Long before air-conditioned buses ferried pilgrims across the causeway to Rameswaram, the dusty, jungle-choked tracts of the Maravar country were patrolled by a different kind of guardian. In the early 1600s, the Madurai Nayak ruler Muthukrishnappa Nayak faced a persistent problem: bandits were robbing pilgrims travelling to the sacred Ramanathaswamy temple, and his own troops, unfamiliar with the tangled scrub forests of the region, could not flush them out. His solution was elegantly local. In 1605, he appointed a Maravar chieftain named Sadaikka Thevar as Sethupathi, literally “lord of the Sethu,” tasking him with policing the pilgrim routes and keeping order across what would become the Ramnad kingdom.
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