Tamil Identity Politics and Sexual Counter-Discourses: Presenting Charu's New Exile Novel

தமிழரின் அடையானஅரசியலும் பாலியல் மறுபேச்சுகளும்: சாருளின் புதியஎக்ஸைல் நாவலைமுன்வைத்து

Abstract

This article offers a comprehensive critical engagement with Charu Nivedita’s monumental Tamil novel Puthiya Exile. It situates the novel within the broader history of Tamil literary traditions while highlighting the novel’s radical narrative style, experimental techniques, and postmodern elements. Through fragmented storytelling, self-reflexive narration, interwoven mythological, historical, and contemporary references, the novel subverts conventional expectations of Tamil readership. It foregrounds marginalized voices, sexuality, corporeality, and questions of identity politics in the digital and globalized age. Alongside literary intertexts from Sangam poetry, Bhakti traditions, and modern Tamil writers, Charu’s novel disrupts the polarity between fiction and non-fiction by blurring the line between autobiography, history, fantasy, and social commentary. The critical essay draws attention to the ways in which the novel interrogates Tamil society’s cultural taboos on sexuality, its political hypocrisies, caste and gender practices, corruption, digital porn culture, and the commodification of spirituality. At once playful and polemical, the novel reveals the author’s attempt to restructure Tamil prose into an epic-like narrative for contemporary times. Ultimately, Puthiya Exile presents an alternative vision of Tamil literary modernity that is deeply self-critical while remaining globally relevant.