He showed that the life and prosperity of the Tamils was in the well-being of Tamil and roused the Tamil race to a new unity. Dr. Kamil Zvelebil rightly calls him the greatest Tamil poet of the first half of the 20th A.D. A star later named as Kanaka Subburathinam was born in the Tamil literary firmament at 10-15 p.m. on 29-4-1891 at Pondicherry. The name his parents christened him with suggests curiously that he is the rettinam (jewel) of Subramanian Bharati.
As Pondicherry was then under the French rule, he had to learn French. However, his burning desire to study Tamil grew day by day. His earliest teachers were Tiruppuliccami Ayya, Pundit P.A. Periyacami and Pundit C. Pankaru Pattar.
He studied the Pulavar (Brevet de Langue Indigene) course during 1907 and 1908 in Calway College on merit scholarship and came out (at the young age of 17~) of the final examination with flying colors by securing the first rank among the forty students.
The interest he evinced in the three Tamils - Iyal, Icai and Natakam (literature, music and drama - language spoken and written, sung and enacted) - was innate and spontaneous. Even in his school days he used to compose songs, redounding them to his schoolmates and play important roles in the school plays. He had a sweet majestic voice. His acting in the school plays was superb. His poems carved a niche for himself in the literary circles of Pondicherry and laid a foundation for his later - day lyrics.
The Pondicherry government recognized his scholarship and offered him a teacher's post in the school at Nervi, a town near Karaikkal on 16.07 909. As a teacher, he earned by and by the love and affection of his pupils and their parents. His pupils would bring cooked mutton, fish and the double-tongued lizard (the guano), a rare delicacy for him. However, he often incurred the displeasure of the politicians whose wrongs he exposed bravely. The result was that he was transferred not less than fourteen times from school to school from the day he joined service as a teacher (16-07-1909) to the day he retired (07-11-1946) a total service of 37 years three months and 20 days, He availed leave for one year three months and 22 days. Thus, though he was a teacher of teachers, he was an enemy to the authorities.
Subburathinam, the Tamil teacher wrote songs praising Gandhi and his Katar movement. Above all, he committed the 'greatest crime' of composing songs against the Whites' rule in 1922. His book of songs on Katar entitled Katar irattinap pattu was written in 1921 and published in 1930. The first song began with the following lines:
anniyar nulait totom enraceyti araintitata puvimurrum enkal arupatu koti tatakkaikal ratttinam currum
("We won't touch the cotton thread of the foreigners. Proclaim this to all the world. Our sixty crore sturdy hands would spin the wheel "). Further, he wrote patriotic lines like the following:
tay nilam poy marravarait talai vananka lamo? tan talai vanaka lamo? .....
("Shall we bow to any except to our motherland?")
Naturally, it was not to the taste of the White rulers, It earned him a black mark in his official records.
Subburathinam's meeting with Subramanian Bharati in Pondicherry in 1908 proved a turning point in his life. His life which was till then breezy turned stormy. Bharati introduced him in his literary journal, Taracu. Subbu had the good fortune of meeting the great freedom fighters like Bharati, Va.Ve.Cu. Iyer, Dr. Varatarajulu in Pondicherry. He helped them all in all possible ways. He gave them refuge, took them food without the knowledge f his parents, rendered them monetary aid now and then and helped them escape from the police hunt. He helped Bharati by publishing stealthily Bharati's journal Intiya in Pondicherry. It was the gun supplied by Subburathinam that t k the life of the British Collector Ash.
Subburathinam became so close and dear to Bharati that he called him elf Bharathidasan 'a slave (in love and affection) to Bharati'. Bharati's patriotism, Passion for freedom, undaunted heart, majestic bearing, and poetic excellence and above all, his condemnation of caste differences drew Bharathidasan close to . The ever-growing love of Tamil and the Nation and above all, the belief the equality of all people in Bharathidasan made him consider Bharati as his guru.
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