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New writing in Tamil
S. Ramakrishnan
UNESCO Courier, March, 1984
The late 1960s were marked by an upsurge in Tamil
creative writing. The preoccupation with ancient Tamil
culture had subsided, Tamil had been made the language of
school and higher education and world Tamil conferences
were making the Tamil language internationally known. The
new poetry movement, which has started in the early
1930s, was still finding its feet, fostered mainly by
small, short-lived magazines reaching a reading public of
not more than one or two thousand.
Against this background Tamil writers turned for
encouragement and support to two small-circulation but
influential magazines, C.S. Chelappa's Ezhuthu (founded
in 1959) and Ka Na Subramaniyam's Ilakkiya Vattam
(founded in 1964). These two magazines, and the writers
who contributed to them, took as their model Manikkodi, a
magazine founded in the mid-1930s, in which the first
attempt had been made to base literature on the realities
of life.
The founders of Manikkodi were visionaries. They realized
the need to provide an alternative to the new popular
magazines which were beginning to make their influence
felt. Although they were nationalists committed to
liberating the country from foreign rule, they were also
alive to the need to bring Tamil consciousness into
contact with the mainstream of international culture.
They themselves had benefited from English education and
through it from exposure to world culture.
In Manikkodi those arose a major voice, that of Pudumaipittan, who still remains a main
source of the contemporary literary tradition.
Pudumaipittan held that writers had purposes other than
that of using literature simply as a vehicle for the
propagation of certain ideologies. He declared that his
stories were not intended to be a means of educating the
world and that art could not be confined within a
philosophy of the sustenance of life. At a time when a
group of writers, such as Girija Devi, Tamamirthammal and
Va Ra, were obsessed with the evils of the caste system
and the need to cut across caste barriers, particularly
as far as marriage was concerned, Pudumaipittan had the
courage to point out in his writings the problems that
could arise in intercaste marriages as a result of the
partners' differing cultural backgrounds.
Almost all the progressive writers of today who subscribe
to the Marxist ideology trace their lineage back to
Pudumaipittan. Among the writers of the post-independence
generation T.M.C. Reghunathan was one of the first to
attract wide attention with his Panjum Pasiyum (1953), a
novel depicting the capitalist/worker relationship. He
was followed by D.
Jayakanthan, a more prolific writer whose earlier
stories and novels espoused the cause of the
underdog.
Jayakanthan wrote about a wide range of issues: the urban
middle-class, the underprivileged urban slum-dweller,
women in revolt, the notions of art, the confrontation
between the traditional and the modern way of life and
the changes this necessitated, the notions of
brahminhood, justice, aspects of sexuality, and so on.
His vociferousness was infectious and he became a model
for many writers.
The younger generation of leftist writers (including
Poomani, Pa Jayaprakasam and Rajendra Cholan) drew their
inspiration from both Pudumaipittan and Jayakanthan, but
without displaying the same breadth of vision and
limiting themselves to close examination of village life
and the working class.
What has marked the work of progressive writers has been
a common concern to make literature a tool to awaken and
reunite the working classes. Basically they are
propagandists and, in one sense, this trend has dominated
most modern Tamil literature.
The earlier progressives were motivated by what they saw
as the threat to Indian culture from English education
and growing urbanization. Vedanayagam Pillai, a former
district judge and a Christian whose first novel Prathapa
Mudaliyan was published in 1879, declared that his work
emphasized devotion to God and the obligatory social
responsibilities. His contemporary Rajam Iyer felt
compelled to write by the need to preserve rural
traditions and the path to Bhakit (devotion), while
Madhaviah, who also shared the anxiety about the survival
of traditional culture, was urged to write by the status
of women, ignorant and uninformed (it was the period of
child-marriage and child widows), and the threat
urbanization posed to the individual.
In the same vein, the succeeding generation of writers
used literature as a tool for social purposes. Two good
examples are Va Ra's Sundari and Bharati's
unfinished novel Chandrikaiyin Karai. Both deal with the
problems of widows, their position in society and their
re-marriage. In 1920 Gandhi entered the arena of national
politics and his philosophy began to assert its influence
on many writers. In 1926 Panayappa Chettiyar first wrote
about the need for national independence and in 1930 K.S.
Venkataramani wrote his novel Desabhakthan Kandan which
propagated Gandhian ideals regarding rural development
and the place of the village in the life of the
country.
During the 1930s commercial magazines began to appear,
the most popular being Ananda Vikatan. It owed its
success mainly to Kalki, a prolific writer and the
author of Thyaga Bhumi, a novel which became an instant
success due to its nationalistic message. Kalki's impact
on his readers was such that more magazines began to
appear thus creating a vast market for popular writing.
Since the 1970s these magazines have proliferated and
today they have a strong hold on the cultural life of
Tamil Nadu.
The Pudumaipittan "lineage" can be traced among a certain
number of writers whose works constitute a very
significant contribution to the language. In a sense,
Sundara Ramaswamy's J.J. Sila Kurippukal
and Puliya Marathin Kadhai, and G. Nagarajan's Nalai
Matrumoru Nale, and a number of his short stories,
represent the realization of Pdumaipittan's objective of
placing literature in the context of the harsh reality of
life. These two writers have in common their lucidity,
their incisive points of view, sincerity with regard to
their experience and a balance between social purpose and
the needs of art.
From the time of Pudumaipittan onwords, Tamil literature
has drawn inspiration from a handful of writers, almost
all of whom are the product of Indian culture and Indian
ways of thought. Among the most important of these are Ka
Na Subramaniyam and C.S. Chellappa. These two writers
were the ones who sustained modern creative and critical
prose and poetry in the most adverse conditions during
the period 1945 to 1965, both, with equal fervour,
leading the movement towards literary criticism and the
new poetry through the medium of various
small-circulation magazines.
Ka Na Subramaniyam's Poithevu (1943), one of the most
important novels in the Tamil language, draws upon the
Tamil psyche with its innate preoccupation with the
God/man relationship and the philosophical quest. His
short stories are uneven in quality, yet one or two of
them, like Azhagi, are very important. Chellappa's
Vadivasal and Jeevanamsam also find their source in the
traditional world.
Mowni, whose writings were first published
in Manikkodi, must be considered a major figure in Tamil
literature. Mowni's world is the world of the introvert.
He brought forth in his stories an intensity of feeling
which is unmatched in Tamil. He was able to create this
intensity--mostly centering on the themes of man/woman
relationships and death--thanks to a powerful yet
deceptively simple prose style.
One of the most popular yet accomplished writers in the
literary sense is T. Janakiraman. He is a strange
combination of traditional influences and a capacity to
give a dream-like quality to the life he depicted. Like
many of his predecessors he was fascinated by the
man/woman relationship, but his depiction of it was a
clever balance between the popular writer's
oversimplification of tis intricacies and the complexity
of Mowni. Born in a Tanjore village, his descriptions of
the enchanting aspects of rural Tanjore, with its
agricultural setting, temple culture and music, enhanced
the appeal of his writing.
It was in his short stories, however, that he achieved
his greatest literary success, and in this tradition a
group of modern creative writers has emerged. Significant
among them are Asokamithran, Vannanilavan, Vannadasan, Sa
Kandasamy and Rajanarayanan. These authors are situated
somewhere between Pudumaipittan and the leftist writers.
With their under-stated style Asokamithran and Kandaswamy
evoke the charm and elusiveness of the day-to-day life of
the middle-class. They never over-react, they operate
within narrow stylistic ranges, but their sensibilities
are a sincere reflection of their experience.
Vannadasan and Vannanilavan have much in common. Both are
post-1970 writers, they come from similar backgrounds and
they are very sensitive to the physical and emotional
life around them. To both, the simple joys and
depreivations of ordinary people are important, though
Vannadasan tends to romanticize them. He is a little
dreamy-eyed in his portrayal of the eternal abiding
goodness and charm of simple folk. Vannanilavan has a
slightly larger canvas and is concerned with the
psychological implications of situations--of human
relationships, of economic situations and those arising
from a sense of awe at the world.
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