Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural

The Limits of Reason

Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural is fundamentally a novel about the limits of reason or rationality. We live in this 21st century where we predominantly use the tools of reason to understand the world around us. We make countless choices and we generally assume that its through application of reason we arrive at them. But is this true, are humans so perfectly reasonable in their believes and actions ? In Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural (The voice of the shadow) the central character Arunachalam is a communist worker, a man deeply educated in the Marxist method. Marxism is the application of reason in understanding societies and humans in general. Yet in the very chapter we are introduced to Arunachalam, he seems to be in a quagmire, because he had stepped out of the house using his left leg. A totally irrational belief but an act that seems to bother him quiet very much. This is who Arunachalam is , a man in the outside is an orthodox Marxist, who boasts in the perfect rational application of the Marxist method, one who lectures his party workers on the philosophy. Yet inside he is like any human being controlled by beliefs and forces beyond reason.
We have a brilliant moment in the earlier chapters where Arunachalam gets angry about her wife being flirtatious with a young man, he is really embarrassed to have this feeling over which he has no control. Nagammai, Arunachalam’s wife understands him better than he himself thinks to be, she does not buy into the Arunachalam that he badly wants to sell to her. Through these initial chapters we see that Arunachalam is a person with many layers, inside the Marxist exterior there are realms of his personality that he is not aware of.

In this scenario he happens to come to know of an incident in the past that completely changes his world view. The rock on which that he had made his life seems shaken, the unshakeable beliefs that he seems to have had over the party crumble before his eyes. He comes to know of a man named Veerabadra pillai who in the past had been a important member in the party. He seems to have been erased from party history. His presence forgotten, no one seems to even remember his name. Yet he had once been a close friend of many senior party functionaries. In this journey Arunachalam finds out the truth about this man. In a sense he becomes part of that lineage which links him to Veerabadra Pillai, who is in turn associated to Bukharin the soviet Marxist who was unfairly killed as part of the Stalinist purges.

Arunachalam comes to know of Veerabadra Pillai through works he had left behind. It is through this articles, plays, short stories, poems we understand the pain that Veerabadra Pillai had to suffer. Veerabadra Pillai becomes Arunachalam’s shadow, whom was himself followed by Bukharin as a shadow. There are some key themes that comes back to us over this novel that I will list below.

1. Conscience beyond reason
Time and again this question comes to us, is conscience driven by reason or beyond it? We can throw words, facts and figures, mind splitting logic but the voice of conscience is never subdued. There are two characters who are completely driven by the worship of reason, one is Kathir a party functionary who explains to Arunachalam how the past belief in total revolution are no longer valid. His ideas and thoughts are provocative, he completely shatters Arunachalam. But as you hear to his sophisticated argument one is never convinced by it. His logic never can satisfy, compare it with the words of Christ who comes at the end of the novel, his words are grand and twisted but they are far from truth. The other character who epitomizes this rational approach is SM Ramasamy although he is critical of the excesses of Marxism. He considers justice as a social contract, a rational institution, he does not share the emotional upheaval that Arunachalam undergoes on learning about Veerabadra Pillai. His rationality makes him distant to the suffering of people. Or even his empathy seems like a rational act. This novel beliefs in justice that is rooted beyond reason, it considers justice as the representation of the divine in this world.

2. Truth beyond reason
The novel also places truth over reason. The party is constantly hiding the past, never openly accepts its past mistakes. It justifies every mistake in the past hoping that the future revolution will compensate for it. For the party it is the end that justifies the means. In the hope of establishing the socialist society if few million people have to be killed so be it seems to be the guiding principle. I was constantly remembered of Gandhi and his approach towards Truth, for Gandhi it is the means that matters most. By choosing a violent path in order to achieve the revolution the soviet communism was doomed from the beginning. As Bukarin, SM Ramasamy argue in this book over and over again there are certain fundamentals like justice, truth that should be common to every human being and they are non negotiable.

3. Feminine vs Masculine
There is a continuing discourse in the novel, about the feminine and masculine aspects of revolution. The feminine aspect understands, assimilates differences and produces something organic. Its based on love and compassion, the masculine should be rooted in this feminine. The revolution in Russia was all about the masculine it could not resolve its difference through love and understanding. The teachings of Gandhi and Jesus are rooted in this feminine, their thoughts seem like idiosyncratic and naïve but the greatest of thinkers sometimes are child like. In the play that shows the confession of Bukharin to his wife Anna, he calls her Nelli, Sophia, Kitty the great women characters, the women before whom Rashkolnikov confessed about his sins. Women who don’t use words to cover up their conscience. Arunachalam in the final letters he writes says how he got recovered by his mental illness, and the very act of sexual union is raised to something spiritual.

4. Myths

The novel also explores why humans constantly evolve myths and habits to make sense of the world. The world is challenging and constantly changing, human life is a speck of dust in this eternity. Hence he finds meaning in bonding with other humans, even those who had lived in the past. Through myths he seem to reach out to realms that are clearly not accessible only through reason. For example the myth of offering food to the dead, it links humans to their past, in a reasonable world view this seems like superstitious. But in a mythical way this connects us to the past, through these rituals we become part of the ever existing. I have been deeply moved by these rituals especially the simple act of burning the dead body, collecting the bones and dissolving in the river Cauvery always moves me to a state which cannot be explained by reason alone. It feels like we are enacting something so ancient signifying how life returns to its original primordial state.

As we finish the novel we ourselves get deeply disturbed by these questions. We ourselves share the anguish and deep rooted suffering of Arunachalam, Veerabadra Pillai, Bhukarin. The novel’s form of using these writings from past is very effective in creating this confusion. Personalities merge and across time they feel that shared pain, which eventually the reader feels it. In the extraordinary ending when Jesus gives those answers to Bhukarin it answers us too.

It is an extraordinary novel that is a rewarding read always.