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Puli Thevar: The Poligar Who Started It All

Captured in 1767, he vanished from a temple, leaving only broken chains behind. Nobody agrees on what happened to him next.

A statue of Puli Thevar at his Nerkattumseval palace. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

📑 Contents

Puli Thevar (born 1 September 1715) was the Poligar of Nerkattumseval, in present-day Tenkasi district, Tamil Nadu.
He belonged to the Maravar community, and is regarded as one of the earliest Tamil chieftains to resist the British East India Company.
In 1755, he refused a large British tribute demand, and defeated the first siege of his Nerkattumseval fort.
From 1756, he stayed in near-constant rebellion against the Nawab of Arcot’s authority, which the British backed.
In 1760-61, Company commander Yusuf Khan besieged Nerkattumseval with heavy artillery, taking his three main forts by 16 May 1761.
He returned from exile and recaptured Nerkattumseval in 1764, but was defeated again in 1767 and captured. His exact fate afterward is disputed.

Yusuf Khan, the Company commander who besieged him, was previously known as Maruthanayagam before converting to Islam.
The British artillery needed for the siege was delayed until September 1760. At the time, the Company was also fighting the French, Hyder Ali, and the Marathas on other fronts.
He maintained a good relationship with the Kingdom of Travancore throughout his resistance.
His son-in-law, known as Ondiveeran, led one of his army units and caused heavy losses to Company forces in the fighting.

Puli Thevar is often described as mentor-generation to later Poligar resisters like Veerapandiya Kattabomman, active a few decades afterward. See that article for that later chapter of the same resistance tradition.
His decades-long resistance (roughly 1752 to 1767) predates the more commonly taught starting points of Indian resistance to British rule by over a century.
The unresolved ending to his story is itself instructive. Tamil Nadu’s resistance history includes many figures whose fate was never cleanly documented, not just decisively defeated or triumphant ones.