PERSPECTIVES
Gandhis Satyagraha
in South Africa and the Tamils
Vijaya Ramaswamy
Gandhis newspaper, the Indian
Opinion, was launched in South
Africa in three languages
Gujarati, Tamil and English in
1903 on the eve of the satyagraha
struggle. Tamils constituted the
largest percentage of the Indian
diaspora among the indentured
labour as well as the Passenger
Indians who came in search of
better opportunities. This essay
situates the Tamils in South
Africa and their response to
Gandhis call for satyagraha
by examining the available issues
of the Tamil edition between
1903 and 1914.
I am very grateful to the Gandhi Museum and
its director Varsha Das, for suggesting that I
should look at the issues of the Tamil edition of
Indian Opinion from 1903 to 1913-14 and
present the nature of their contents before a
select audience at a National Seminar held on
18 December 2006, titled Indian Opinion, the
Editor Gandhi. The present article is a revised
version of my paper, The Indian Opinion: Voice
of the Tamil Diaspora, published by the Gandhi
Museum on the occasion of the centenary year
of Gandhian Satyagraha in South Africa.
Vijaya Ramaswamy (biyarangu@yahoo.com)
is with the Centre for Historical Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
36
I
n his book, Satyagraha in South Africa
Mahatma Gandhi says, I believe that
a struggle which chiefly relies upon in-
ternal strength cannot be wholly carried
on without a newspaper it is also my ex-
perience that we could not perhaps have
educated the local Indian community, nor
kept Indians all over the world in touch
with the course of events in South Africa
in any other way, with the same ease and
success as through the Indian Opinion,
which therefore was certainly a most use-
ful and potent weapon in our struggle.1
The first issue (which began as an
English weekly) was published at Gandhis
press at Durban, Natal on 4 June 1903.
The paper opens with a lengthy editorial
on the need for a Tamil edition of the Indian
Opinion (IO) in South Africa. It is noteworthy
that the Gujarati and Hindi editions also
began to come out around the same time.
The publication of the IO in three major
Indian languages Gujarati, Tamil and
English foregrounds the Gandhian satya-
graha in South Africa. The lead editorials
spoke of the ill-effects of imperial policy
on both the Africans and the trope of
Indian diaspora, in particular the Tamil
community. From contemporary records,
it appears that the Tamils constituted the
largest contingent of the Indian diaspora
among the indentured labour, and a size-
able chunk of the Passenger Indians who
came in search of better opportunities
from various parts of their homeland. This
article seeks to situate the Tamils in South
Africa and their response to Gandhis call
for satyagraha, from the perspective of
the available Tamil editions of the IO pub-
lished between 1903 and 1914.
The crux of the Indian grievance in
South Africa was discrimination on gro-
unds of race. As the very first Tamil edition
of IO puts it, The whites do not consider
us their equal although we both are set-
tlers in South Africa.
september 25, 2010
Apartheid translated itself in terms of
words, gestures and acts. In a sense it tur-
ned to the advantage of the migrant Indians
that the practice of apartheid brought
together the motley groups of indentured
labour, coolies, white collar workers and
prosperous professional categories like
merchants and lawyers under the umbrella
of discrimination. This banding together of
the Indian community paved the way for
the Gandhian satyagraha.
The Tamil Edition
The very first issue of the Tamil IO pro-
vides the justification for its publication.
These reasons are as follows:
(1) The Whites do not consider us their
equals although both are settlers in
South Africa.
(2) We must take note of British ingratitude
in not acknowledging the help rendered by
the Indian soldiers in South Africa.
(3) We are pained at the complete igno-
rance of second and third generation Tamils
about their own historical roots, Tamil
culture and Indias relationship with Britain.
(4) We hope to overcome this lacuna (in
their knowledge) through learned articles
by Tamils on all these aspects.
(5) Can we expect anything at all to be
done for us by the King Edward VII or by the
Anglo-Saxon community? Our sole aim (in
starting this Tamil edition of Indian Opinion)
is to better the conditions of our people and
establish unity among the various Indian
communities settled here in South Africa.
Almost every edition of the weekly con-
tains the lines It is your paper published
in your interest in order to condemn dis-
criminatory laws against Indians. It states,
Your paper cannot run if we do not have a
minimum of 4,000 to 5,000 subscribers
and advertisements for at least four to five
pages. It ends by appealing to the Tamils
to patronise the weekly by buying their
copies. It is noteworthy that very rarely
did the Tamil edition of IO even run into
the second page. It often shared the page
with the Gujarati edition.
Tamil Diaspora in South Africa
The inaugural issue devotes three long
columns to an essay titled An Account of
Indians in South Africa. It mentions that
vol xlv no 39 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the Indians in South Africa number
around one lakh and reiterates loyalty to
the British monarch Edward VII with the
assertion that, We are as much the sub-
jects of the British empire as the British.
The first batch of Tamils arrived from
Madras on 17 November 1860 to work in
the sugar cane fields of South Africa.
Around 1855, the white settlers in the Brit-
ish colony of Natal had discovered that the
coastlands of Natal possessed tremendous
potential for sugar farming provided reli-
able labour could be found. The colonists
in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius had
developed a thriving sugar industry using
Indian indentured labour. Adopting the same
pattern the white plantation owners of South
Africa began to rely on Indian indentured
labour which had a predominant compo-
nent of Tamils (over 60%). Labour agents
brought back shiploads of indentured
labourers most of whom were illiterate
and quite ignorant of both their destina-
tion and terms of the labour contracts.
The early indentured labourers were
followed by Tamil merchants belonging
primarily to the Chettiar community.
These came with their silks, spices, rice
and other luxury products. Some of them
were also petty traders like R Munusami
Mudaliyar, the father of Tillaiyadi Valli-
yammai, who opened a small provision
store in Johannesburg. Families like those
of Murugesan Pillay, Perumal Naidu,
Chinnasami Pillay, Thambi Naidu and
N Pillay belonged to this second rung of
the Tamil diaspora and came to be called
passenger Indians because they had
paid for their passage in the ships. Many
of these merchants settled in Transvaal
and Johannesburg.
The early issues of The Tamil Opinion
suggest that there was yet one more cate-
gory of these early immigrants. This was
of those who seem to have been brought
from India under the slave trade. They
were settled primarily in the Cape Prov-
ince. Besides Cape Tamils there were the
Cape Malays, Cape Muslims, etc. In course
of time these groups came to be termed
coloured peoples, that is neither white
like the European masters nor black like
the indigenous Africans but an admixture
of races and colours. These groups seem to
have gained voting rights in due course,
something that was denied to the latter
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 25, 2010
waves of immigrants from the Tamil country.
Anil Nauria in his book The African Element
in Gandhi provides examples of coloured
Indians like Abdur Rahman who managed
to get themselves elected to the city and
provincial councils.
It was the Tamil Chettiar community as
well as the coloured Tamils who produced
intellectuals, teachers and professionals
and a number of Tamil schools founded by
them came up in Durban, Transvaal and
Natal.2 One Vriddachalam Pillai, who had
a small business in Durban, ran a Tamil
school and published a Tamil weekly called
Viveka Banu at his own printing press.
Scholars like S M Pillai and G R Naidu
became known for their services to Tamil
language and culture. It was these Tamils
who became the backbone of the Tamil
edition of the IO.
Issues Raised in the IO
The issue of 4 June 1903 condemns the
Immigration Restriction Act that required
the indentured labourers who had already
served for five years to either return to
India or serve under the same terms and
conditions. Further, those among them
who were illiterate or did not know any of
the European languages were to be sent
back, with or without their consent.
Licence Act
These discriminatory laws included the
annual licence fee of three pounds per
person if the indentured labourer and his
family wanted to continue to remain in
South Africa. The tax was levied even on
unemployed children of the labourer. This
matter comes up again and again in the
subsequent issues of the weekly. It continued
to be a burning issue even in 1913, the pe-
nultimate year of publication of the Tamil
edition of the IO. In the issue of 26 April
1913, the paper reports that the govern-
ment had gone back on its promise to re-
peal this despicable Licence Act (Act 17 of
1895), a solemn promise made by General
Louis Botha (1862-1919), the Prime Minis-
ter of Transvaal and of the South African
Union to Gopalakrishna Gokhale. The paper
quoted Botha as saying in his speech of
1 November 1913 that we shall do nothing
by which your rights shall suffer. In the
IO of 26 April 1913 Gandhi had called for
satyagraha in which he stated that while it
vol xlv no 39
PERSPECTIVES
was but natural that Transvaal and
Johannesburg should lead the way in the
struggle as the worst hit by the Licence
Act, other areas like Cape Province and
Natal should show solidarity with the
others. Gandhi is quoted as saying, The
government may treat us as if we are sep-
arate but we can demonstrate our union
by our action. The supplement to the
Tamil edition of 29 October 1913 proudly
published the photographs of women
satyagrahis like Mrs K Murugesan Pillay,
Mrs P K Naidu and Mrs Perumal Naidu.
The angry responses to the Licence Act
continued into the 1914 issues of the Tamil
edition. A very important aspect of the
Tamil IO is that it not only made the Tamil
community aware of the issues before it
but also served as an information bulletin
for further action on the satyagraha front.
The editorial of the issue of 7 January 1914
says that no one should proceed towards
Pretoria since Gandhiji had asked every-
one to wait until the outcome of negotia-
tions was known. It adds that people
would be informed about the further
course of action through their respective
English, Tamil and Hindi editions. The
issue of 21 January carries a direct appeal
signed by M K Gandhi in which indentured
labourers are requested not to pay the
3-pound licence fee (which was being
negotiated) or to enter into new contrac-
tual agreements with potential employers.
The children of these indentured
worker migrants wanted to acquire an
education and began to seek white-collar
occupation as schoolteachers and clerks.
The subscribers of the IO came from the
educated section of the Tamils.
Education for Tamil Children
The lead article in the 4 June 1903 issue of
IO expresses anxiety about the denial of
education to the children of the Tamils.
Indian children were not allowed to
attend government schools but separate
ones were established for them at Durban
and Pietermaritzburg where only elemen-
tary education was imparted. The Tamils
responded by running their own schools
in defiance of government orders.
IO not only established schools for these
children but also appealed for donations.
One of the news items says that at Pieter-
maritzburg P Narayanasami Naidu gave
37
PERSPECTIVES
Rs 225 as donation to the Tiruvannamalai
Victoria Hindu Primary School while
M Ponnusami gave Rs 105.
Two lead articles in the 3 March 1904
issue focus particularly on the education
of the girl child. Titled Higher Education
for Women the first article examines the
reasons for education being denied to girls.
It points out the patriarchal set-up in which
marriage and housework takes the place
of education and employment in the case
of women. The editor advocates womens
education on the grounds that educated
women will not only be able to fight mari-
tal ill-treatment but also act against social
abuses like child marriage and dowry. The
second lead article is the reproduction of a
long speech by Achalambikai Ammaiyar,
the well known educationist of Chennai
who belonged to the group dubbed as
Adayar feminists. The article has been
taken verbatim from the Chennai-based
womens journal Madar Manoranjani.
A somewhat unusual story figures in the
30 August 1904 issue. A news item informs
that two students of a Durban school were
found brawling on the street using abusive
words in English. They were about to be
handed over to the police by an English-
man when a wealthy merchant intervened
and saved the children. The reporter
points out that unless the Tamils improved
their own education system and imparted
the right values to their children, the lat-
ter would forget their cultural roots and
imbibe all that is worst in society.3
The Chettiar community, which is a
trading caste clearly came in search of
business opportunities. They brought with
them silks, spices and other luxury items
for which they hoped to find an African
market. The Pillais and Mudaliyars (the
caste group to which Tillaiyadi Valliyammai
belonged) also came in quest of business
opportunities. Those who had very little
capital ended up as white collar workers.
These groups represented the articulate
face of the Tamil diaspora and therefore
many of their anxieties get sharply focused
in the issues of IO. It is noteworthy that
womens involvement in the anti-imperial
struggle was again more clearly perceived
in the families of these upper caste
Tamil groups.
The inaugural issue of 4 June 1903 raises
the contentious issue of the Trade Licence
38
Act. The act places the Tamil merchants
among others at the mercy of the licence
granting authorities. The licence had to be
renewed on a yearly basis. The report
bitterly complains that the granting or re-
jection of application to trade depended
entirely upon the whims and fancies of the
authorities and there could be no appeal
against their verdict. The laws were most
stringent in Transvaal and the Orange
River Free State while the diaspora situa-
tion was marginally better in areas like
Cape Province where the first wave of
Tamils settled.
The Tamil edition of 29 October 1904,
addresses the issue of the commercial ban
on Indian merchants. A number of European
merchants associations in Pietermaritzburg
got together to resolve that they would not
allow Indians, in this case primarily Tamil
merchants, to trade in the region. They
also warned the local people not to buy any
goods from the Tamil shops. The paper
says that the European traders took this
step because they feared competition and
believed that the Trade Licence Act of the
imperial regime did not go far enough in
protecting their interests. The report con-
cludes on an optimistic even defiant note
stating provided we stand united nobody
can stop us from trading in these parts.
Common Issues of Apartheid
The crux of the Indian struggle was dis-
crimination on grounds of race. As the
very first Tamil edition puts it The whites
do not consider us their equals although
we are both settlers in South Africa.
The Indian community as a whole and
certainly the Tamils are referred to as
coolies by the Europeans. The term coolie
is a Tamil word, meaning labourer or worker
and occurs in early Tamil inscriptions. It is
obvious that a word that was used to char-
acterise Tamil indentured labour was being
used as a generic term for Tamils includ-
ing the educated and fairly affluent Tamils
like the Mudaliyars, Pillais and Chettis.
Indians were clubbed with the Kabiris
by the lawmakers of the Municipal Corpo-
ration of Transvaal. To quote the report:
In society and in social practice, Indians
are regarded as Paraiahs.
Ironically the report in the IO also
becomes a reflection of caste discrimina-
tion back home in the Tamil country
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because the Paraiah is regarded as an un-
touchable and not allowed to move freely
in society, or to drink water from the
same well as the upper castes and to enter
Hindu temples.
Verbal discrimination was accompanied
by physical discrimination as well. Many
of these unequal Acts were incorporated
in the Immigration Control Act passed in
February 1903. These were particularly
applicable in Transvaal, Johannesburg,
Natal and Pietermaritzburg although their
application extended beyond these.
(1) No Indian who did not own minimum
property worth at least 75 pounds could
walk on the same pavement as the whites.
(2) Indians were not allowed to walk out-
side after 9 p m.
(3) Indians could not live in the same lo-
cality as the whites but were forced to in-
habit particular areas of the town.
It was however the rule about carrying a
pass at all times that became a burning
issue, both literally and figuratively, in the
South African struggle. It became the sym-
bolic issue of Gandhis satyagraha move-
ment. As the IO issue of 4 June 1903 indig-
nantly put it, whether old or young, whether
man or woman, whether at daytime or at
night, anyone found without a pass can be
arbitrarily arrested and detained. It also
talks about a protest meeting of the Cape
Town British India League. This was held
under the leadership of H G Muhammad
on 24 May to seek the withdrawal of the
Immigration Control Act and demand reser-
vation for Indians in the Cape Town Council.
The burning of these hated passes became
a signifier of the Gandhian satyagraha in
South Africa.
The Indian community was not allowed
to purchase land in Transvaal and non-
Indians were advised by the government
not to rent out their houses to Indians who
could not settle anywhere in Transvaal
except in the quarters allotted to them.
IO and the Tamil Cultural Identity
On most of the issues listed above, the
Tamil edition of IO shared common
ground as well as common space with the
Gujarati and Hindi editions. This is liter-
ally true as can be seen in the 16 April
1904 issue in which Hindi, Tamil and
Gujarati articles appear on the same page.
However the Tamil edition also had
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 25, 2010
distinctive features, which cannot be found
in the other two. A number of reports
were devoted to happenings in Tamil
temples, musical evenings and cultural
events. For example the 4 June issue re-
ported that on 23 April 1903, Guru pujai
and Mahesvara pujai was performed for
Vaidyanatha Svami (Siva) and Appar
Svamigal (one of the Nayanar trinity).
Appar is an important saint in the Nayanar
Saivite pantheon for whom annual worship
is offered in the temples of Tamil Nadu.
The performance of this worship in a local
temple in Transvaal is clearly addressing
an exclusively Tamil audience. The names
of the patrons of this religious festival are
given as Thyagaraja Pathar and Chappani
Naidu. In the same issue is a news item on
the Harikatha Kalakshepam or Divya
Charitai of Arangan (the Tamil term for
Vishnu) by Vriddachala Pillai.
It is well known that the goddess of
small pox, Mariamman, is worshipped as
a deity in the Tamil country. Her visit to a
house is indicated by the tying of the
margossa (neem) leaves in the front arch
representing a welcome to the goddess and
a warning to unwary visitors. A curious
news item in the 3 September 1904 issue
testifies to the cultural specificity of the
Tamil edition. It reports that one Karappa
Pillai was arrested by the police and fined
a hefty sum of 50 pounds (which of course
he was unable to pay) failing which he
would have to face a three-month jail term
for hiding his smallpox-affected parent
under the cot, away from the gaze of the
health authorities. The cultural implications
of his action that was beyond the compre-
hension of the South African health offic-
ers would however be crystal clear to the
Tamil community, which had built multi-
ple temples to Mariamman and Karumari-
amman in South Africa.4 In the present
South Africa, the Mariamman temple in
Pretoria has been given the status of a na-
tional monument by the government.
Pages from the Past
What would the Tamils sitting in Natal,
Transvaal, Johannesburg or elsewhere in
Africa in the 1900s have read in their
editions of IO? Here are some samples
from the year 1904, soon after the Tamil
edition had started. It must be noted that
the paper came out irregularly.
vol xlv no 39
PERSPECTIVES
3 March 1904: The single page issue
shares space with the Hindi edition. It
consists primarily of a two-part lead arti-
cle on womens education and higher edu-
cation for Indian women. Interestingly,
both the articles are based on speeches
made by Achalambikai Ammaiyar.
The only other news item in the issue is
a detailed account of the first anniversary
of the Saiva Matam celebrating the 63
Nayanmars of the Tamil Saiva bhakti tra-
dition. The main patrons were C K D Pillay
and S Duraisami Pillay and a number of
members from the merchant community
such as Kandasami Chettiar, Saiyappa
Chettiar, etc. The events included Tevaram
reciting competition for children, Tevaram
constituting the most important body of
medieval Saivite literature. There were
Kathakalakshepam (musical discourses)
by renowned scholars and nadasvaram
(an ancient Tamil wind instrument associ-
ated with musical rituals in temples) per-
formances by artists from Nagapattinam.
Does this mean that the performing art-
ists were actually paid to come all the way
from Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu?
9 April 1904: This issue once again shares
space with the Hindi edition. The thrust of
the articles seems once again to be on
women and religion, in that order. They
are written by lokopakari literally uni-
versal well wisher. The lead piece is titled
Good Advice to Women. It centres
around how women should serve as role
models for society through their obedi-
ence to their husbands, selfless care of
their children and practice of patience and
restraint. The article compares angry
women to asuras who wreck their homes.
The piece is pedantic in style and patriar-
chal in tone. The second piece in the same
issue stresses the importance of walking
as an exercise for women.
The next piece is a religious story from
the Mahabharata on the power of sur-
render and devotion. In the middle of
the war at Kurukshetra, the horses need
to be watered. Arjuna is enjoined by
Krishna to create a pond and construct
steps, etc, through an act of faith. Krishnas
compassionate glance produces blue lotuses
in the pond. The moral is the importance
of faith and surrender to the supreme, not
dissimilar from the didactic tone of the
39
PERSPECTIVES
advice to women stressing once again
faith and surrender.
The last piece is an unusual advertisement
for Dr Williams Pink tablets which seem reproduction of articles from Chennai-based
to be a cure for many ailments including
headaches, stomach disorders, etc. It is
noteworthy that at least two of the pieces
in this issue the essays on women and the
news cum advertisement by William Pink
are replicated in the other editions of
the IO.
16 April 1904: One single sheet encom-
passes the Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati
editions. The Hindi issue talks about the
Russo-Japanese war in 1904 (which even-
tually got linked to a second Sino-
Japanese confrontation). The Tamil issue
does not concern itself with this major war
but continues to talk about womens edu-
cation in its lead issue, followed by a
repeat of William Pinks elaborate two col-
umn advertisement recommending his
pills as the ultimate panacea for all ills. It
seems likely that the advertisement
fetched a tidy and much needed sum.
28 May 1904: Two lead articles deal with
the steps taken to oppose the hated
Licence Act aimed at destabilising the
Indian community in South Africa. One of
the other lead articles deals with the plague
outbreak around Natal and Johannesburg
followed by general advice to Indians to
sanitise their homes and surroundings in
order to escape the dread epidemic. The
last item is in the form of a lengthy letter
addressing The deeply felt absence of a
Hindu temple in Johannesburg.
2 July 1904: The strong political overtones
of the newspaper become more clear in
this issue which is entirely devoted to the
Tamil edition and with three lengthy col-
umns on the politics of discrimination in
South Africa including the burning issues
of licences and racial apartheid. The only
other column is a historical piece on the
maharaja Ramavarma of Travancore. This
issue makes it clear that the political situa-
tion was building up towards a crisis. The
political protests by the Indian community
and by the Tamils would foreground the
satyagraha struggle in South Africa.
This brief glimpse of the pages from the
Tamil edition of the IO would suggest that
40
not every issue was keyed into a narrow
political framework. The edition had a
somewhat wider canvas which included
periodicals (Madar Manoranjani, etc) such
as the ones by Achalambikai Ammaiyar
on issues which exercised the cultural
imagination of the diasporic Tamils at
that particular time. Therefore the Tamil
editions of the IO should be read as much
as vestiges of Tamil cultural history as of
the political history of that period against
the specific background of the Gandhian
satyagraha movement. Satyagraha and
the political modes of protest were clearly
its raison detre but it also served the larger
purpose as well, that of raising other
matters pertaining to the Tamil diaspora.
Role of Tamil Women
The issues of the Tamil edition of IO,
between 1913 and 1914 deal almost
exclusively with the commencement of
the Gandhian struggle in South Africa and
its implementation in three phases. As
South African Indians geared up for the
long march to Pretoria, the editions of the
IO in Gujarati, Tamil and Hindi, provided
information and directives through adver-
tisements regarding Gandhis plans.
For example, the Tamil IO dated 7 Janu-
ary 1914, states
The Indian Enquiry Commission, set up by
the Indian National Congress, has urged the
South African imperial regime to concede to
our demands for autonomy. Pending negoti-
ations, the long march to Pretoria which had
been planned for 1 January, stands suspend-
ed. This decision is being duly advertised in
the English, Tamil and Hindi issues. A deci-
sion will be arrived at by the end of this
month and conveyed to all (Satyagrahis)
through these editions.
Gandhi evinces much hope in the
Viceroys emissary, Chief Commissioner
Benjamin Robertson. Only if his efforts
failed would the non-violent struggle
be renewed.
The same editorial dated 7 January 1914
enjoins every satyagrahi to prepare for the
arduous struggle ahead. Gandhi writes:
This struggle will not only confer honour
upon us, it is also a spiritual struggle. In this,
we need to fear only god. On no account
should be consent to pay the cruel three
pound tax which which will take a toll on the
poor and downtrodden Indian community.
Those who join this struggle, unmindful of
september 25, 2010
the blows and the gunshots and long, gruel-
ling imprisonments, would have earned
self-respect for themselves and the commu-
nity of Indians. Lets think of those Indians
who do not need to pay this tax or of those
women with young infants who are suffer-
ing in South African Jails.
The best historical representation of the
satyagraha movement in South Africa is
the publication of the Golden Number of
the Indian Opinion 1906-14 published at
the press in Phoenix, Natal. The Tamil edi-
tion was now in its waning phase and the
information it provides is more in terms of
action plans for the various passive resist-
ance groups as well as for conveying Gan-
dhis directives which were issued from
time to time.
In this final section therefore I propose
to piece together the story of these closing
years of the Tamil edition by supplement-
ing the scattered information provided in
the issues with the more consistent infor-
mation provided through other sources.
The response to Gandhis call for
passive resistance against the unjust and
unequal laws of the British in South Africa,
met with an overwhelming response from
the Indian communities. In his essay of 23
July 1913 in the IO, Gandhi observed,
I never dreamt that 20,000 poor Indians
would arise and make their own and their
countrys name immortal. This fight was
joined by women and by many young boys of
16, so that the campaign became much more
of a moral struggle. South African Indians
became the talk of the world.
A reporter sought from Gandhi an ac-
count of the atrocities being perpetrated
on the political prisoners at the Durban
jails. Two Christian priests named Andrew
and Pearson also flew to South Africa at
their own expense with the support of
Gokhale to understand the course of the
Indian struggle in South Africa. The pris-
oners reported the filthy conditions in
which they were housed and how the
warders who were Kabiris, never hestated
to use the whip on them. On 29 May, a
few prisoners including Bhadri (a Tamil),
Padam Singh and Bhavani (a Tamil
woman) were released due to ill health and
they reported the large-scale prevalence
of diarrhoea among the prisoners (7 Janu-
ary 1914). The Tamil editions of 1913-14
provide regular lists of Tamils imprisoned
for their passive resistance and occasionally
vol xlv no 39 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the release of some political prisoners
and the warm welcome accorded to them.
For example, the Tamil IO dated 28 Janu-
ary 1914, in a small news item Release of
Our Brave Indian Sisters appearing at
the bottom of the page, records the re-
lease of some of these women:
The women passive resisters, 11 in number
who had been sentenced to three months hard
labour (which they spent with their chil-
dren) by the Newcastle court were released
on the 13th from Durban jail. They were: Mrs
Thambi Naidu, Mrs Pillai, Mrs P K Naidu, Mrs
K Murugesa Pillai, Mrs Perumal Naidu, Mrs
Chinnasami Pillai, Mrs Bhavani Dayal, Miss
Bhagyam Murugesu Pillai, Miss Meenakshi
and Mrs Tommy. They were accorded a warm
welcome by the Tamil community of Natal.
The Tamils forming as they did a sizea-
ble component of the Indian diaspora,
were in the forefront of passive resistance.
Here I shall focus on the role of Tamil
women in this struggle with special
reference to Taillaiyadi Valliammai. The
supplement in the Tamil edition dated 29
October 1913 carries a picture of some of
these passive resisters, the majority of
them being Tamil women K Murugesa
Pillay, P K Naidu and others listed in the
notification. The only non-Tamilian in this
group, going by the surname, appears to
be Bhawani Dayal although the name
Bhawani is a common Tamil name.
Another photograph in the IO files is of
Tamil women resisters who spent three
months in the Pietermaritzburg jail. This
list includes the name of Valliamma
Munusamy, Veerasamy, V Naidu, Moonu-
samy (Valliammas mother Mangalat-
hammal also called Janaki), Bhavani
Dayal and V S Pillay. The IO mentions
many other names whose presence is
not recorded.
The 17-year-old resister Tillaiyadi Valli-
ammai came from a traditional Tamil
weaving caste called Senguntha Mudali-
yar. I have been able to piece together
something of her personal life because of
the article in the community journal of
the Sengunthars published in 1953 titled
Tillaiyadi Valliammai and written by
Akkur S Ramalingam. Her father be-
longed to Puducheri (Pondicherry) while
her mother was from Tillaiyadi in Tanjavur
district. The family came to Johannesburg
(the year is not mentioned) where her
father Munusami Mudaliyar opened a
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 25, 2010
small shop selling provisions and South
Indian sweets. Valliammai was born in
1898 into this fairly well-off family. The
first impact of the apartheid in South
Africa on Valliyamma was when marriages
performed in the traditional Indian style
were declared illegal, rendering her an
illegitimate child in the eyes of the law.
Her political awareness was widened by
what she read in the Indian Opinion about
the growing Indian resistance to the
Licence Act, the Pass system, etc.
On 19 April 1913, Gandhi wrote:
Most of the settlers here including the
womenfolk will join the struggle. The latter
feel that they can no longer refrain from
facing goal, no matter what it may mean in
a place like this. Mrs Gandhi made the offer
on her own initiative and I do not want to
debar her.
On 23 October 1913, when a womens
rally started out from Johannesburg to
Newscastle, both Valliamma and her
mother Mangalathammal were a part of
it. Gandhi had instructed the group that it
was incumbent upon them to make the in-
dentured labourers and their families
aware of the discriminatory laws and en-
list them in the struggle. As the frail but
brave womens brigade marched through
Charlestown, Ladysmith and Maritzburg
the women courted arrest in batches. Fi-
nally at Volkrust, Valliyammai and her
mother were both arrested and were in-
terned at the Maritzburg prison which
also housed Kasturba Gandhi. Gandhi
himself was at the Bloemfontein prison.
Valliyamma along with Nagappan fell
ill and at a time when Gandhi was negoti-
ating with General Smuts, in February
1914. The South African government was
induced to release Valliyamma before the
end of her prison term in February 1914.
Gandhi in his letter (15 July) from Bloem-
fontein refers to his visit to her in prison at
the time of her release and his sense of
guilt at her pathetic condition. She died
the same month.
The Tamil edition also ceased publica-
tion a few months later. The last issue of
3 April 1914 announced its closure. It said
that the struggle will ensure the repeal of
the hated licence act. The Hindi and Tamil
editions would also cease publication
forthwith and resume publication only if
the passive resistance struggle failed. The
vol xlv no 39
PERSPECTIVES
Gujarati edition which continued to be
published refers to the unveiling of two
memorial tablets in memory of Valliyamma
and Nagappan at the Braamfontein ceme-
tery by Gandhi and his moving tribute to
them. It is worth noting here that memorial
stones are cultural signifiers of the Tamils
going back to the Sangam age in the pre-
Christian era where such hero stones are
referred to as Virakkal or Nadukkal.
I would like to close this narrative with
Gandhis return to India. Gandhi left for
India on 18 July 1914 and reached in Janu-
ary 1914. In his speech at Triplicane in
Chennai he praised the role of the Tamils
in South Africa and followed it up with a
visit to Tillaiyadi to pay his personal
tribute to Valliyamma and acknowledge
her sacrifice.
Notes
1 Collected Works of Gandhi, The Publications
Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcast-
ing, Navjeevan Trust, Ahmedabad, 1969, Vol 29,
p 117. A good general history of the Indian Opinion
is to be found in Y P Anands presentation History
of Indian Opinion at the seminar on The Indian
Opinion: Editor Gandhi, 18 December 2006.
2 According to recent figures Natal has the largest
concentration of Indians in the country, 600,000
out of a total of 8,00,000 South African Indians.
3 It is noteworthy that today South African educa-
tional institutions have a separate Tamil depart-
ment. The Tamil departments in government
schools all over South Africa as well as the Tamil
department at the University of Durban-Westville
are now supplementing the private schools run by
the Tamils themselves and are fostering the dis-
semination of Tamil language and literature.
4 Today the re-assertion of Tamil identity by the
South African Tamils is being done by various
local associations such as: The Natal Tamil Vedic
Society; South African Tamil Federation; Tamil
Advancement Society, etc. The Saiva Siddanta
Sangam and Arutpa Kazhagam are doing the
teaching and singing of Tamil religious music
such as Tiruppugazh and Tevaram.
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41
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Third Workshop
on
Research Writing and Publication in the Social Sciences
22-27 November 2010
Organised by

UGC-Academic Staff College, Jamia Millia Islamia

and conducted by

Economic and Political Weekly

Applications are invited for the third Research Writing and Publication Workshop that will be held in Jamia Millia Islamia, New
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Please submit a demand draft of Rs 150 as processing fee in favour of Registrar, Jamia Millia Islamia, payable at New
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Selected candidates will have to pay an additional Rs 500 as registration fee after they are informed about their selection.
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Date for informing applicants of selection: 1 November 2010
Address for Correspondence:
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Jamia Millia Islamia
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42 september 25, 2010 vol xlv no 39 EPW Economic & Political Weekly