Utopia in Tirukkural
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
KAALAM KAALAMAAGA VARUM KARPANAI NAGARGAL VALLUVAR PADAIKKUM VAIYATHU-CH-CHUVARGAM: (Tamil): V.C. Kulandaiswamy; Pavai Publications, 142, Johnny John Khan Road, Royapettah, Chennai-600014. Rs. 150.
A jumbo title, possibly because Kulandaiswamy has taken up a jumbo subject, utopias down the Ages! Utopian literature begins with Plato. Man has always dreamt of a beautiful, stainless future, for the present never satisfies the thinking man who is travelling up the evolutionary spiral. The first part of the book deals with some of the major imagined cities of the western world: Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s City of the Sun, and Andreae’s Christianopolis. There is adequate general information about their lives and work which is probably getting into Tamil for the first time. Written in chaste Tamil, the book would be an incentive to the student community to dig deeper for information in libraries.
Except for some minor variations, all the western utopias call for cooperative living. But even they cannot dispense with a certain planned gradation of people, not unlike the caste of Indian clime. An isolated island is the first choice for locale and the writers also put in some attention-grabbing titbits in these tomes. The government of New Atlantis is firm in rejecting adultery and polygamy and encourages laboratory research in a big way. But Campanella makes women common property of all. Religion too has a significant place and all the utopias underline the importance of simple living and high thinking. And none of them has a place for lawyers! There are, of course, notable absentees in Kaalam Kaalamaaga: Butler’s Erewhon, the socialist utopias of Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward) and William Morris (News from Nowhere), the dystopias of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four). Perhaps this is understandable since the author is more concerned with the projections of a morally perfect and administratively viable world as that is what emboldens him to uncover an utopian structure in the ethical aphorisms of Tiruvalluvar.
Portrayal of king
There are no poetic frenzies, nor philosophic speculation in the Tirukkural. Valluvar has a good deal to say about man, nature, and God. Man is born equal but due to his occupation, a ‘high’ and a ‘low’ become inevitable in the social structure. Thus the farmer who feeds the community gets elevated to the highest position. Secular in the right sense of the term, the Tirukkural’s portrayal of the king who has to act in consonance with Dharma (Aram) is profound. The probing pen of Kulandaiswamy notes down concepts like communication skill and scientific vision in the work. Fate is spoken of as unchangeable but this ought not to deter man from personal endeavour. Male chastity gets a special mention, a relevant point in these days when polygamy is vaunted as a symbol of masculine power. In Kulandaiswamy’s construction of an ethically perfect universe in the Tirukkural, the inner and outer beings of man as also the home and the world are at perfect peace.
Kulandaiswamy’s Kaalam Kaalamaaga is yet another welcome work for collegians to read and set up their own think-bank for progress in life.
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