India, Aug. 16 -- This particular book is focused on one day in the life of VO Chidambaram Pillai (VOC). At the height of the Swadeshi movement, for about two years from 1906, VOC ran a shipping company directly challenging the British India Steam Navigation Company. He was opening new fronts in the anticolonial struggle and mobilising people for the nationalist movement. He also led a major strike in the British-owned cotton mills. He was travelling all over south India and even further to propagate Swadeshi ideals. He was arrested on March 12, 1908. The day after, in Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi, people took to the streets. For a day, it was like a liberated zone. The British government crushed the movement. By focusing on this dramatic event, I go back and forth narrating the causes and consequences of this uprising. And I end with a very tragic aspect of this story - why and how it got erased from public memory. I really hope that this will become part of the national discourse. National Maritime Day is celebrated on April 5, which commemorates the voyage of the SS Loyalty from Bombay to London in 1919. I would urge the government to also consider the arrival of the first Swadeshi ship in Bombay from Marseilles, France, in 1907, so that the great sacrifices of VOC are remembered. I think it is more fitting. I began my research when I was in Class 10. With no training, I wrote in notebooks and on pieces of paper. I made photocopies, though it was expensive in those days. If there were four pages, and the fourth page only had a few lines, I would photocopy the three full pages and then manually copy those few lines. I gathered materials from all over the world. Finally, during the pandemic, I decided I could not postpone organising this material any longer. So, I started organising it all, and writing. In Tamil Nadu, VOC is a household name. You can write a full book, a short book, or focus on just one part of his life in Tamil. But how do you pitch the story of VOC in English? I thought I would focus on his crowning achievement, the most dramatic part of his life: the setting up of a Swadeshi shipping company. A David vs Goliath tale, it has all the narrative elements of a good story: an underdog, a powerful villain backed by an even more powerful state, betrayal, and tragedy... everything. The rise of Gandhi transformed everything. He was India's first truly national leader. Whatever Gandhi said had an effect everywhere. The Pathan tribes in Peshawar listened to him, people in Assam followed him, and he had a following in Tamil Nadu as well. That kind of figure's influence was unprecedented. VOC was so committed to Tilak that he refused to accept anybody else as his leader. VOC also played a part in the non-Brahmin (Dravidian) movement. As a result, he was sidelined by the Indian National Congress. But in public memory, he is remembered as a symbol of selfless sacrifice, one of the audacious dreamers. Given the long history of Tamil Nadu's attempts to maintain its distinct identity, the trajectory of the national movement in Tamil Nadu was different. So, even when the Indian national movement was growing in Tamil Nadu, it also had faultlines that should not be missed. The non-Brahmin movement emerged parallelly with it. The humanities and social sciences, especially history, are rather weak in south India. If you don't have good historians, who will tell the story? For instance, can you offhand think of a good book on, say, Sri Narayana Guru? On the other hand, we have such a rich clutch of books on the Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj. We know so much about the peasant movements in Bihar. This is because historians in north India working from institutions such as Delhi University and Calcutta University studied these issues extensively. The Tamil elite, with their focus on science and technology, ignored the social sciences. Combined with the north Indian indifference towards the south, this lack has meant that major south Indian personalities remain unknown outside their states. Yes, it's true. The first anti-Hindi agitation dates to the late-1930s. But the way to influence discourse at the national level is through English. It is the elite who will need to take the first swing. The Bengal bhadralok come immediately to mind. In the case of Tamil Nadu, the elite were the Brahmins. For many historical reasons, they forsook the humanities. Unfortunately, intellectuals of the Dravidian movement too did not write as much in English. The Tamils have always wanted to maintain their distinct identity. If you look at Tamil literary history, while always being in conversation with the north and Sanskrit, Tamil has maintained its identity. Even the Bhakti movement, which originated in the 7th century in Tamil Nadu, is a reaction to developments in north India. In modern times, linguistic pride and linguistic identity are playing out in the realm of democratic politics. In post-Independence India, it was argued that south Indians needed to learn Hindi for employment. With economic and social development in south India outpacing the north that argument has been junked. The democratisation of society in south India is deeper than elsewhere. Young people from across the social spectrum in Tamil Nadu have taken to technical education through English and have left for better pastures abroad. Tamil people are not convinced that there is good faith in the arguments of Hindi enthusiasts. You call it a three-language policy. In which part of north India is anybody learning Telugu or Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada?...