On August 26, 1942, a group of freedom fighters from Kannampalayam in Coimbatore set the Sulur Aerodrome on fire. This was just a few days after Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Do or Die’ call as part of the Quit India Movement, the decisive final phase of the struggle for Independence. After the incident, the British government launched a brutal crackdown on the residents of Kannampalayam and imposed a tax called Thimir Vari on the entire village. With the Tamil term, Thimir, meaning insolence and Vari meaning tax, the name implies it is “a tax to be collected to deal the rude ones with an iron hand”. The government served a 48-hour notice on the residents to pay the tax.
K.S. Palaniyappan, a washerman, was among the most important members of the team that set the aerodrome on fire. When freedom fighter K.V. Ramasamy, popularly called Sulur Netaji, presided over a meeting to chalk out strategies to set the aerodrome ablaze, it was Palaniyappan who volunteered to make Vendayams.
