June 16 passed as yet another day on Thursday. But 221 years ago in 1801, it was on that date, the Marudu Brothers, the rulers of the Sivaganga, made a declaration in which they gave an open call to people to destroy not just the British but all Europeans, whom the brothers referred to as “low wretches”.
The declaration, a first call in India for taking up arms against the British, led to a fierce war in which the Marudu Brothers were defeated, hanged and their family members exiled.
The declaration was known as Jampatheevu Prakadanam or Srirangam Prakadanam, since its notices were affixed on the walls of the Tiruchi Fort and those of the Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam. Jampatheevu, known as Navalantheevu in Tamil, is another name for India as it is surrounded by the sea on three sides. Vaishnavite saint Periyazhwar refers to the country as “ Navalamperiya Theevu.”
“The declaration set a precedent for the South-East Asian countries. Even Tipu Sultan, a contemporary of the Marudu Brothers, had not come out with any proclamation. One should read the Declaration of American War of Independence, 1776, to know the greatness of the declaration by the Marudu Brothers,” says M. Rajendran, a former IAS officer, who has written a monograph on the declaration.
“To the castes, nations, Brahmins, Kshetriyas, Vysyas, Sudras and Musclemen [Muslims] that are in the Island of Jamboo/in the peninsula of Bamboo Dweepa/this notice is given,” says the proclamation.
“Wherever you find any of the low wretches, destroy them and continue to do so until they are ‘exported’. Whoever serves the low wretches will never enjoy eternal bliss after death, I know this,” said Chinna Marudu, who came out with the Proclamation.
He further said, “To all living at Srirangam, the priests and great people, Marudu Pandyan prostrates himself at their feet.”
Calling upon people to publish, circulate and distribute it to their friend, he said, “Everyone who shall not write it and circulate it as before mentioned, let him be held as guilty of the enormous crime of having killed a black cow on the banks of the Ganga and suffer all the various punishments of hell.”
Mr. Rajendran said the British were able to get scent of the declaration and came out with its own declaration four days before the Marudu brother came out with it.
“Edward Clive came out with a second declaration, 37th day after the Marudu Brothers were hanged. But the British never responded to the Declaration of American War of Independence,” he said.
What is to be noted here is that the Marudu Brothers were great friends of the British. Their relationship strained and resulted in a war because they refused to hand over Oomai Durai, the brother of Veerapandiya Kattambomman, who was given asylum by the Marudu Brothers.
Colonel Welsh, a friend-turned-foe of the Marudu brothers, had recorded the days when he enjoyed a cordial relationship in his book Military Reminiscences.
Periya Marudu, or Vellai Marudu, had nothing to do with the management of a country. He was a great sportsman, spending his time hunting. “Being a man of uncommon strength and stature..., it was even said he could bend a common Arcot rupee with his fingers,” Welsh had written.
About the younger brother, he said, “Though of a dark complexion, he was a portly, handsome and affable man of the kindest manners, and most easy access and though ruling over a people to whom his nod was a law, he lived in an open place without a single guard.”
It was Chinna Marudu who first taught Welsh how to throw the spear and hurl the collery stick (‘Valary’, a boomerang-type weapon), a weapon scarcely known elsewhere, but in a skilful hand capable of being thrown to a certainty to any distance within one hundred yards.
Welsh’s writings were a clear proof that it was with a heavy heart he fought the Marudu brothers, his former friends. “Yet this very man, I was afterwards, destined by the fortune of war, to chase like a wild beast; to see badly wounded, and captured by common peons, then lingering with a fractured thigh in prison and lastly to behold him with his gallant brother, and no less gallant son, surrounded by their principal adherents hanging in chains upon a common gibbet.”
J. Gourlay, the author of Mahradu, An Indian story of the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, had poignantly captured the final moments of the Marudu Brothers when brought to be hanged in a tree at Tirupattur (in Sivaganga).
“You need not show any mercy to me. I fought to protect my country and was defeated. You can think that you can take off my life. I do not want anything to tell about it. But these kids! What crime they did? Did they take arms against you? Look at them. Are they capable of taking arms against you?,” Gourlay recalled the Periya Marudu as exclaiming in anguish before he was hanged.
