288 கலைமணி பாஸ்கரத் தொண்டைமான்
Ragunathan’s brother, a revenue officer under British rule was his guard can after his father’s demise. But Ragunathan developed contacts witht he banned Communist Party which was underground in those days. slowly he became a convinced leftist polititcaly, and was arrested and detained in prison during the students agitation of 1942. Though he was released after a few weeks his formal college education came to an end with that. In a way it was a blessing in disguise in prompting Ragunathan to become a writer by profession. He began to concentrate on writing stories, Poems and articles in journals. In 1944 he joined the Dhinamani Publications as a sub editior. He left that job in 1946 and joined Mullaia monthly in 1946. He worked in Chennai for nine years and then came to his hometown and edited and published a progressive monthly of his own, Shanthi for more than a year. After ramaining as a freelance writer for more than a decade, he joined the Soviet Information Branch, Chennai, where he worked as editor for more than tow decades and retired from professional journalism in 1988 at the age of sixty-five.
His first book puyal a novelette was published in 1945. His book of literary criticism Ilakkiya Vimarsanam (1948) was hailed as a pioneering work of its kind.
At the turn of the 50s Ragunathan, who had already established his identity as a notable leftist progressive writer, brought out Panchum Pasiyum, the first socialist realistic novel in Tamil. This novel deals with the lives of the handloom workers of Tamilnadu highlighting their plight in the first years of Indian independence. Deprived of a decent living and loss of work and forced to migrate in search of other jobs, the community faced hunger deaths and suicide. The novel tells about how the class consciousness of the weavers was awakened and how they stood united to decide their own fate. This novel is distinguished for its powerful style, vivid description of situations and for its ideological insight. Panchum Pasiyum has gained the privilege of being the first work of fiction from modern Tamil to be translated into an European language, Czech.
As a poet, Ragunathan neither belongs to the school of grammatical prosody nor of the new poetry. His trenchant poetry recitals
