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SAHMAT

Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust


29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001
Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787
e-mail-sahmat8@yahoo.com
17.1.2015
Press Statement
In support of Perumal Murugan
In another shocking and serious blow to the freedom of expression, Perumal Murugan, an influential Tamil writer at
the peak of his creative powers, has been bullied, blackmailed and harassed by anonymous vested religious elements
led by the Hindutva right, in collusion with the police and the state administration of Tamil Nadu, into helpless
submission so much so that he has, in pain and frustration, announced that he is giving up writing altogether.
Perumal Murugans sensitive and distinctive novel, Madhorubagan, was published as far back as 2010 in Tamil and
has run into many editions. An English translation of the book was published in 2013 under the title One Part
Woman and also went into more than one edition. As if on cue to an orchestrated campaign initiated by the RSS and
the BJP in the state, the work has, over the last few weeks, suddenly come under attack for allegedly being offensive
to the local dominant caste of Tiruchengode (near Erode in Tamil Nadu), where the story is set some time in the
early part of the twentieth century.
This motivated retrospective and retroactive literary witch hunt and inquisition of the novelist has been abetted by
the police and the district administration in the form of a so-called peace meeting to which Perumal Murugan was
summoned on January 12. The proceedings of the meeting, as reported by the lawyer friend who accompanied him,
resembled that of an arbitrary katta panchayat (khap panchayat), brow-beating the writer into a humiliating
unconditional apology for what he had written, and into promising to retract whatever supposedly gave offence. All
that the police could or would do to protect Perumal Murugan was to advise him to stay away from Tiruchengode
for his own safety. The author is now in effective exile from his home, where he and his wife lived and worked, and
has been reduced to pleading with his publishers not to sell or reprint any of his books and promising to compensate
the loss they incurred on account of this.
Can we allow a set of unidentified rabid and fascistic forces to kill the soul of a writer thus? We call upon the state
government of Tamil Nadu to protect the writer, his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression and his
creative integrity from such extra-constitutional cultural censors. We call upon artists, writers, intellectuals, readers
and the concerned public at large to rise to the defence of democracy imperilled by this unwarranted and vile
abrogation of an authors right to write.
Irfan Habib
Prabhat Patnaik
C.P.Chandrasekhar
Geeta Kapur
Vivan Sundaram
Anil Bhatti
Archana Prasad
Anil Sadgopal
Indu Chandrasekhar
B.P.Sahu
D.N.Jha
K.M.Shrimali
Rahul Verma

M.K.Raina
Mihir Bhattacharya
Malini Bhattacharya
Venktesh Athraya
Parthiv Shah
Teesta setalvad
Nilima Sheikh
Vishwamohan Jha
Amar Farooqui
Badri Raina
Praveen Jha
Lata Singh
Rakhshanda Jalil

Ram Rahman
Saeed Mirza
Jayati Ghosh
Madangopal Singh
Sohail Hashmi
Zahoor Siddiqui
Veer Munshi
Arjun Dev
Atluri Murali
Biswamoy Pati
Indira Arjun Dev
Prabhat Shukla

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