puts it, “the civilians had little choice but to work in the Tiger's banks, cooperative shops, agricultural institutes, colleges and law courts. It didn't mean they were fighters who'd undergone military training”. They were literally running a state within a state and even had an “immigration” post which decided who could enter and leave their region. This entanglement had transformed the region like a wheat field with tares. And what happened at the end of the war was like what Joshua had said in the Gospel according to Biff  “you can't pull out the tares without destroying the grain.”

The last stages of the war had scarred the lives of many Tamil civilians. Almost everyone who were interviewed mentioned how they and many more like them lost their properties, livelihood and had to be on a constant move for fear of losing their life. Bunkers became not only their new homes but also their place to defecate and their place to leave the dead unburied. With the number of injured outnumbering the available facilities and with insufficient surgical supplies, doctors operated without anaesthesia and sometimes had to amputate with butcher knives. The injured mother who died while her baby was still feeding; the doctors who performed a caesarean delivery on the road; a baby trying to feed from its mother who was probably dead -- incidents like these may be difficult to come to terms with for someone who has never witnessed a war, but they seem to be a common sight in a war zone.

The ubiquitous claim among these stories is the unforgiving attack of the army. These survivors believe that the civilians had been targeted intentionally. The aid worker, in his story, describes heavy attacks on civilian areas in spite of transmitting their locations to the military. Similarly, a doctor interviewed for the book also claims that the hospitals were under constant attack. The attacks on the medical facilities were so consistent that eventually the doctors decided not to disclose their locations in order to prevent further attacks. A similar claim is made on the military declared safe zones as well. The survivors say in the book that the military would drop pamphlets from the air providing the locations of no-fire zones and asking civilians to move there. And as soon as they relocate and settle in these safe zones they would be attacked.

Many Tamils have suffered not only from the attacking army, but also from their own people – the Tigers. The LTTE had been notorious for using child and under-age soldiers. In the peak of the war, when the Tigers casualties were high, it appears that the forcible recruitment of children had increased. One of the front line LTTE soldiers interviewed in the book denies that the recruits were under-age, but accepts “ [recruits] been forced to join and spent their whole time complaining”. In another story, a teenage sniper described to one of the interviewees how her mother used to hide her in a travelling bag to protect her from the LTTE recruits. These forcible recruitments had created animosity between the civilians and the LTTE.

The incident, where an angry Tamil woman, whose nephew was forcibly taken over by the LTTE, being ready to handover the Tigers to the army surmises that the LTTE may not mean the same any more to many Tamils like her.

Besides forcible recruitment, the LTTE is also accused of exercising control over the movement of civilians from the war zone. According to the nun interviewed in the book, the rebels had a working “immigration” system and one had to get a pass that will allow them to travel in and out of the rebel area from a Tiger who also doubled up as an immigration officer. In addition to this, there are claims that the LTTE attacked their own people who attempted to flee the war zone. Though some of the interviewees deny that the Tigers shot at fleeing civilians, they did accept that civilians were intimidated and forced to stay in the war zone. The rebel's justification for this action is that as long as there are civilians in the war zone there is hope that the international community might intervene.

It is one thing to be a good samaritan when things are normal, but it is a total challenge to retain this character in times of adversity. Exploitation is a common behaviour when the demands for basic necessities shoot up and war zones are no exception. As much as there were incidents of people using the conditions to sell food and other products many times their original price, there were also stories of honourable and brave deeds. People shared their last remaining food and crowded bunkers; hid teenagers from rebel recruiters; declared unknown people as relatives to prevent the army from detaining them as terrorists. Kind acts like these only had saved some of the survivors Harrison had spoken to.

If the war was terrible, neither its end nor the surrender of Tamils to the military gave them relief. The experiences, narrated by the interviewees, in the various camps set up for the people coming out of the rebel region appears to be as worse as the war itself. There are alleged reports of rape, abuse and torture in many of these camps. Thanks to some of the corrupt soldiers in these camps, few fortunate Tamils have managed to pay these guards off and escape from them. Even long after the war was over, Tamils have experienced extortion, custodial rapes, disappearances and tortures in the name of identifying former Tigers.  'The Wife', one of the stories in the book, narrates such horrific experiences of a Tamil's wife who was once part of the movement.

For various reasons, including geopolitical one, the international community and Sri Lanka's neighbours like India failed to take stringent actions to protect the civilians. There were also some strange decisions by United Nations, like asking the aid workers to evacuate the region at a time when their presence was most needed. Though the reason for this is cited as the region becoming too dangerous for the aid workers to stay, critics see this as an action taken by Sri Lankan government to avoid outside witnesses. Moreover, the presence of foreign aid workers in the war zone means the military may not be able to go on a full throttled attack. Whatever may be the reason, it is apparent that the international community has let down yet another group of civilians. Harrison acknowledges this throughout the book and has dedicated a separate chapter rightly titled - 'The War the United Nations Lost'.

Though I sympathise with these survivors, I cannot refrain questioning how much of these stories are true to a tee. Harrison also expresses a similar sentiment and accepts that she cannot prove every single detail of the account, in spite of all her attempts to find the truth. I completely agree, when Harrison says “... there never will be an agreed account of what actually took place in those final months of war – Sri Lankan history will continue to be written differently according to your ethnic group or political bias.” 'Still counting the Dead' should be read keeping this in mind.

Apart from reporting the stories of these survivors to the world, the key thing to take from the book lies in its conclusion. The need of the hour is to acknowledge the truth from both sides. Though the Sri Lankan inquiry finally acknowledged that the casualties were significant and hospitals were shelled, the report overlooked targeting civilians and sexual violence. Similarly, the Tamils and their diaspora who had been supporting the war financially all these years, should start recognizing LTTE's war crimes and their attacks on Tamil and Sinhalese civilians.

It is only around the time when Velupillai Prabhakaran was born, the Sri Lankan government had introduced policies that started alienating Tamils. This along with the standardization policy introduced in the 1970's are cited as a reason for the rise of Prabhakaran and formation of an organization that eventually became the LTTE. Harrison fears there is a possibility for this to reoccur in the future.

If the trauma caused by the 2009 war is not addressed sincerely, then it could result in the rise of another insurgent movement. This may not be in the near future, but there is a younger generation growing up listening to the horrors of the recent war, just like Prabhakaran did when he was growing up. This sounds to me as a legitimate concern. If not for anything else, at least to prevent the rise of another Prabhakaran and yet another civil war, the parties concerned should start addressing not only the wrongdoings of this war but also the cause of the war itself.

To quote an aid worker from the book , “The war is not over in Sri Lanka; you don't solve these kinds of problems on the battlefield.”

Lost and Found

It is nice when people do good things. It is nicer when it is altruistic. And it is best when it is done to us. I have had this pleasure at least twice now. Couple of years back when my other half lost her phone in the bus, I had written it off immediately. Nevertheless, I decided to follow the old trick of calling the mobile number to see if we are lucky. While I was expecting to hear "your phone is currently switched off", a samaritan answered the phone, which was still in the bus, and handed it over to the driver. The transport service had a wonderful lost property division and we were able to collect the phone next day happily.

On another occasion, few weeks back, I walked out of the tube day dreaming, leaving behind my badminton racket. I realized this only after entering the office and knew its too late. When I went back to the station to enquire, I was told about the Lost Property Office (LPO) that Transport for London operates.

LPO © Supafly¹ 

Any items found not only in tubes, but also in trains, buses and back seats of cabs are returned to LPO. So I went back to my desk, filled an online form, provided the identification details and submitted it. LPO has a twenty one day waiting period and irrespective of whether the item is found or not, the applicant will be notified of the status.

Twenty one days had gone and I didn't receive any notification. So I assumed it was not found and  in the spirit of new year, I decided to buy another racket. But for one last time, I called up LPO to ensure that my racket was never found. After few inquiries, when the attendant said that they found my racket, I was taken by surprise. Though they failed to intimate me, I would like to give the benefit of doubt to LPO as I don't remember providing a distinct identification, apart from the description, a badminton racket in a black bag.

In the window of LPO in Baker Street © Gary Knight²

Later, when I thought about how they would have found my racket, two scenarios came to my mind. One, some passenger found it and returned it to the authorities. Second, the maintenance team or the driver while inspecting the train, at the end of a service, had found it and returned to LPO. In both the cases, the person who had found the item also had an opportunity to keep it with them. But they didn't. Probably because, he or she is kind and was against owning some one else property, even when they can get away with it. Alternately, a cynical view would be the presence of CCTV cameras in the stations and trains that records every activity, would have acted as a restraint. I hope it was the former.

Irrespective of who it is or what their intention is, I am very thankful to them. And one of the key things, I think, that helped them to return the item is the kind of system that is in place. In the absence of a properly functioning system, like the LPO, right intentions alone may not be sufficient. A more relevant example to illustrate this theory is the presence of litter bins in the streets. Few years back, I happened to carry a coffee cup for almost a mile, without able to find a bin. That was the first time I realized the lack of enough bins in the streets of Hyderabad. So even if some one really has some inclination to keep public places clean, absence of a functioning system, litter bins in this case, will only restrict them.

This doesn't imply that the presence of a functioning system is a sufficient condition; I have seen people littering next to empty bins, in the streets of London, where there are no shortage for bins. Nevertheless, I think, a functioning system is a necessary condition and would motivate the well intended. Presence of more such systems, across various domains, either by private organizations, local communities or government bodies, could bring out more responsible behavior from its citizens.

In pictures: behind the scenes at the TfL Lost Property Office

Image Copyrights:
1. Supafly - http://goo.gl/s7ubii
2. Gary Knight - http://goo.gl/1EAUWh