I am truly gratified to have the benefit of such lovely contributions. The allure is not me. I know. It is that peerless poet Mahakavi Bharathi. N Vijayaraghavan,Advocate.

[3/20, 07:28] Sekarreporter: I have the Third of Special Contributions to my book on Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar. It has been accepted for publication in English by Kalaimagal Publications. And in Tamil by Alliance Publications. This contribution sizzles with an autobiographical touch which we rarely get to know. Bharathi does it to everyone. Vanavil K Ravi,Advocate joins PNPJ and NAVJ on Bharathi as a Cosmic Poet. Bharathi touches them all at the core and let them see themselves as they are. I am truly gratified to have the benefit of such lovely contributions. The allure is not me. I know. It is that peerless poet Mahakavi Bharathi.

N Vijayaraghavan,Advocate.
[3/20, 07:40] Sekarreporter: K.Rmü, M.A. , M. Phil. , B L
Advoca te

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The Cosmic Poet
Subramaniya Bharati, the one who ignited the fire of poetry, the flame of righteousness and the fervour of humanism in my heart, is a Mahakavi in the true sense of that term, not merely because he was a great poet but because he was one among the very few who thought, spoke and sang of the Greatest that we call “The Mahat”, the great Cosmic Being. He was the only one who not only spoke and sang of that great Cosmic
Being but also participated in its vibrations and engaged himself in a dialogue with it. Thus he is verily a Mahakavi, Prapancha Kavi and Brahma Kavi.
A poet, whether the Bard of Avon or the Bard of Ettayapuram, is not just an author whose works are simply read. The works of a great poet are to be studied time and again. Every time a reader revisits any work of a great poet, the reader would discover a new layer of meaning.
I propose to deal briefly with the three layers that I could unravel in the works of Mahakavi Bharati.
Firstly, every reader of Bharati knows that he was a patriotic, nationalist poet. Only a few may know that he was the first in that clan. When I say this I do not in any way undermine the poetic excellence of his forerunners; I only emphasise the point that Bharati was the first Poet to sing intensively and extensively of India or Bharat as Mother, as the Mother-Goddess.
He was the first to draw the geographical map of the Unmutilated Hindustani . In his poem, “We will stroll upon the Silvery Snow-mountain” 2, he spoke of the River Sind, Keralite Damsels, the Sweet Telugu, the barter between the people in Gangetic Plains and Cauvery Basin, the roaring poets of Maratha, the scholars of Kasi, Rajput warriors and Kannada Gold Mines; all these in a single song!
He was the first to equate Motherland with God the Almighty. Sorry, I stand corrected; he did not simply equate them but declared their identity unequivocally.
M. Phil. ,
In a single Poem, “Munnai llangai Arakkar3” he says that the bow that killed Ravana and his companions in Sri Lanka was the bow of Bharat Rani, the Queen India. He further says that the hands that wrote Vedas were her hands; the king Bharatha, known to be the son Sakuntala, was Bharat Rani’s son; the shoulders that carried the bow called Kandeepa’ were not those of Arjuna but they were her shoulders; the hands that gifted away the ear studs in the battlefield were the hands not of Karna but of Bharat Rani; the mouth that uttered the preciousines in Bhagavat Geetha was her mouth; she was Gautama, the buddha; also the wise Janaka and the poet Kalidasa.
He was the first to sing for Mother India, songs that were traditionally sang only for gods and goddesses. Yes, Suprapadham4 that was sung only to wake up gods; Dhasangam5 (The Ten Features) ascribed only to Gods; A garland of nine gems6 made of verses! All these for Bharat, the divine mother. None before him ever dreamt of singing such songs to his Motherland.
Of course, Bankim Chandra wrote the song ‘Vande Mataram’, reckoned to be the first patriotic song in our freedom movement. In his song, the divine motherland was portrayed as having 70 million mouths, which represented the population of the undivided Bengal then. In 1905, when Bharati translated it in Tamil, he enlarged the figure of the Mother as the one with 300 million mouths and 600 million hands7 to represent the entire population of India then. This enlargement was the first step taken towards the worship of the great Motherland India.
Secondly, many of us would readily agree that Bharati championed the cause of social reformation and that in his works he advocated caste equality and gender equality. Here again, some know that he was not a mere writer who spoke of equality but he practised it in his life: by bestowing the ceremonial thread meant for the so-called upper castes upon two persons who were considered untouchables in those days and ineligible for such ceremonies; by walking on the street, side by side with his wife, holding her hands; by standing on the road in front of a tea shop run by a Muslim gentleman, sipping tea purchased from that shop and saying loudly “let all those who pass this way see me and know that this Aiyar is drinking tea prepared by a Muslim”. Only a few may know that he went a step further and even openly criticised great persons like Gandhiji and Swami Vivekananda, whom he adored and praised, when they had expressed some compromising views on widow-remarriage. He was the first
M. Phil. ,
poet in India to declare the supreme democratic principle that every one of us is the ruler of this Nation8, when it was not yet one Nation and also when it was a Colony of the British. He defined the equality among people as quantitative and qualitative equality: “All are of the same weight (in the scale of Justice) and all are of the same price . He dared to make the most powerful statement: “Even if one single individual would have no meal we shall destroy the world” 10 He expressed it not as a simple statement but as a statement of Eternal Law. Oh, who authorised him to make laws? Here comes the great English poet Shelley who proclaimed in his essay, ‘A defence of Poetry’ that “the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” Il
Thirdly, only a very few would have noted that Bharati accepted no boundaries but tuned himself in unison with the vibrations of the limitless, ever-expanding Universe that the ancient Sages called ‘The Brahman’.
He did not stop with speaking of equality among human beings. In line with the views expressed by a few sages before him, he spoke of the equality of all living beings. Vallal Ramalinga Swamigal and Sage Thayumanavar had spoken of such equality. Bharati, here too, went one step ahead and proclaimed that not only crows and sparrows were his caste but also the Oceans and Mountains his clan 12. Thus he erased the distinction between the living and the non-living, jiva and ajiva.
The culmination is reached in his poem titled ‘Vinayakar Nanmani Malai’, where he expressly declares that to him Vinayaka was Muruga, Narayana, Shiva, Allah, Yehowa and even all the female goddesses’ 3. In that poem he states:
“l dare to speak what hitherto has not been spoken of;
Ask the boon not so far asked by anyone.” 14
He asks the Almighty, the All-encompassing Universal Being to do, what? He did not ask God to grant some special boon to himself, his family, his community or even to his country. He asks that the Supreme God shall ordain that all the beings in the world, not only human beings but also birds, animals, insects, leaves of grass, roots and trees shall be happy and live amiably in comity through his deeds. He goes further and says that he would stand in the midst of the Sky of Wisdom, Gnana Akasa, and proclaim that Love and Peace shall prevail on earth and all shall live happily sans sorrow, fear, disease and death; that God shall hear his proclamation and say ‘Let it be so, Amen, Ameen, Thatasthu
K. Ra.,vû, M.Phi1. ,
This is not an eschatological or ecclesiastjcal dogma but an environmental, more than that, a cosmological awareness of the Unity Of Everything, not merely the Theory Of Everything that scientists like Stephen Hawking spoke of.

Vanavil K.Ravi
17-03-2022
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