Books in Indian languages shouldn’t be classified as regional, says Murugan

 He participated in a discussion at JLF on his comeback novel Poonachi (The Story Of A Black Goat) which is a fable about a goat that tells a story of humans, love and freedom.

Murugan, 53, asked if writings in other languages were regional literature what qualified then as the mainstream literature.

“I don’t like to qualify it as regional literature. It’s so sad. If this is regional, then what is the mainstream literature? Is it English?” he asked.

“Anything that is written about Indian life and in an Indian language should be part of the Indian literature rather than being dubbed as regional literature. That would make perfect sense,” he said at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival.

Murugan, who writes in Tamil, declared his writing “dead” in 2015 after he was harassed and attacked by right-wing groups.

Echoing Murugan’s views, his English translator for Poonachi N Kalyan Raman said many of the Indian languages had already become international languages.

The controversial writer said although he was not a political chronicler, yet his writing was not free from politics. “I am not a writer who writes overtly about politics. I even look at politics through the literary lens. But nothing is free of politics and therefore when I write, politics is embedded in it just as it is embedded in everything we do,” he said.