SUBSCRIBE

PRINT DIGITAL

Cover Stories Columns Essays Features Books Art & Culture Cinema Galleries Author Open Avenues Digital Issue

THE FREEDOM ISSUE 2019 | POSTCARDS FROM HISTORY

VO Chidambaram: The Romance of

Resistance
Super powerful product feeds
Tracing the legacy of VO Chidambaram Pillai in Tuticorin Powerful product feeds
are the source of
succesful campaigns.
V Shoba | 09 Aug, 2019 Channable will get you
there

MORE STORIES
SPECIAL
Why Did Indira Gandhi Call
for Elections in January 1977?

Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada

Prasad

SPECIAL
‘Nine-month gap for booster
shot unscientific’

Ullekh NP

OPEN AVENUES
Creating an Impactful IIM in
the National Capital Region

Open

MOST POPULAR
IIM Bangalore: Theory and Practice
1
Schoolchildren at the VO Chidambaranar Port,Tuticorin, 2018 Rishikesha T Krishnan

Rethinking MBA
2
Ullekh NP

Unlocking the Universe

3
Minhaz Merchant

#Hate
4
Rahul Pandita

The Shiva-Vishnu Partnership

5

F
Lakshmi Bayi
EW STATUES of VO Chidambaram Pillai grace public squares and it is just as
well. The dull gold one at the old municipal office in Tuticorin, the crucible of
his remarkable vision and valour, stands defiant over a base inscribed with the
MORE COLUMNS
definitive sobriquet his whole life has been reduced to. ‘Kappalottiya Thamizhan.’ The
Tamil helmsman immortalised on screen by Sivaji Ganesan in Kappalottiya Thamizhan Why Did Indira Gandhi Call for
Elections in January 1977?
(1961). A pioneering Swadeshi nationalist of 19th century fin-de-siècle political ferment,
Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Pillai is best remembered for floating a steam shipping company in 1906 to challenge the
‘Nine-month gap for booster shot
monopoly of the British-India Steam Navigation Company. At a time when the first
unscientific’
wave of Swadeshi enterprises, birthed in the wake of the Partition of Bengal, were Ullekh NP

making soap and matches, Pillai’s endeavour was the equivalent of Elon Musk’s plan to
Creating an Impactful IIM in the
colonise Mars. Fundraising for the first voyage to Colombo of the short-lived Swadeshi National Capital Region
Steam Navigation Company took him all over India, and he did not call off the journey Open

despite the premature death of one of his sons back home. A freighter was leased before
two ships, SS Gallia and SS Lavo, could be acquired. Ticket prices were slashed; a trade
war ensued that included an offer by the British company to provide free umbrellas. For
Tamils, the venture was the drop that filled the entire ravine with nationalistic lifeblood.
To Pillai, neither a sailor nor a businessman by temperament, it was the hurdle event in
his interminable decathlon race against foreign forces as well as entrenched psychosocial
bigotry. It had, however, already set off a domino effect that would end in his
incarceration and bankruptcy, the dissolution of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation
Company and on June 17th, 1911, the first and only assassination of a British government
official in south India, Robert William d’Escourt Ashe, the acting Collector and District
Magistrate who was shot dead by R Vanchi Aiyar, an extremist. Ashe’s murder, which put
the British in a state of high anxiety, was considered by the judges of the Madras High
Court a direct consequence of the bitter hostility between British officers and Swadeshi
activists, including Subramania Siva and Chidambaram Pillai, writes AR
Venkatachalapathy, a historian and writer for whom Pillai has been a subject of lifelong
academic interest, in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly.

One of the most transformative yet rarely frontlit figures in the history of the freedom
movement in the state of Madras, Pillai was a great straddler of his times, the geography
of his thought bridging Tamil pride, literature, religion, social ills, labour unionism and
legal activism. Ironically, some of the harshest reprisals he would face in posterity would
come from his own countrymen, who have not just consigned him to the abyss of
historical insignificance and, worse, appropriated him as a Vellalar community icon, but
have also raked him over the coals for failing at entrepreneurship. Potted biographies of
Pillai don’t tell us that his name carried the taint of doom for decades after his death.
“When a 100-acre parcel of land in the shadow of the corporation crematorium was
allotted for our college and for a residential society named in his memory, everyone
thought this was a bad idea,” says APCV Chockalingam, Honorary Secretary, VOC
Educational Society, Tuticorin. His father APC Veerabahu, a distant relative and an
admirer of Pillai’s, founded the VO Chidambaram College, an aided institution that
prioritises disadvantaged students, in Tuticorin in 1951. A conference room across the
hall is full of rare photographs of Pillai with his bejewelled wives—he married twice and
fathered eight children—and friends. “Few acknowledge the impact VO Chidambaram
Pillai has had on Tamil society as a revolutionary, writer-translator and activist. C
Rajagopalachari is supposed to have said that if Gandhi was Rama, Pillai was
Parasurama,” says Chockalingam. Inspired by Pillai’s Tamil nationalism, his uncle, MC
Veerabahu, a member of the Constituent Assembly, had signed his name in Tamil on the
Constitution—the only one to do so. Even K Kamaraj, who became Chief Minister of
Tamil Nadu in 1954, had signed in English. “My uncle’s life, in a sense, mirrors Pillai’s. He
gave up a career in law to join the freedom movement. He died with nothing to his
name. He fought to get freedom fighters’ pension but he himself refused it,” says
Chockalingam. MC Veerabahu, too, launched a shipping venture in independent India
with a vessel named SS VO Chidambaram Pillai, but the company soon folded up due to
mismanagement.

Toenail Clippers For

Seniors

The SwissKlip Heavy Duty makes cu6ing

THICK and ingrown toenails e>o?less.

SwissKlip Open

If success, as Winston Churchill said, is going from failure to

failure without losing enthusiasm, then Pillai must rank among
the most successful Tamil rebels of his time. “Chidambaram
Pillai is a tragic hero who failed in terms of worldly things,” says
Venkatachalapathy. “Serving an unusually harsh sentence, he
lost a fifth of his body weight in prison. His father died and he
could not attend the funeral. He was shunned by the Congress
upon release, possibly because of his anti-Brahmin tilt,” he
A bust of VO
Chidambaram Pillai in adds. But there are heartening acknowledgements of his
Tuticorin
sacrifice. “At an event in 1927, Periyar is embarrassed to be
invited onstage while everyone ignores Chidambaram Pillai. He
praises him and says he was a Swadeshi activist while I was still a wayward youth.”

Born into a wealthy family in Ottapidaram, a taluka town 25 km northwest of Tuticorin,

in Tirunelveli district, Vallinayagan laganathan Chidambaram Pillai was a pleader at the
local sessions court before moving to Tuticorin in 1900. In the course of his legal stint at
Kovilpatti later in his life, he is known to have defended and even provided board and
lodging to activists pro-bono, even if by his own admission, the money he made as a
pleader was just about enough to cover his betel leaf expenses. But it was his time as a
Congressman in Tuticorin, up until his arrest in 1908, that has come to be regarded as
the defining period of his life. With the inevitable split in the Congress at the 1907 Surat
session, Balgangadhar Tilak picked him out as his lieutenant in the Madras Presidency,
giving him a chance to sharpen the rebellious edge of his character. Spurred on by
Subramania Siva, a fiery orator whose words seemed to echo the deep roar of the ocean,
Pillai became the unlikely face of the first working-class movement against the Raj in
Tamil Nadu. It began in the long grey building that houses the Madura Coats textile mill
in Tuticorin today. Started as Coral Mills in 1898 by Andrew and Frank Harvey, agents of
the British-India Steam Navigation Company, it became the site of a headlining protest
by a thousand aggrieved workers. Pillai cheered them on with new hope as they marched
down the streets yelling ‘Vande Mataram’ and struck work for the first time from
February 27th to March 6th, 1908, demanding shorter workdays, a weekly holiday,
higher wages and better working conditions. Coral Mills capitulated, and the British
administration could no longer ignore the spirit of revolution that was growing apace in
Tuticorin and spilling over to other parts of the district. Decades of internalised
oppression were finally erupting and the hand-wringing and the quiet ire of the past
were giving way to overt resistance by the working class.

One of the most transformative yet rarely frontlit

figures in the history of the freedom movement in
Madras, VOC Pillai was a great straddler of his
times, his thought bridging Tamil pride,
literature, religion, social ills, labour unionism and
legal activism

It was in this charged atmosphere that Pillai and Siva began to make arrangements for
public celebrations in Tirunelveli on March 9th, and in Tuticorin the following day, to
mark the impending release of Bipin Chandra Pal. Sensing both a threat and an
opportunity, British officials promptly arrested them on allegations of fomenting unrest
and later charged them under Sections 124(A), 153(A), 109 and 114 of the Indian Penal
Code allegedly on account of their most recent incendiary speeches. With their arrest, it
was as if a switch had been flipped. Mass outrage broke out in Tirunelveli and the streets
swelled with crowds prepared to avenge the cowardly act. Shops remained shuttered, the
police station was attacked, a kerosene tank torched. Four died in police firings and
reserve forces were brought in to quell what came to labelled the Tinnevelly Riots, a
concussive episode in the history of the Madras Presidency.

Chidambaram Pillai and Subramania Siva entered the annals of history as the first
Tamils to be charged with sedition and were handed unusually severe judgments: a 20-
year ‘double transportation’ sentence for Pillai and a 10-year transportation sentence for
Siva. Tilak, who had been tried for sedition in 1897, had only been sentenced to 18
months’ rigorous imprisonment. In a petition to the Governor of Madras dated January
29th, 1909, where he requests that his sentence be remitted on account of not being
transported overseas as directed by the court, Pillai distances himself from the riots and
says he should not be held responsible for ‘the misguided rowdies of Tinnevelly taking
advantage of the excited condition of the people in consequence of the unexpected
remand’ of their leaders. Four years would pass however before he would be a free man.
By way of explanation, this is what Judge AF Pinhey had to say about the sentence meted
out to Pillai: ‘The first object of a sentence is that it shall be deterrent not to the criminal
alone but to others who feel any inclination to follow his example.’

OVER A CENTURY later, tens of thousands of residents followed Pillai’s example to

resist a modern-day exploitative enterprise and its ambition to rapidly scale up a highly
polluting industry. A two-decade-long struggle demanding the closure of copper
smelting plants operated by Vedanta Sterlite in Tuticorin over allegations of pollution,
gas leaks and unethical practices culminated in a high-voltage people’s movement in
March 2018 after the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board issued a ‘consent to establish’
licence towards an expansion plan to double production to 800,000 tonnes a year. On
May 22nd, as the movement entered its 100th day, a crowd gathered to take out a rally to
the Collectorate. They were in violation of Section 144, which had been imposed the
previous day. Police responded by firing teargas but the situation spun out of control and
shots were fired indiscriminately at the crowd, killing 13 in what turned out to be one of
the most brutal instances of lethal force used by the state to subdue a protest. A National
Human Rights Commission inquiry has revealed the police used just 43 non-lethal
bullets, 18 rubber and 25 plastic, and 23 teargas shells before firing 69 rounds of live
ammunition. The Sterlite plant was shut down, but activists haven’t had it easy, with the
Central Bureau of Investigation charging many of them with robbery, dacoity,
falsification of evidence and disobeying law. “This is the land of Chidambaram Pillai,
Subramanya Bharathi and Kattabomman. It is in our blood to rise up against a great
danger that is about to befall us,” says anti-Sterlite activist Fathima Babu, who faces
several cases.

Police shoot at protesters in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, 2018

“Were we inspired by Chidambaram Pillai? No, we didn’t make the connection when we
started to rise up for our rights as workers at Sterlite. It was much later I realised that
here was a workers’ movement not too different from the one from a century ago,” says
35-year-old Amal Raj, at his engineering workshop in Tuticorin. “Ideas that are
seemingly buried are never quite dead. They will be dug out some day, sometimes
unintentionally.” Raj worked as a welder at the Sterlite plant from 1998 to 2015, earning
Rs 12,000-15,000 a month, and led a series of protests demanding better and safer
working conditions, access to medical care and commensurate compensation for
accidental deaths. “Sterlite did not allow for a union to be formed. When I started work
there, they would pay very well but they didn’t care a bit for workers’ welfare. There was
no dining shed or clean drinking water. Tea was served in plastic bottles with the upper
halves chopped off. Accidents inside were hushed up and treated internally and the
deaths were often reported as suicides. When I began agitating against all this and some
of our demands were met, I became the de facto union leader,” says Raj. The Bharatiya
Mazdoor Sangam eventually backed him, but Raj could not fight off a move to post him
to Ballari in Karnataka. He quit to start his own business instead. “At least 20-25 small
workshops have come up in Tuticorin since Sterlite shut shop. Of the 4,000-plus
workers who were employed at the plant, a large number are skilled enough to run their
own shops. Yes, there is unemployment, but those without technical skills are the most
affected,” says Raj. The spirit of enterprise, embodied in Pillai, is innate to these coastal
lands, he says.

Over a century later, tens of thousands of workers

in Tuticorin followed Pillai’s example to resist a
modern-day exploitative enterprise and its
ambition to rapidly scale up a highly polluting
industry

At the Tuticorin Port Trust, renamed VO Chidambaranar Port Trust when Tamil Maanila
Congress leader GK Vasan was Union Minister for Shipping, Pillai’s search for self-
reliance seems to have long since drowned in the blue-green waters. The port is the
second one in a region that has a long maritime history dating back to the early Pandya
kingdom. It was an idea mooted by Kamaraj to Jawaharlal Nehru and executed in the
’60s and ’70s by then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister CN Annadurai. Operations started in
the mid-1970s, mainly with export of salt and import of coal to power the hydrothermal
plants in Tuticorin. Despite much expansion—it expects to handle a million twenty-foot
equivalent units, the common measure used to denote a ship’s capacity, this year—the
port essentially feeds Colombo, which has meanwhile emerged as South Asia’s
transhipment hub. Despite our promixity to the international east-west trade route, the
lack of a vision to deepen south India’s terminals to accommodate large mainland
container carriers has remained a squandered opportunity, forcing Indian exim
businesses to incur the additional cost of extra port handling in Colombo. Ironically,
imports now constitute over 70 per cent of the business at the VO Chidambaranar Port.
With Sterlite shut, port traffic is down by 17 per cent, says T Velsankar of PSTS Shipping
Services, a major shipping company in Tuticorin, and president of the Tuticorin
Stevedores Association.

Shimmering in the undulating heat of the morning, the rundown old port, known as
‘Zone B’, which once launched the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, is an empty
shell of itself. At a privately run dry dock on the port, a couple of wood sailboats hunker
like ghosts waiting for someone to breathe life back into them. A dozen or so men
hammer away at loose planks jutting out of the body of a boat numbered 171. They fill
the leaky gaps in between with a mixture of fibre and natural resin, a process known as
chalking. It costs Rs 35-40 lakh to repair a 15-year-old boat after a long voyage, and even
after that, it doesn’t inspire much confidence. “A sailboat of this size can carry about 350
tonnes of cargo and runs on a 350-500 HP motor,” says S Lasington Fernando, Secretary,
Coastal Mechanised Sail Vessel Owners Association. I nod vigorously to cover up my
disbelief when he says it charters for Rs 4.5-5 lakh a month and can make it to the
Maldives in three days. “We operate during fair-weather—September 15th to May 15th—
and ply to Colombo, Mangaluru, Lakshadweep and the Maldives. There were over 50
such vessels. Now there are 20. Business is not very lucrative considering the upkeep
these boats need and the time it takes to get them ready for the sea again. But that is not
the reason we are languishing. Cargo containers control most of the trade now,” he says.

The Swadeshi boats must have set sail near about here to the pleasant nattering of
patriots. Zone B today, like Chidambaram Pillai after his release from prison, is a
forsaken artefact left to weather the frightful ravages of the wind and the sea. Penniless
and resigned to doing small jobs—as a rice trader in Chennai, a bank clerk in
Coimbatore and finally as a pleader in Kovilpatti upon getting his sanad back—to fend
for his family, Pillai’s disapproval of casteist arrogance and Gandhi’s non-violence made
him immiscible in the cocktail of voices shaping the freedom movement of the 1920s
and the 1930s. He turned to labour union issues and wrote a memoir in verse, among
other works. He died in Tuticorin in 1936, a forlorn outcast of the mainstream struggle
for freedom, perhaps vaguely appalled at the punt he had taken on his life and his
money. But that ship had sailed long ago.

freedom struggle Indian history The Freedom Issue 2019 Tuticorin

VO Chidambaram

Irvine: Imagine Your Life

Here
Explore Beautiful New Homes in Desirable
Irvine. Voted #1 Best Place to Raise a Family.

Irvine PaciMc Open

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

V Shoba

0 Comments Open Magazine 🔒 Disqus' Privacy Policy "

1 Login

( Favorite 1 t Tweet f Share Sort by Newest

Start the discussion…

LOG IN WITH
OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

Be the first to comment.

✉ Subscribe d Add Disqus to your site ⚠ Do Not Sell My Data

Sponsored

Forget Expensive Roofing Unsold 2021 SUVs Now These Cars Are So Loaded
(Do This Instead) Almost Being Given Away: It's Hard to Believe They're
Smart Consumer Update See Prices So Cheap
SUV Deals | Search Ads Luxury Cars | Search Ads

Forget Everything You Is This America's Next Big NFL Star Rob
Know About Getting Fit Monopoly? Gronkowski's Favorite
Over 40 Says Mike Tyson Empire Financial Research Shoes
Mike Tyson's IM-21 Wolf & Shepherd

CCPA Notice

RECOMMENDED STORIES

HISTORY HISTORY HISTORY

Hastinapur Calling A New Nepal Terracotta Tablet ‘On His Sexual Experiments, Gandhi
Kaveree Bamzai
Predates Mahabharata to Harappa Refused to be Swayed by Disapproving
Culture Associates’
Our collective memory should not come in the
way of history Nanditha Krishna Ullekh NP

The terracotta plaque represents Krishna and Renowned Gandhi scholar Tridip Suhrud on his
Arjuna in the epic battle latest work

Sign Up for Our OPEN REGULARS FEATURES SALON OPEN AVENUES

Newsletters About Columns India Cinema Brands

Sign up to receive interesting Subscribe Gallery World Books Finance

long form stories of Politics, Contact us Specials Business Gadgets Luxury
India, Around the world and
Privacy Essays Sports
many more..
Media Kit Small World Art and Culture
SUBSCRIBE NOW This Week Living
Unreasonable

© 2019 Open Media Network Pvt. Ltd. Design & Developed by Pixelvj