Abstract
The central finding of this paper is that the eleven novels of R. Murugan (1953–2026) portray history not through kings, but through the daily lives of common people such as cooks, bank clerks, plantation workers, and IT professionals. The works examined in this study include the Arasoor novel series (Arasoor Vamsam, Viswaroopam, Achyutham Kesavam, Vazhndhu Podheere), the historical novel Milagu, the political novel 1975, the genealogical novel Ramojiyam, the autobiographical fictions Number 40 Rettai Theru and Dupleix Street, the IT novel Moondru Viral, and the time-travel novel Thinai Allathu Sanjeevini.
These novels touch upon nearly four hundred years of Indian history, ranging from 16th-century pepper trade wars to colonial rule, the Swadeshi movement, the Emergency (1975–77), and the IT economy of the globalization era. This study explains how elements such as the changing faces of power, the gap between government schemes and people's lives, caste, religion, linguistic blending, migration, the position of women, rituals, and food are expressed through techniques like parody, magical realism, and a multilingual style. The article establishes that Murugan's novels depart from the traditional Tamil historical novel genre and put forward an alternative historiography termed the "History of the Common People."
References
6 references- 1. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
- 2. Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.
- 3. Guha, Ranajit, ed. Subaltern Studies I. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982.
- 4. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988.
- 5. Lukács, Georg. The Historical Novel. London: Merlin Press, 1962.
- 6. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
How to Cite
த.சங்கீதா, & முனைவர் மு. ஹேமலதா. (2026). இரா. முருகனின் புதினங்களில் வரலாறு, அரசியல் மற்றும் சமூகப் பண்பாட்டுக் கூறுகள்: History, Politics, and Socio-Cultural Elements in the Novels of R. Murugan. KALANJIYAM - International Journal of Tamil Studies, 6(03), 517-533. https://ngmtamil.in/kalanjiyam-tamil/index.php/kalanjiyam/article/view/1030
