Salem C. Vijiaraghavachariar, the freedom fighter who fought against Kala Paani

Andamans, notoriously called ‘Kala Paani’ (black water) during colonial rule, served as a penal settlement from the second half of the 19th Century, even before the construction of the Cellular Jail during 1896-1906. Many freedom fighters, including Vaman Rao Joshi, Sohan Singh, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhai Parmanand, and Nand Gopal had been kept at the jail. What is less known is a prominent Congress leader from Tamil Nadu, Salem C. Vijiaraghavachariar (1852-1944), was ordered to be transported there to serve a 10-year imprisonment. He got it legally rescinded. He was implicated in a case concerning the Salem Hindu-Muslim riots in August 1882 and convicted three months later.

“Though thirty and facing many privations, Mr. Vijiaraghavachariar was not daunted by the sentence. He appealed to the High Court of Madras and succeeded in getting his conviction quashed on January 9, 1883, much to the chagrin of the local bureaucrats who had counted on silencing the independent young lawyer,” wrote The Hindu in its obituary on him on April 21, 1944. The report said, “He did not rest with vindicating himself gloriously, but fought for the next two years to get the other accused also released.”

Removed from Municipal Council

Vijiaraghavachariar was the first Tamil to become the president of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) at the Nagpur session in 1920. His 82nd death anniversary falls on April 19. His rebellious spirit came to the fore again when the British government removed him from the Salem Municipal Council on the ground that he was “an undesirable person”. He challenged the decision in the High Court and sought damages. He won, and was awarded token damages of ₹100. In his battle against the official establishment, he received enthusiastic support from newspapers such as The Hindu and the Amrita Bazar Patrika. When he died, C. Rajagopalachari (CR or Rajaji), who was junior, recalled the advice of Vijiaraghavachariar to illustrate how sturdily independent his senior was: It was the duty of all practitioners at the Bar not merely to carry on their profession but also to take part in public life and “to stand up for the defence” of people against “any inroads” of the authorities.

Though the term ‘Salem’ became a prefix for him, Vijiaraghavachariar was born at Pon Vilaindha Kalathur near Chengalpattu. His father Sadagopachariar, deeply versed in Sanskrit, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but the boy, who mastered the Vedas in his early days, had his own plans. The passion for English was so great that he fled home and took shelter at his uncle’s house in Madurantakam, according to the material provided by his great-grandson P. Srinivasan, who is the president of a museum-library named after the former Congress president. Academically brilliant, Vijiaraghavachariar went on to do his graduation at Presidency College, Madras. While working briefly as lecturer at a government college in Mangaluru, he quit in protest against the racial prejudice of the European principal. It was then that he came to Salem and privately qualified for the Bar.

The legal successes he had achieved in the Salem riots case shot him to national fame. He was hailed as the ‘Hero of Salem’ and the ‘Lion of South India’. Soon, he became a member of the committee that drafted the constitution of the Congress. When the organisation split between “moderates” and “extremists” over the concepts of swaraj (self-government) and national education and the former took control of the party, he stayed away from the organisational activity as he sided with Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He again began playing a dominant role after the 1916 resolution when a unified Congress came into being and Mahatma Gandhi had then entered the arena. When the party focussed on issues such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the Khilafat Movement, Vijiaraghavachariar convinced Gandhiji to go beyond these issues and demand “swaraj”. At the Nagpur session chaired by him in 1920, the party decided to intensify its efforts as Gandhiji’s historic resolution on non-cooperation was adopted. When Lord Birkenhead was the Secretary of State for India in the mid-1920s and threw down a challenge whether Indians could draw up a Constitution for themselves, he, as a member of the Motilal Nehru’s panel, played a crucial role in drawing up, what is even now called, the Swaraj Constitution, says the Congress’s website.

His interest in social reforms was no less significant. He advocated post-puberty marriage for women and also the right of a daughter to have a share in her father’s property. He advocated the much-needed change in the Hindu personal law at a time when any talk about it was a taboo, says the Congress’s website. A paper presented by academic R. Kumaran at the 2012 conference of the South Indian History Congress notes that at the third session of the Congress in 1887, he emphasised the need for social reconstruction and the upliftment of religious and communal minorities, besides appealing to Muslims to join the Congress in larger numbers. He carried on an anti-untouchability campaign. He condemned racial discrimination and sponsored the claims of the labour. He spurned titles and resisted the lure of office.

‘Pioneer of fundamental rights’

On a piece of land gifted by the Salem local body, the C. Vijiaraghavachariar Memorial Library-Public Hall has been functioning since July 1951. The then Chief Minister, P.S. Kumaraswami Raja, declared it open, whereas his predecessor T. Prakasam laid the foundation in August 1950. The city has two statues for him — one on the premises of the library and the other on the busy Second Agraharam. While the first was unveiled by former Union Finance Minister R. Venkataraman in 1982, the second was by M.G. Ramachandran two years later. Venkataraman hailed him as the pioneer of fundamental rights. Vijiaraghavachariar’s grandson R.T. Parthasarathy, an associate of former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj, served as a Member of the Rajya Sabha during 1966-72.

Dr. Srinivasan rues that the authorities, in 2023, had acquired a portion of the library land, measuring about 310 square metres, for an infrastructure project without paying a fair compensation, unlike what they did a year earlier, when a smaller portion of the property was taken over. His point is that the authorities should not do anything that would belittle an institution that seeks to perpetuate the memory of a brave fighter with its modest means.