CHENNAI: “Of all the languages I know, I have seen none beautiful as Tamil”, Mahakavi Subramanya Bharati said. Such lines are dime a dozen these days, but it is especially heartening to hear such a salutation to Tamil from Bharati, says E Ramamurthi.
“Bharati knew six Indian and seven foreign languages. A salutation that comes from a man who knows 13 languages is an educated and cultured statement, not mere rhetoric”, says Ramamurthi, better known as ‘Bharati Kavalar’ or ‘The Protector of Bharati’, a title given to him by poet Bharatidasan in 1964.
In the course of his research, Bharati Kavalar found a line in praise of the firebrand poet, which many would find hard to digest today. “Rajaji said Bharati’s writing in English was superior to his Tamil works. Will you believe it?” says Ramamurthi with a twinkle in his eye. He says Bharati’s works existed in five different languages. Apart from his prolific writing in Tamil and English, he wrote three poems in Sanskrit, translated seven short stories of Rabindranath Tagore from Bengali and also translated a number of French works along with contemporary VVS Aiyar.
Bharati also translated the Quran into Tamil, straight from Arabic. Unfortunately, this manuscript was lost before it could be published, says Bharati Kavalar.
Bharati addressed public meetings in Malayalam, read books in Telugu, spoke fluently in Urdu and German. But bizarre political circumstances pushed him to learn Algerian, says Ramamurthi. “Pondicherry, at that time, was under the threat of invasion by the British. So the French government proposed to move revolutionaries like Bharati, VVS Aiyar and Aurobindo Ghosh to Algeria, which was then ruled by the French. Bharati was the only one eager to learn Algerian”, he adds.
But, Bharati himself may not have lived to receive the one praise he so wanted. He was of the opinion that his work would not have received true praise if its translations had not won the praise of French thinkers. In fact, he was so taken with France and its culture that he paid tribute to them in his own way. “Bharati composed his song Viduthalai, Viduthalai, Viduthalai. .. to the exact same meter as the French national anthem as a tribute to France”, points out Bharati Kavalar.
“I have been enamoured with this great poet since I was 14”, he says with a smile.