On December 18, Sahitya Akademi announced its yearly awards for the best works of literature published in 21 languages. The selection of the book in Tamil was unanimously welcomed in the state’s literary world, which is otherwise usually marred by controversies. The book chosen this year is ‘Tirunelveeli Ezucciyum Vaa.Vuu.Vi.yum 1908′ (Tirunelveli Uprising and VOC) by A R Venkatachalapathy, historian and professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, published in 2022 by Kalachuvadu Publications. While the Akademi usually awards books of fiction, literary criticism, poetry, and general essay collections, this is the second work of research chosen. The first was in 1983 for the book ‘Bharati: Kaalamum Karutthum’ by Tho Mu Si Ragunathan.
Venkatachalapathy’s book traces riots in the Tirunelveli district on March 13 and 14, 1908. According to Venkatachalapathy, the first riot against the British took place at Kakinada in Madras Presidency on May 31, 1907, after the Swadeshi movement began. “However, in Tamil Nadu, the first riot against the British happened in Tirunelveli in 1908,” says Venkatachalapathy. “The Tamil Nadu riot was a ripple effect of the 1905 Kolkata riot, triggered by events such as the Partition of Bengal, leading to the Swadeshi movement and a boycott of foreign goods.”
As part of this nationwide movement, the first swadeshi shipping started in Tamil Nadu in 1906 by V O Chidambaram, a lawyer, who later went on to earn the moniker ‘Kappalottiya Tamilan’ (Tamil helmsman). In 1907, Bipin Chandra Pal, a revolutionary in Bengal, was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. On March 9, 1908, the day of Bipin Chandra’s release, Chidambaram organised a meet to celebrate the release as ‘Swarajya Day’ and eulogise Bipin Chandra in Tirunelveli. The following day, the same was celebrated in Tuticorin. “Though the British tried to stall the event, it failed. On March 12, Chidambaram and his fellow revolutionaries Subramania Siva and Padmanabha Iyengar were arrested. Protesting their detention, riots broke out on March 13 and 14 that ended with police firing killing four people,” he says in his book.
Venkatachalapathy says he first started to write about the riot in 1984 as an essay when he was a commerce student in college. The essay was developed into a research monograph published in 1987. Three decades later, additional research work went into the book, which was published in 2022. The author refers to the ‘riot’ as an ‘uprising’ (the English translation of ‘Ezhuchi’, otherwise known as ‘Kalagam’ in Tamil, a term carrying a negative connotation) and is the first historian to do so. Venkatachalapathy published his first book in Tamil when he was 17 years old. The book, ‘Vaa.Voo.Si.yin Kadithangal’ (Letters of VOC), published in 1984, was the result of time spent at the Tamil Nadu archives. The book did not garner much attention, but Venkatachalapathy continued to research the life of Chidambaram.
“I got an urge to write the biography of Chidambaram in parts,” he says in the preface of the 2022 book. His book on Chidambaram, ‘Swadeshi Steam: V O Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle Against the British Maritime Empire’, published in December 2023, was the first comprehensive book in English about Chidambaram and his shipping efforts. “When I was in Class IX, studying in a CBSE school, I found no mention of Chidambaram in my history book,” says Venkatachalapathy, who has more than 20 books to his credit. “There was hardly any research on VOC and so I embarked on that journey in 1981. There is a lot more to write about Chidambaram that may end up in two more volumes and I am working on it.”
