In the novel, faith-based manipulation reigns supreme over even the ill-conceived decisions of democratically elected bodies, as represented in this instance by the local municipal council, just like in contemporary India, where the Supreme Court is widely perceived to have placed the faith of the Hindus over the facts of the case and the laws of the land in the controversial 2019 judgment on the Ayodhya dispute. Hindu nationalists have long claimed that the Babri Masjid, a mosque built in Ayodhya during the reign of the first Mughal emperor, Babur, in the sixteenth century, was previously the site of a temple to the Hindu god Ram. This gave rise to a massive Hindu populist movement in the 1980s and led to a rogue demolition of the mosque in 1992. The resulting riots, which spread across north India, deeply divided Indian society along communal lines and eventually catapulted a Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, to power in India. The Supreme Court’s judgment on Ayodhya, foregrounding faith over facts, has now led to several other such disputes claiming the rights of Hindus over mosques and Islamic monuments.

When Ananthan Pillai, a character in the novel, powerfully speaks for the public at the municipal council meeting where the cutting of the tamarind tree is up for debate, his voice could well be the voice of any “sober” Hindutva politician today:

“This town is a holy place, and the tamarind tree is sacred to it,” he said. “The tree might be mute, it might also be maimed, but it is still a living thing.”

When Dhamu proclaims in a meeting “that he was going to build an army of brave young men who would protect Hindu religion and Hindu gods from Muslims and Christians. He told the crowd that it was in the best interests of Muslims and Christians to refrain from hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus. But if they didn’t, he said, all Hindus knew where the churches and mosques in town were, so they shouldn’t force peace-loving Hindus to resort to violence,” he could very well be echoing the views of any number of the Hindutva demagogues who are now powerful ministers in the central and state governments.

This continued relevance to changing political and social situations is perhaps why Oru Puliyamarathin Kathai continues to top the Tamil literature sales charts every year, over five decades after its publication.

On the translation

As overseers of the translation process, our only qualification being we are the children of the late author Sundara Ramaswamy, we ran into some thorny considerations.