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This article is written in honour of the 125th Birth Anniversary of Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar [www.monsoonjournal.com]

Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi

Subramanya Bharathi was born on Dec 11th 1882, in Ettayapuram a village in South India to Chinnasami Iyar and Lakshmi Ammal. His birth name is Subramaniya Iyar. He is celebrated as one of the great poets of India. He was a reformer, journalist, freedom fighter and poet. Bharathi was prolific and was adept in both prose and poetry forms. His rousing compositions helped rally masses to support the Indian independent struggle in South India. He is known as Mahakavi Bharathi meaning great poet Bharathi. The word ‘Bharathi’ is another name of Goddess of learning Saraswathi in the Pantheon of Hindu deities.

Subramanya Iyar lost his mother at a very young age in 1889. He started his education at the Hindu College, in Thirunelveli town in the year 1894, and studied there till 1897.At the time of marriage Bharathi was only fifteen while his bride who was his cousin was only seven. Her name was Chellammah. Misery struck Bharathi’s life again the following year; he lost his father. After the death of his father in 1898 he moved to Benares a town in the banks of river Gangees, and lived there till 1902 with his aunt. Benares is also known as Kasi and Varnasi a holy place of pilgrimage in Hindu religion. During this stay he learnt Sanskrit, and many other North Indian Languages. Another interesting experience Bharathi had during his stay was, when he met a Sikh gentleman and was greatly impressed by his turban. From that day Bharathi started wearing a turban always. Turban became a distinct feature of Bharathi’s appearance.

During his stay with his aunt Bharathi was exposed to two important traits which influenced him to a great extent. The first is the nationalism and the other Hindu spirituality. In December 1905, he attended the All India Congress session held in Benares. Here he was privileged to meet a keen social worker Margaret Elizabeth Noble an Anglo-Irish lady who was a disciple of Swami Vivekanda, and was better known as Sister Nivedita. This encounter made him realize the Indian women were deprived and kept in ignorance of the struggle of the nation and thereby lost their contribution to the struggle. He visualized a ‘new-woman’ of India as an emanation of Goddess Sakthi, a willing partner of man to build a new India. On his return to his home town in 1902 he was appointed the court poet at Ettayapuram till 1904.

Patriotism: - Bharathi realized the need to educate the public about the Indian struggle for liberation and other happenings around the world. He started taking keen interest in journalism and the print media of the west and home land. In 1904 he joined ‘Sudesamithiran’ a Tamil daily as an assistant editor. His enthusiasm made him to join the radical Tamil weekly ‘India’ and the English newspaper ‘Bala Bharatham’, becoming the editor of both. These journals not only educated the public but were also a great outlet for Bharathi’s creative mind.

Bharathi participated in the historic Surat Congress in 1907 at which the militant’s wing of the Indian National Congress led by Logamanya Tilak, Aurobido Gosh and Lajpath Ray challenged the moderates like Gandhi and Nehru. Subramanya Bharati together with V. O Chithambarampillai and others from South India joined the militant group agitating for independence. As early as in 1908 Bharathi organized a public meeting to celebrate Independence (Swaraj) Day of India. His nationalistic poems were printed and distributed free to the audience. In the same year he gave evidence in support of his friend in the case which had been set up by the British rulers against his good friend V. O Chithambarampillai the one who launched a shipping lines in defiance of the British orders and was called ‘Kappal Ootiya Thamilan’ meaning the Tamil who piloted the ship. The same year the proprietor of the weekly ‘India’ was arrested. Faced with the prospect of arrest, Bharathi escaped to Pondichery which was under French rule.

Living in exile he continued his journalistic pursuit, by continuing to edit the weekly journal ‘India’, and Tamil daily ‘Vijaya’. At the same time Bharathi continued the editorial work on the English monthly ‘Bala Bharatham’. Bharathi edited a local weekly of Pondicherry by the name ‘Suryothayam’ too. All this he achieved in spite of the might of the British Empire stopping remittances and letters to the papers in British India. It is also believed that as a journalist, Bharathi was the first in India to introduce caricatures and political cartoons in newspapers.

During exile he had the privilege to mix with many other leaders of the militant wing of the independence struggle who have sought asylum in the French colony.

After a stay of ten years in exile he returned to British India near Kadalore in November 1918 and was promptly arrested by the British and imprisoned in the Central prison in Kadalore for thrty four days.

Literary carrier: - Before one goes to study his outpouring of poems and penmanship it is important to understand what prompted him to pursue in this field. First and foremost the motivating factor was his desire to tell the world what he felt about the various issues of the world that made him to be a journalist and a poet. He was not man with head in the clouds. He realized the prime need of his mother land was its independence. He also realized it cannot be achieved alienating seventy five percent of the country’s population. It was the lowliest and the lost that made seventy five percent of the Indian population. By lowliest I mean the Harijans, the dalits, the adivasis, and the other backward classes tagged as low caste. And the ‘lost’ implies all women who are almost lost to the political world and had no say in the matters of independence struggle. Sister Nivedita had profound influence over him in this matter, for if an Anglo-Irish woman can come all this distance and does social work then why not his own country women take part in the struggle he thought. He wrote in his songs;

‘We will destroy the idiocy

Of denigrating womanhood’

In another poem he wrote;

Those who said women should not touch books are perished

The funny men who locked the women in their homes now bow their heads’

Bharathi was totally against cast system though he was from a high cast (Brahmin).He gave up his cast identity of wearing the sacred thread. He believed the whole humanity is equal and should be free to take to any field of studies. During his time only Brahmins were allowed to learn Veda. To prove his point he performed Upanayanam (Initiation ceremony) to a young Harijan man and gave him the sacred thread and declared him a Brahmin. This action earned him the enimity of his Brahin relatives and friends. On the subject of castes he wrote;

My blood boils to think of these idiotic men!

How many divisions within us, they are more than a crore….’

Again he sang to the children;

There is no castes baby; it is sin to say low and high by birth baby’

His poetry expressed a progressive, refined ideal. His powerful words molded the thinking of the Tamils and guided to progressive thinking.

In his short life of 39 years he wrote untiringly. His writings are

A special mention must be made on his greatest contribution to Tamil poetry. Until then the poems followed the strict syntactic rules set down in the Sangam era which was about two thousand years old. The language itself had evolved and an average folk could not understand what was written. Bharathi broke away from the ranks and created a prose-poetic style known as puthukavithai meaning ‘New Poems’. This was understood by all. Previously one believed if it is hard to understand it must be good. Initially the educated men brushed him aside as childish attempt, but the masses liked his literary works and a new style of Tamil songs developed, which enriched the ancient Tamil language.

Apart from the above songs he wrote on various issues in the news papers together with many short stories to educate the public. Bharathi was very much interested in Carnatic and Hindustani music. He composed songs in Carnatic music (kiritis) in Tamil on various topics. Though he was fluent in many languages including Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, Kutchi, French, and English he composed only in Tamil except two songs in Sanskrit.

During his time the elite Tamil musicians believed to be a good musician they must sing the compositions by the three Carnatic music composers known as ‘The Ttrinity’, whose compositions were all in Telungu and Sanskrit. The Tamil vocalist sang without knowing the meaning of the songs, and they were singing without proper expression. Bharathi rebuked this stupid attitude of the vocalist. He wrote his observations in an article ‘Sangeetha Visayam’ (issues in music). He also observed that these compositions of ‘The Trinity’ expressed only two emotions which were devotion and love. He insisted the music is much greater than that. Bharathi observed that music should bring out other expressions such as valor, anger, wonder, fear and hatred. He took the stand musicians should not sing songs which they do not understand the meaning. Naturally his forthright condemnation brought many enemies within the high class society of musicians.

It is sad to end this great mans story in a low note. Since his imprisonment he was not in good health. Though Bharathi was released there were many restrictions on his movement and employment by the British rulers. Bharathi lived in poverty. In 1919 he moved to Madras and met Ghandi at Rajaji’s house. Finally in 1920 when a general amnesty order finally removed restrictions, Bharathi was in dire poverty. Bharathi rejoined ‘Suthesamithiran’ again. Unfortunately he was struck by the temple elephant shortly afterwards, which he used to feed regularly. Though he survived the mishap a few months latter his health deteriorated and died on September 11^th 1921. At the time of death he was only thirty-nine years old. He was a people’s person and devoted his life to his mother land India and his mother tongue Tamil, but there were only about fifteen people attended his funeral. [monsoonjournal.com]

by Kumar Punithavel~Email: kumarpunithavel@yahoo.com

Photo: Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar in Nallur, Jaffna~Sri Lanka, by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai