Life and Legacy of Freedom Fighter V. V. S. Aiyar

#GS-1 #Modern India #Culture #Freedom Struggle #Important Personalities

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The Vice President of India paid homage to the revolutionary and scholar Varahaneri Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar on his death anniversary on 3rd June.

Born in Tiruchirappalli on 2nd April 1881, Aiyar travelled to London in 1907 to study law but shifted completely to the freedom struggle.
He joined India House, which was founded by Shyamji Krishna Varma.
He worked closely with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar inside the secret Abhinav Bharat Society to support revolutionary work and send weapons secretly to India.

To escape British police, he moved safely to the French territory of Pondicherry in 1910.
He built a strong intellectual group there alongside poet Subramania Bharati and spiritual leader Aurobindo Ghosh.
He secretly gave weapons training to young Vanchinathan, who later shot dead the British Collector of Tirunelveli, Robert Ashe, in 1911.

During World War I, he joined the Indian National Congress and edited a Tamil daily named *Desabhaktan*.
The British government arrested him for sedition in 1921 and sent him to prison.
Even though he finished his law studies, he refused to become a barrister because he did not want to take an oath of loyalty to the British Crown.
Mahatma Gandhi called him a fierce anarchist in 1907, but Aiyar later chose the path of Ahimsa or non-violence.

People call him the Father of the Tamil Short Story because he started modern Tamil storytelling with his book *Mangayarkkarasiyin Kaadhal*.
His famous short story *Kulathangarai Arasamaram* from this book is a major landmark in Tamil literature.
He translated the Thirukkural and Kamba Ramayanam into English to make Tamil literature famous around the world.
He supervised the English translation of Savarkar's famous book *The Indian War of Independence, 1857*.
He loved Kamban, the author of the Kamba Ramayanam, and felt he was greater than the classic Sanskrit poets Valmiki and Vyasa.
To inspire young Indians, he wrote Tamil life stories of global figures like Giuseppe Garibaldi, Guru Gobind Singh, and Napoleon.

He hated the British education system and started the Bharadwaja Ashrama, which was a Tamil Gurukulam in Cheranmahadevi in 1922.
This school focused on teaching culture and practical job skills to students.
His life ended in a tragic accident on 3rd June 1925 when he drowned in the Papanasam falls while trying to save his daughter.