Compassion & The Grace of Being Gullible: A Comparative Philosophical Reading of the Film Meiyazhagan

Abstract

This paper presents a creative and comparative philosophical reading of C. Prem Kumar’s Tamil film Meiyazhagan, criticallyexploring how twelve seminal thinkers— Socrates (c. 470 BCE), Gautama Buddha (c. 563 BCE), William Shakespeare (1564  CE), Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 CE), Leo Tolstoy (1828 CE), Adolf Hitler (1889 CE),  Mahatma Gandhi (1869), Rabindranath Tagore (1861 CE), Swami Vivekananda
(1863), Sigmund Freud (1856 CE), A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (1931 CE), and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (1957 CE)—would emotionally and philosophically respond to the film. Through a hypothetical dialogue, this study inquires into how a regionally grounded narrative transcends cultural boundaries to engage timeless questions of love, memory, loss, and the human precondition. Methodologically, this study blends comparative philosophy with cinematic hermeneutics, viewing the film as a site of ethical inquiry and emotional resonance. Each thinker’s response is anchored in their worldview and interpreted through cinematic affect, narrative rhythm, and symbolic texture—bridging historical thought with contemporary storytelling. This inquiry unfolds around the paradoxical grace of being gullible— reframed not as naïveté but as moral innocence and spiritual openness. The protagonist’s vulnerability becomes strength: a radical receptivity through which compassion flows unguarded and uncorrupted. In this light, Meiyazhagan emerges
as a philosophical artifact—where innocence defies cynicism, and tenderness crystallizes into truth.