The Dark side of Tradition: Unveiling Honor Killing, Caste Oppression in Perumaol Murugan’s Pyre

Abstract

The novel Pyre is written by an Indian Writer Perumal Murugan and subsequently been translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan into English in 2016. The novel sets in a village focusing on the life of an young couple Kumaresan and Saroja and the challenges they face after their inter caste marriage. Murugan continues to focus on the potent symbol of the conflict between love and caste. This novel unlikely to have a happy ending, it is because of this novel’s journey towards undeniable outcomes that disturbs the insights of the human about the treatment of the vulnerable castes and its guardians dominate the innocent loves. The outcomes of these vulnerable caste systems much like protagonists like Romeo and Juliet ends their life due to this ultimate sin. This paper critiques on the powerless state of the characters who fails to question against this ultimate sin rather they unknowingly undergo such inhumane attitudes. This paper also tries to explore the dehumanizing state of the human.