The Daughter of Kumari begins with a brief reflection on it by the author, who tells us, ‘…this is a creation of mangalam—a work of benediction and pure auspiciousness.’ The book mostly relates in fine detail a long wedding, a series of complicated rituals involving priests, kings, commoners, cooks, soldiers, dasis, and countless numbers of servants, conducted and attended by fourteenth-century royalty and aristocracy from Venad and Madurai. Though the opening of the novel has been described as ‘historical’ by the writer of the epilogue, Ajithan J, this is only partially true: the kind of deep, abiding loyalty that the narrator of the wedding-tale, an administrative official of Venad, shows towards the ruler of Venad, is distinctly modern, and deeply reminiscent of the portrayal of loyalty and kingship in the early-twentieth-century historical fiction of CV Raman Pillai, on Travancore. In other words, the self who both arranges the central event in the novel, and also tells us about it, is an eminently modern one, even if the events are located far earlier in history.
But the novel is less about kingly power and devotion to it, and more about a world of faith in which gods were somehow more human-like—playful, mischievous, envious, or irked. The idol of Meenakshi, the Goddess of Madurai, was secretly transferred to the Parakodi Kandan Sastha Temple in Aralvaymozhi, a mountain pass that connects the Tamil country with Venad, in the fourteenth century when the Pandya kingdom was invaded by Malik Kafur. It remained there for around sixty years, until the Vijayanagara kingdom restored the temple in the city of Madurai and reinstalled the idol. Around this regional lore, the novel weaves its web of nostalgia for a faith in which gods were intimately connected with the lands they were consecrated on, in which social bonds of kinship and forms of affect associated with them could apply to the gods. Such faith was characteristic of the many kinds of worship that are now collectively referred to as ‘Hindu’. Nostalgia for such faith was prominent, for example, in the vociferous opposition of this section to the Supreme Court judgment of 2018 that allowed the entry of women of menstruating ages into the forest-shrine of Sabarimala. Opponents of the judgment were driven by deep-seated nostalgia for faith in which the consecrated deity could be attributed utterly human qualities—Ayyappa was apparently closer in his nature to human sanyasis who could be distracted from their austerities by the presence of women. This caused a rift between the advocates of a more Abrahamic conception of the Hindu faith, and what some of them referred to as ‘pagan’ Hinduism. Nevertheless, the divide was definitely not deep enough. In other words, such nostalgia is not always politically innocent.
It is true that the colourful, playful, ever-shifting worlds of the Hindu god provide a striking contrast to the rather stern worlds of the gods of Abrahamic faiths. Some claim that these worlds even accommodate non-heteronormative sexuality and freer sexual morality; social bonds and kinship exist in these worlds, but these are incredibly fluid and reversible. However, as Sri Narayana Guru never tired of reminding us, such a world is tied to the chains of caste and gender that enslave humans. The divine can engage in infinite play; mortals bound to karma, rebirth, caste and gender can only marvel at divine leela. And therefore, the intimacies and intensities that the divine world of Hindu gods afford humans only entrench them further in the inhuman order of caste. The mere presence of paravars or mukkuvars and others excluded from the order of caste (as in the novel) does not upset the tethering of the divine world of play to the despicable order of caste; they are merely props in the enactment of the word of gods, which is necessarily temporary. Because the world of the gods cannot be but infinitely diverse, their presence is indispensable to the ritual-play itself. For these reasons, I remain unconvinced by Ajithan J’s observations in the epilogue—that the novel is essentially a movement beyond the postmodern empty play of signifiers. I agree, but such reactions often revive the aesthetic of conservative nostalgia.
However, even for someone who remains critical of ‘pagan’ Hinduism, the colourful description of the wedding of Goddess Meenakshi, whom the King of Venad is giving away to Sundareswara, taking her father’s place, is charming indeed. Humans make heroic efforts to arrange a wedding that befits the gods, but the entire affair is utterly human and shaped by existing social and gender hierarchy to which even the goddess must bend. Meenakshi, the mother of the realm, suddenly turns into the daughter, the coy bride, who must be given away by her father. Indeed, the Meenakshi of myth—the warrior-goddess—is almost totally absent in this tale; she is the docile, shy, loving daughter, who seems to exude mangalyam—auspiciousness—by just being such a feminine self (and clearly her agency has nothing to do with it).
There are moments in which anachronism creeps into the translation. For example, a high-level official of Venad declares: ‘I have also finished all eighteen kalari levels and graduated with honours, mind you!’ (p. 201), or the use of the word ‘carnival’ to describe the public celebrations accompanying the divine wedding. Anachronisms may look innocuous but actually have dangerous consequences. I remain wary of nostalgia, especially of its conservative variant—even when it is wielded by one of our most gifted authors.
J Devika, feminist historian, is a social researcher and commentator, translator, teacher, and author of children’s books, based at Centre for Development Studies, Kerala.