If Bharathi’s writing was fire, that fire was not meant merely to burn the political chains that bound a nation; it was also a ray of light that entered the darkest chambers of the human soul
If Bharathi’s writing was fire, that fire was not meant merely to burn the political chains that bound a nation; it was also a ray of light that entered the darkest chambers of the human soul. His creative force did not remain within what we today call “poetry”; it moved freely across the vast expanse of “the philosophy of liberation.” When India of that era was being crushed under foreign oppression, Bharathi, with the vision of his inner eye, perceived the Russian people in a distant corner of the world rising in their own struggle for freedom. He transformed that same human longing into flashes of lightning through the gentle, musical cadence of Tamil. His words, travelling beyond all boundaries of thought, became a rare bridge linking the soul of Tamil with the universal spirit of humanity. And that is what we realise— Bharathi’s writing was not a storm that rose for India alone; it was a thundering cry for the liberation of humankind itself. When Russia’s empire was tr...
