Write an essay in Tamil about India’s freedom struggle
Answers
The Indian independence movement had a long history in the Tamil-speaking districts of the then Madras Presidency going back to the 18th century.
The first resistance to the British was offered by the legendary Puli Thevan in 1757. Since then there had been rebellions by polygars such as the Marudu brothers, Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Oomathurai and Dheeran Chinnamalai and the sepoys of Vellore. Though there were no violent rebellions in the 19th century, still, there were continuous agitations by Indian independence activists such as Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty, John Bruce Norton, Eardley Norton, Sir T. Muthuswamy Iyer, P. Rangaiah Naidu, G. Subramania Iyer, Sir S. Subramania Iyer, C. Jambulingam Mudaliar, Salem Ramaswami Mudaliar, M. Veeraraghavachariar and C. Karunakara Menon. After a brief interlude of militancy in the early 1900s, independence activists from Tamil Nadu adopted the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi. Some of the important Gandhian leaders of the region were C. Rajagopalachari, K. Kamaraj and S. Sathyamurthy.
Contemporaneous with the Indian nationalist movement, there were also pro-British political parties and movements, the most prominent being the Justice Party. Some important pro-British leaders were P. Theagaroya Chetty, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Raja of Panagal and E. V. Ramasami Naicker.
Early contacts with European powers:-
European travellers and traders have had contacts with the Tamil country at least since the 1st millennium BC. Roman and Greek traders frequented the ports of Puhar and Musiri during the Sangam Age. The apostle St. Thomas is believed to have preached and died in South India and ports of the Tamil country were mentioned in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Globalisation accelerated further under the Chola Empire which traded with South-East Asia, China and the most of the Arab world. Though sea trade declined after the fall of the Pandya kingdom in about 1327, foreign visitors continued to visit cities in the region throughout the Vijayanagar period and its aftermath.