Subramania Bharati: A Tamil Poet Who Wrote India
Revolutionary, journalist, poet — dead at 39, immortal in Tamil literature
Subramania Bharati wrote this poem in Tamil. The English translation you read keeps the shape — but not the music. To hear the music you would have to learn Tamil. Many have, for him. He died at 39. The poems he left behind are still recited in Tamil Nadu schools every morning, more than a hundred years later.
Tamil literature — a 2,000-year conversation
Tamil is one of the world's oldest continuously-written languages — its literary tradition stretches unbroken from the Sangam period (c. 300 BCE – 300 CE) to the present. When Bharati wrote Here Brahma-knowledge has taken root, and the Buddha preached his dhamma here, he was placing himself in a two-thousand-year-old conversation across Sanskrit, Pali, and Tamil literatures. The line is short. The lineage behind it is enormous.
The elephant at Triplicane
Bharati used to feed an elephant at the local temple in Triplicane, Madras (now Chennai). One day in 1920 the elephant — provoked by something — knocked him down and stepped on him. He survived the immediate injury. But he never fully recovered. The internal damage contributed to his death three months later, at the age of 39.
Q1.In which language did Bharati write Bharat Our Land?
Subramania Bharati wrote this poem in Tamil. The English translation you read keeps the shape — but not the music. To hear the music you would have to learn Tamil. Many have, for him. He died at 39. The poems he left behind are still recited in Tamil Nadu schools every morning, more than a hundred years later.
Tamil literature — a 2,000-year conversation
Tamil is one of the world's oldest continuously-written languages — its literary tradition stretches unbroken from the Sangam period (c. 300 BCE – 300 CE) to the present. When Bharati wrote Here Brahma-knowledge has taken root, and the Buddha preached his dhamma here, he was placing himself in a two-thousand-year-old conversation across Sanskrit, Pali, and Tamil literatures. The line is short. The lineage behind it is enormous.
The elephant at Triplicane
Bharati used to feed an elephant at the local temple in Triplicane, Madras (now Chennai). One day in 1920 the elephant — provoked by something — knocked him down and stepped on him. He survived the immediate injury. But he never fully recovered. The internal damage contributed to his death three months later, at the age of 39.
Q1.In which language did Bharati write Bharat Our Land?