Ashes of Affection: Necropolitics and the Annihilation of Affection in Perumal Murugan’s Pyre

Abstract

Pyre by Perumal Murugan is a mean-eyed literary reflection on the atrocious intersections of caste, love, and violence in rural Tamil Nadu. Using Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, this paper, Ashes of Affection: Necropolitics and the Annihilation of Affection in Perumal Murugan’s Pyre, analyzes how caste structures are the highest powers that control the legitimacy of lives and loves. The main focus of this study is to critically unravel the manner in which the novel presents the social destruction of inter-caste love through social rules in communities, entailing institutionalised practices of exclusion, punishment, and suppression of emotional experiences. This research is based on a qualitative approach to literature, which combines theoretical components of intersectional caste theory, trauma studies, necropolitics, and affect theory, and a detailed study of the text. It analytically examines the narrative, characterisation, and symbolic imagery used by Murugan to show how caste politics dictate desire and determine who can survive, who can fall in love, and who can die. The analysis outlines the politicisation of personal relationships in caste-based oppression and their transformation into regulated relationships. The main hypothesis is that Pyre by Murugan is a necropolitical narrative where caste systems subject physical threat as well as emotional and affective depletion, particularly on individuals who cross over caste lines through romantic affairs. This is a qualitative literary analysis that makes in-depth interpretations of the text based on trauma studies, affect theory, and intersectional caste theory. While the internalised conformity of Kumaresan and the caste otherness of Saroja depict the forces of social death, the village itself is a community necropolitical force of its own. The Pyre, as the title, is a place of burning, disagreement, affection, and control, literally and symbolically. Murugan’s work dramatises caste as a disciplining and destroying power, where necropolitical control makes love impossible to live. This study shows how caste violence kills not just bodies but also emotions, attachments, and futures as it traces the psychological torture of Saroja and the ambivalent resignation of Kumaresan. This paper also contributes to the current debate on caste, emotion, and power in Indian literature because it deals directly with affect and annihilation. The findings presented in this study are moving in the right direction in terms of anti-caste literary criticism and socially minded humanities studies, since they emphasise the value of re-reading Indian fiction through critical approaches that put affect, annihilation, and caste sovereignty at the centre.