The Marudhu Brothers and the Jambudweep Proclamation of 1801: Sivaganga Against the Company

Who the Marudhu Brothers Were

• The Marudhu brothers, Periya Marudhu, also called Vellai Marudhu, and his younger brother Chinna Marudhu, rose in the service of Muthu Vaduganatha Thevar, the ruler of Sivaganga.
• In 1772 the forces of the Nawab of Arcot and the East India Company attacked Sivaganga and killed Muthu Vaduganatha Thevar at Kalaiyarkoil. His queen Velu Nachiyar escaped to Virupachi near Dindigul, with the support of Hyder Ali of Mysore, and the Marudhu brothers went with her.
• With Hyder Ali's help, Velu Nachiyar and the Marudhu brothers recovered Sivaganga in 1780. The brothers then administered the kingdom, and after her death they became its effective rulers.
• They are also remembered as builders of temples; the tall gopuram of the Kalaiyarkoil temple is credited to them.

The South Indian Rebellion of 1800 and 1801

• The Marudhu brothers drew the chiefs of the south into a South Indian Confederacy against the Company, with allies such as Gopala Nayak of Virupachi and Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Malabar.
• In 1801 they gave shelter to Oomaithurai, the brother of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, after his escape from the Palayamkottai prison. The rising that followed is also called the Second Polygar War, far wider than the first, which had ended with Kattabomman's hanging at Kayathar in 1799.
• The Company sent a large force under Colonel Agnew, and after months of fighting in the forests of Sivaganga the brothers were captured.

The Jambudweep Proclamation, 16 June 1801

• On 16 June 1801 the Marudhu brothers issued the Jambudweep Proclamation, also called the Tiruchirappalli Proclamation. Jambudweep is an old name for the Indian landmass.
• It called on people of every caste and region to unite as one and drive out the British.
• It was affixed to the walls of the Tiruchirappalli fort and of the Srirangam temple, so that the people coming there would read it.
• Because it addressed the whole land rather than one kingdom, it is read as one of the earliest public calls for freedom from British rule in India, more than half a century before the revolt of 1857.

Tiruppathur, 24 October 1801, and After

• The brothers were hanged at Tiruppathur fort in Sivaganga district on 24 October 1801. 24 October 2026 is the 225th anniversary.
• Many of their followers and kin, among them Chinna Marudhu's son Duraisamy, were deported to Penang, then the Prince of Wales Island.
• In the same year, by the Carnatic Treaty of 1801, the Company took over the administration of the Carnatic from the Nawab, and the palayam system of the south was dismantled in the years that followed. The next great outbreak in the region was the Vellore Mutiny of 1806.
• In August 2026 Tamil Nadu announced a special monthly pension of Rs. 11,500 for the descendants of the Marudhu brothers, along with those of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Muthuramalinga Vijaya Raghunatha Sethupathi and V.O. Chidambaranar.
• Marking the anniversary, an article in Dinamani recalled other Tamil freedom fighters: Chempakaraman Pillai, linked with the German cruiser Emden's shelling of Madras in 1914; Neelakanda Brahmachari, an accused in the Ashe murder case of 1911; and Rangoon Saraswathi Rajamani, who served as a spy in Netaji's Indian National Army.