{"id":32204,"date":"2014-07-21T23:10:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T03:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=32204"},"modified":"2014-07-22T22:19:57","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T02:19:57","slug":"how-the-famous-tamil-poet-subramania-bharati-responded-to-the-first-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=32204","title":{"rendered":"How the Famous Tamil Poet Subramania Bharati Responded to the First World War"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBY A.R. VENKATACHALAPATHY<\/strong><\/p>\n

B<\/strong>orn in 1882, Subramania Bharati\u2019s political career began in the end of 1904. Less than four years later he would be forced into exile, an ordeal that would extend to well over a decade. The years spent in exile in the French enclave of Pondicherry, between mid-1908 and late 1918, subsume the years of the Great War, and it is not entirely coincidental that Bharati should choose to end his exile within a week of the signing of the Armistice. How did the great poet respond to the Great War?<\/p>\n

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Portrait of Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathiyaar at Bharathy Public Library in Uyarappulam, Aanaikkottai, Jaffna District, Sri Lanka- pic by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Unlike World War II, this War had little direct impact on southern India, barring the bombing by the German light cruiser Emden. But in an imperial world where India was fully integrated as Britain\u2019s colony, the War did not leave India untouched, and the politics of the time was deeply coloured by its course and Britain\u2019s fortunes in it.
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\nThe War broke out in July 1914 at a particularly inopportune moment in Bharati\u2019s life. What Bharati called the \u2018new spirit in India\u2019, the Swadeshi movement, the earliest phase of the Indian nationalist movement with mass participation, was effectively extinguished by 1908 in the wake of severe state repression. Apart from the movement\u2019s prime leader Tilak, who was transported to Burma, many of Bharati\u2019s own comrades \u2014 V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, Subramania Siva, Ethiraj Surendranath Arya and Krishnaswamy Sarma \u2014 were imprisoned. Fearing arrest, Bharati himself left for Pondicherry in September 1908. French India had for long been the refuge for civil debtors and other malefactors seeking to escape the clutches of the British Indian police. Bharati was the first to choose Pondicherry for political asylum \u2014 an example that would soon be followed by Aurobindo Ghosh and V.V.S. Aiyar.<\/p>\n