Information About Poet Subramaniam Bharti

Subramaniam Bharti was an immortal poet of national consciousness. He envisioned an independent India, which would have religious, spiritual, social, and political freedom. He wanted to see harmony and a friendly atmosphere in the country. Bharthi Ji wrote poems in English, Hindi and Tamil, etc

Personal details

Subramaniam Bharathi was born in Etayapuram, District Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu. That day was 11 December 1882. His father’s name was Chinnaswamy Iyer. He used to do the work of Pandit of the Raja of Ettayppur and ran a cloth mill. His mother’s name was Lakshmi, a very religious woman. He was the first child of his parents. His name in childhood was Subbaiah. When Subbaiah was five years old, his mother died. After that, his father married a second time in 1888.

Subbaiah’s father wanted to make him a doctor or engineer, but he engaged in mischief with his uncle Sambasivam. He had his early education in his village itself. The teacher had jokingly named his ‘Bharti‘. Bharati means ‘goddess of learning’. This joke-given name became an indicator of his prestige. Apart from short rhymes, Subbaiah did not show any other talent in his childhood.

Subramaniam could not succeed in the matriculation entrance examination, due to which he could not get admission in matriculation. Eventually, he returned home. This made his father very sad. And being disappointed, he got Subbaiah appointed in the service of the king of the princely state. There everyone would stunned to hear the reasoning in his rational, and satiric style.

Subramaniam Bharti in Kashi

In 1897, Subramaniam was married to Chelammal, the seven-year-old daughter of Chellam Iyer, a resident of Kadayam village. The very next year in 1898, Subbaiah’s father suffered a huge loss in the cloth mill which he could not bear. And he died. Subbaiah’s stepmother went to her maternal home with her children. Meanwhile, Subramaniam’s Fufi Kuppamamal and Fufa Krishnamal invited him to Kashi. Subramaniam left for Kashi after sending his wife to their maternal home. Fufa Fufi did not have any children, so Subramaniam got a lot of love there. He lived in Kashi for about 4 years.

There, Subramaniam’s desire to study appeared in him. Subramaniam passed his matriculation examination through Central Hindu College affiliated with Allahabad University. According to the rules, this examination was to gave in Sanskrit and Hindi or two other languages. He passed the matriculation examination in the first division by getting good marks in both Sanskrit and Hindi.

Career Life of Subramaniam Bharti

During this, the king of Ettapuram invited him to this. The king respected Subramaniam as a poet friend. Subramaniam Bharathi used to recite Byron’s poems to the king, informing him about the activities of the country and abroad. But the approach of the king was feudal. He was often surrounds by sycophants. Subramaniam did not like all this. He gave his resignation letter to the king. From there Bharathi reached Madurai. There he took a job as a temporary Tamil teacher in Sethupathi High School at a monthly salary of seventeen and a half rupees. From August 1904 to November 1904, he was a teacher in that school.

Bharathi’s first poem Tanimay Erakkam was published in Madurai in July 1904. Some specific vocabulary used in that 14-line poem. Later Bhartiji had to make a lot of changes in this style. By 1908, he counted among the leading poets of the new genre. The subjects of Bhartiji’s satirical poems often became Ji huzoor of the British government. Towards the end of 1904, Subrahmanyam Bharathi started working as the deputy editor of the Tamil paper Swadesh Mitran. Many articles of Bhartiji were published in this. In these articles, the importance of karma, loyalty to the nation and society has been expressed in the main.

Subramaniam Bharti as a Poet Fighter

Congress session was held in Kolkata in December 1906. There Bhartiji participated as a representative journalist. It was here that he had a direct experience of political speech. It was during his stay in Kolkata that he met Bhagini Nivedita. Bhartiji was very impressed by the long conversation on Nivedita’s spiritual, social, and political subjects. Nivedita gave him a dry leaf as a prasad, which Bhartiji kept with her for life. In 1908, the first compilation of national songs of Bharati Ji was published. In 1909, his second poem ‘Janma Bhoomi’ was published. Bhartiji dedicated both these works reverently to Bhagini Nivedita.

After some time, Bhartiji leaned towards the Congress party. It is worth noting that he was not a fan of violence at all. Since Bhartiji could not publish his nationalistic and challenging articles under the customs policy of Swadesh Mitran, so he started publishing his such works in the Tamil weekly paper India. Along with this, he would also write editorial comments, forewords, poems, etc. But someone else’s name printed as editor. Apart from this, he started working as the editor of Bal Bharatam. Bharti Ji started getting famous from South to North India. His poems related to the love of the country began to dominate the minds of the youth. His poems were translated into other languages of the country as well. The British government got distract by this. They implemented the Press Act, under which the publication of nationalist works in newspapers and magazines was banned.

Subramaniam in Pondicherry

Then Bhartiji went to Pondicherry. In those days Pondicherry was under the control of France, so no order of the British was applicable there. Bhartiji arranged for the publication of India in Pondicherry. Even there the British authority was trying to stop that publication. They banned the distribution of money orders sent to the magazine to monitor the readers of the magazine. Finally, it had to close the magazine on 12 March 1910. In Pondicherry, Bhartiji had to face financial difficulties. There he came into contact with mystics, wanderers, and sages. He also wrote some poems on his lifestyle.

After a long stay in Pondicherry, Bharati returned to India on 20 November 1918. On the same day, the police arrested him and put him in coodlore jail. On 20 November 1920, Bharti Ji again appointed as the deputy editor of Swadesh Mitran. The operators sent 30 rupees to his wife per month during his stay in Pondicherry as a sympathy to the poet fighter Bharti Ji. In March 1919, Bharati met Gandhiji at Chakravarti Rajagopalachari’s house. Gandhiji was very impressed by his behavior and simplicity.

In July-August 1921, Bharti Ji suffered from dysentery. The body was already weak. Dysentery did not get better even after a lot of treatment. Finally, Subramaniam Bharti died on the night of 11 September at around 1.30 pm. In this way, the journey of a great poet-fighter was completed in a simple way.

This is the title of some of the poems of Subrahmaniam Bharathi.

• यह है भारत देश हमारा
• वन्देमातरम
• आज़ादी का एक ‘पल्लु’
• निर्भय
• मधुर तमिल की भूमि हमारी
• भारत माँ की अनमोल ध्वजा
• भारत देश
• जा, जर्जरित भारत, जा ! आ, नवभारत, तू आ !
• आज़ादी
• नया रूस
• महात्मा गांधी
• आज़ादी की देवी के लिए एक प्रार्थना
• सरस्वती-वन्दना
• नंदलाला
• बाँसुरी कन्हैया की
• कन्नम्मा, मेरी प्रिया-1
• कन्नम्मा, मेरी प्रिया-2
• मेरा प्रेमी कान्हा
• एक बिघ्हा ज़मीन
• ओ शिव शक्ति, मुझे बतलाओ
• अल्लाह
• ईसा मसीह
• भारत की जनता
• शिशु-गीत
• स्त्री-स्वातंत्र्य
• स्त्रियों का मुक्ति-नृत्य
• नई नारी
• डंका
• श्रम
• एक नया ज्योतिषि
• जय भेरी
• अमर रहे विशुद्ध तमिल