In Tamil Nadu, as in other parts of India, the earliest expressions of opposition to British rule took the form of localised rebellions and uprisings. Chief among these was the revolt of the palayakkarargal (poligars) against the East India Company in 1799.
The poligari system had evolved with the extension of Vijayanagar rule into Tamil Nadu. Each poligar was the holder of a territory or palayam (usually consisting of a few villages), granted to him in return for military service and tribute.
Where circumstances allowed, the poligars naturally tended to place less emphasis on performing their duties and more on enhancing their own powers. Given their numerical strength, extensive resources, local influence and independent attitude, the poligars came to constitute a powerful force in the political system of south India. They regarded themselves as independent, sovereign authorities within their respective palayams, arguing that their lands had been handed down to them across a span of sixty generations Such claims of course were to be brushed aside by the East India Company...
The East India Company, eager for revenue, opposed the manner and scale in which the poligars collected taxes from the people. The issue of taxation—more specifically, who was to collect it, the traditional rulers or the rapacious new collectors from overseas —lay at the root of the subsequent uprising. As one British Collector noted:
I again repeated that. . . unless the poligar were deprived of his power, and my recommendations went to the fullest extent of the measure, the Company's investment would be materially checked, the weavers residing in the Panchalamkurichi palayam would be stripped off their property, and the largest part of the advances made to them by the commercial resident exposed to considerable danger.
...The early struggle between the poligars of south and East India Company, although essentially a battle over tax collection, had a strong political dimension. The English treated the poligars, perceived as a rival power, as their inveterate enemies, allowing their hostility full expression in their accounts...
When in 1799 the poligars of Tirunelveli District rose in open rebellion, the East India Company took all possible measures to check the spread of the uprising. A detachment of Company troops was speedily deployed against the Tirunelveli poligars, while dire warnings were issued to poligars in other parts of the south not to join the rebellion. The Company, which regarded the poligars as the 'scourge of the country', determined to deprive the ringleaders of their palayats and punish them in an exemplary fashion.
Collector Jackson singled out Kattabomma Nayak of Panchalamkurichi as the main leader of the rebellion. That came to be known as the First Poligari War was declared on 5 September 1799. Although Kattabomman managed to escape from the field of battle, he was captured a month later in Pudukottai. After a summary trial, he was sentenced to death by Major Bannerman, Commander of the East India Company troops. He was publicly hanged near Kayattar Fort, close to the town of Tirunelveli, in front of fellow poligars who had been summoned to witness the execution.
Subramania Pillai, a close associate of Kattabomma Nayak, was also publicly hanged and his head was fixed on a pike at Panchalamkurichi. Soundra Pandian Nayak, another rebel leader, was brutally done to death by having his brains dashed against a village wall.Despite the exemplary repression of 1799, however, rebellion broke out again in 1800, this time in a more cohesive and united manner. Although the 1800-1801 rebellion was to be categorised in British records as the Second Poligari War, it assumed a much broader character than its predecessor. It was directed by a confederacy consisting of Marudu Pandian of Sivaganga, Gopala Nayak of Dindugal, Kerala Verma of Malabar and Krishnappa Nayak and Dhoondaji of Mysore. The insurrection, which broke out in Coimbatore in June 1800, soon spread to Ramanathapuram and Madurai. By May 1801, it had reached the northern provinces, where Marudu Pandian, Melappan and Puttur provided the leadership. Oomathurai, the brother of Kattabomma Nayak, emerged as a key leader. In February 1801, Oomathurai and two hundred men by a clever stratagem took control of Panchalamkuriclli Fort, in which Oomathurai's relatives were imprisoned.
Its fort now re-occupied and reconstructed by rebel forces Panchalamkurichi became the nerve centre of the uprising. British dismay was boundless. As one eyewitness put it,
' . . . to our utter astonishment, we discovered that the walls, which had been entirely levelled, were now rebuilt, and fully manned by about fifteen hundred poligars.'
Three thousand armed men of Madurai and Ramanathapuram, despatched by Marudu Pandian, joined up with the Panchalamkurichi forces. However, British military superiority having just destroyed the far more formidable challenge posed by Tipu Sultan in Mysore, quickly asserted itself. The poligar forces based at Panchalamkurichi were crushed and, by the orders of the colonial government, the site of the captured fort was ploughed up and sowed with castor oil and salt so that it should never again be inhabited.
The colonial forces quickly overpowered the remaining insurgents. The Marudu brothers and their sons were put to death, while Oomathurai and Sevatiah were beheaded at Panchalamkurichi on 16 November, 1801. Seventy-three of the principal rebels were sentenced to perpetual banishment. So savage and extensive was the death and destruction wrought by the English that the entire region was left in a state of terror.
The suppression of the poligar rebellions of 1799 and 1800-1801 resulted in the liquidation of the influence of the chieftains. Under the terms of the Carnatic Treaty (31 July, 1801), the British assumed direct control over Tamil Nadu. The poligari system, which had flourished for two and a half centuries, came to a violent end and the Company introduced a zamindari settlement in its place.
While it is obviously premature and misleading to attach the term 'nationalist' to the struggle of the poligars, or to portray it as some kind of mass movement, the uprising does appear to have attracted some popular support. In subsequent years, a good deal of legend and folklore would develop around Kattabomman and the Marudu brothers. Long after Kattabomman's execution, Kayattar, his place of death, remained a place of political pilgrimage. In his Tinnevelly Gazetteer of 1917, H. R. Pate notes the presence in Kayattar of 'a great pile of stones of all sizes, which represents the accumulated offerings by wayfarers of the past hundred years'. Folk songs recalling the heroism of the poligar leaders remain alive in Tamil Nadu to this day..."
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