This Song Is Our Song

When a media mogul attempted to hide away the song of Tamil Nadu’s Mahakavi, it sparked a movement.

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WELL-respected theatre personality T.K. Shanmugam had been using Bharati’s songs in his theatre productions from as early as the late 1920s. Shanmugam, following the success of his play Bilhanan (1948), based on the legendary eleventh-century Kashmiri poet of the same name, decided to turn it into a film. A song from Bharati’s Kannan Pattu, ‘Thoondil puzhuvinai pol’ (Like the worm in a bait—a song on the pining of a lover), which Shanmugam had used in the play, was to be included in the cinematic version as well.

Media mogul A.V. Meiyappan, who had bought the broadcast rights of Bharati’s songs from another businessman (who in turn had acquired it from Bharati’s family), sent a legal notice to Shanmugam, threatening to sue for copyright infringement if he dared to use Bharati’s songs in his film.

The legal notice, issued well before the release of the movie on January 29, 1948—about twenty­six years after Bharati’s death—stated that all recording rights of Bharati’s songs vested solely with Meiyappan and that no song may be used without his express permission. And if any song had been included in the film, he demanded its immediate deletion. If Shanmugam failed to do so, he threatened legal action and to claim for damages to the tune of Rs 50,000—an astronomical sum back then. 

A shocked Shanmugam received the notice a few days after Gandhi’s assassination. Before pursuing the legal route, Shanmugam chose to confront the issue politically. First, he composed a pamphlet wrought with emotion. The single­sheet leaflet titled Bharatikku Viduthalai Vendum! (Needed: Liberation for Bharati!) asked pointedly and forcefully: