The Madras High Court has quashed a criminal case filed against tamil writer Perumal Murugan by residents of Tiruchengode. The writer created controversy by his novel Madhorubagan , when people from the right winged organisation RSS burned copies of his book and forced him to recall the entire work.
The writer had overcome with depression and had announced that he would stop writing publicly in a Facebook post.
The book, translated in English as One Part Woman dealt with the story of a childless couple in Tiruchengode, almost 100 years ago, the travails of bearing children and the pressures to do so. In the book Murugan invoked a 100-year-old festival set in town, the night of which allowed men and women to copulate free of any qualms. That did not go down well with locals of the town and many right-wing activists.
A sit-down in Namakkal — his hometown forced him to apologize publicly, delete the controversial part and announce public retirement from all forms of writing. He also received death threats by numerous groups.
PerumOn Tuesday, a bench comprising Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice Puspha Sathyanarayana of the Madras High Court deemed the “sit down” legally not binding and quoted Voltaire and Mahabharata while delivering their judgment. “Let the author be resurrected to what he is best at, write,” they decided while listening to his lament- Perumal Murugan has died.
