GREATEST TAMIL POET OF MODERN ERA-SUBRAHMANYA BHARATI
GREATEST TAMIL POET OF MODERN ERA-SUBRAHMANYA BHARATI (Post No.4481)
WRITTEN by London Swaminathan
BHARATI was born on 11th December1882 in Ettayapuram in Tamil Nadu and died on 11th September in Chennai. He was the greatest of the Tamil poets of modern period. He composed patriotic and devotional poems. His other poems covered all the important issues facing the country. He lived well before his times and sang about women’s liberation and a casteless society. he predicted India would become independent, a quarter of a century before its actual independence in 1947. He was a great lover of Tamil language and the Vedas. He wanted to spread both Tamil and Vedas. He translated some of the hymns from the Rig Veda. He knew several languages including Sanskrit, French and English. He wrote both in Tamil and English.
His poems inspired the freedom fighters including my father V santanam, who was the News Editor of Dinamani. He along with Kamaraj, Kakkan and other Congress leaders went to prison for fighting against the British Rule. My father and others sang Bharati’s famous patriotic song ‘Veera Swathanthram Vendi Nindraar…………’ through the main roads of Chennai. This is to emphasize that his poems inspired the freedom fighters and it would inspire generations to come.
Bharati was very kind towards all the living beings; he sang that the animate and inanimate beings of this land are his kith and kin. He was greatly influenced by Shelley, Byron, Milton, Browning, Francis Thompson and Thomas Moore. In the same way he was influenced by all the national leaders and poets. He sang about Guru Gobind Singh, the Sikh Guru, Veera Shivaji, the great Hindu King, Mahatma Gandhi, B G Tilak, Gokhale and others.
As a lover of Sanskrit he was influenced by the Upanishdic seers, Panini, Kalidas, Adi Shankara, doyen of Tamil literature U V Swaminatha Iyer to name a few.
He predicted that India would become a Super Power, a Super Guru and lead the world. He also predicted that there would be a bridge linking India with Sri Lanka along the Setu Bridge of Ramayana. His other predictions about Trip to Moon, Indian Independence etc. have already come true.
I will quote some of the tributes paid to Bharati by famous Tamil scholars:
“In Bharati there is a steady, ceaseless, unflagging spiritual evolution. His burning desire to shake off the yoke of an alien rule finds immortal expression in his soul-stirring national songs. The freedom from without is only a prelude to freedom from within. In the wailing of Panchali (Panchali sabatham), one hears the passionate cry of a down trodden nation for freedom. His love lyrics are nothing but an adumbration of the heavenward flight of his soul. His devotional songs in praise of Kali, mark a definite stage in his onward march to the faroff City of God, which he wants to found here on earth. His Cuckoo Song (Kuyil Paattu) is the crown of his achievement in the domain of poetry. Bharati’s ideal is that of Sri Aurobindo who strove to make our earth the very Kingdom of God”._- R S Desikan
“Poet Bharati has fulfilled the true mission of a poet. He has created Beauty not only through the medium of glowing and lovely words, but has kindled the souls of men and women by the million to a more passionate love of freedom and a richer dedication to the service of the country.
“Bharati was truly great and he was easily the greatest of the modern poets. With him came the flood-tide of renaissance, as a part of national upsurge for freedom. In his hands Tamil recovered its naturalness, clarity, vigour, vitality and flexibility. he turned to colloquial vocabulary and rhythms and brought the written Tamil closer to speech.
“His short life of thirty-nine years was full of trials and tribulations, which a freedom fighter had to face in the early years of this century. His political Guru was the extremist Lokamanya Tilak. He had several spiritual Gurus including Sister Nivedita.
–Bharati Tamil Sangam , Calcutta, 1970
“Bharati was not only a poet who could rouse the patriotic feelings of his fellow-Tamils, but was also a literary artist of the highest order who could see the universal in particular. Although Bharati hails from Tamil Nadu, and occupies a front place in India’s regional literature, his impact will be felt wherever great literature is loved and read” – V K R V Rao
Bharati was not only a poet and a freedom fighter but also a humanist, journalist, Yogi, Siddha, Nature lover, Essayist, social reformer and linguist.
