Hidden in the rugged plateaus of what is now northern Tamil Nadu, a region called Baramahal holds a name that is both poetic and powerful. The word comes from Persian: ‘bara’ means twelve, and ‘mahal’ means palace or administrative division. Together, they refer to the twelve hill forts and the lands surrounding them—a network that once dominated this landscape for centuries.
When we speak of Tamil Nadu’s architectural marvels, our minds often wander to the grand temples of Thanjavur or Madurai. But nestled in the Villupuram district lies a monument that whispers tales of a different kind of grandeur—Gingee Fort. Known as the ‘Troy of the East’, this sprawling complex atop three hillocks—Rajagiri, Krishnagiri and Chandragiri—stands as a silent sentinel to centuries of history. While many know of its massive granite walls and the famed Kalyana Mahal, the fort holds secrets that few have heard.
On October 16, 1799, British East India Company officers led Veerapandiya Kattabomman Nayak, the thirty-nine-year-old Polygar chieftain of Panchalankurichi, to a public gallows at Kayathar in present-day Thoothukudi district. All the Polygars of the region had been summoned to watch. The message was deliberate: defiance would end here.
It did not.
Within eighteen months, a coordinated uprising broke out across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and the fringes of Mysore. The Second Polygar War, which lasted from 1800 to 1805, became the most serious military challenge to British authority in South India before the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. It was fought not in open fields but in jungle passes, hill forts, and river crossings. Its leaders came from different regions, spoke different languages, and belonged to different communities — yet for a brief period, they fought as one.
When we speak of early Indian resistance to British rule, the names that come to mind are usually from the nineteenth century. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Kittur Chennamma. Pazhassi Raja. But long before any of them, in the parched, palm-fringed landscape of southern Tamil Nadu, a different kind of war was being fought. It began in 1752, more than a century before the mutiny, and it lasted fifteen years. It was a war of guerrilla ambushes, jungle hideouts, shifting alliances, and brutal reprisals. It was the First Polygar War.
The protagonist of this forgotten war was Puli Thevar, the Polygar or Palaiyakkarar of Nerkattumseval, a small fort town in what was then the Tirunelveli region, now part of Tenkasi district in Tamil Nadu. The word “Puli” means tiger in Tamil, and the man lived up to his name. For fifteen years, from 1752 to 1767, Puli Thevar led a coalition of Polygars and Marava chieftains against the combined forces of the British East India Company and their ally, the Nawab of Arcot.
On three granite hillocks in present-day Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu stands a fort that has seen empires rise and fall. The Gingee Fort, known to historians as the “Troy of the East,” was described by the Maratha king Shivaji as the most impregnable fortress in India. Its massive ramparts, sixty feet wide in places, and its eighty-foot-wide moat have withstood sieges from the Vijayanagara Empire, the Marathas, the Mughals, the French, and the British.
Hidden in the rugged plateaus of what is now northern Tamil Nadu, a region called Baramahal holds a name that is both poetic and powerful....
