Inter-Caste Marriages Ends With Honour Killing: A Study Of Perumal Murugan’s Pyre

Abstract

Perumal Murugan is a renowned twenty-first-century Indian non-Dalit writer who speaks about the life and experience of the Dalit people of Tamil Nadu, India. His writings are pictures of the life, experiences, and treatments of the marginalized people and also represent the oppression faced by the subaltern in the society's caste system. His novels mainly center on caste, untouchability, brutal injustice, honour, injustice to the subaltern, and segregation. The present research portrays how Murugan’s novel Pyre represents honour of the family and how inter-caste love marriages are turned into the honour killing of young married couples. In the novel, Murugan depicts the caste, gender, culture, injustice treatment, and the relationships between different communities in the Kongu Region. In the novel, the protagonist Kumaresan and his friends converse about the collective consciousness of caste communities. Here, the protagonist’s mother Marayi warns Saroja about the caste group in the village and their extremity to protect their honour. The caste system is a bitter fruit obtained after a plethora of amendments throughout history. The irony of these amendments is constituted by the upper caste men for their whims and fancies. The idea of honour is valued more than lives and the institutionalization of honour killing as a sacred duty to restore the honour of their community is underlined. The social expectations of honour for the upper-class, middle-class, and oppressed communities are also different. It is the practice that happened in India and killing people to protect their honour would allow the people to justify the murder and violence.