Panchalankurichi

Panchalankurichi
village
Country	India
State	Tamil Nadu
District	Thoothukudi
Languages
• Official	Tamil
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Lok Sabha constituency	Thoothukudi

Panchalankurichi is a small but historic village, 3 km from Ottapidaram and 18 km from Thoothukudi in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu, India. Panchalankurichi was once a Palayam and is best known as the birthplace of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, an 18th-century Palayakarrar ('Polygar'), who opposed the British colonial rule in India and their Tax collecting methods.

Panchalamkurichi (often spelled Panjalamkurichi), in the Kovilpatti taluk of Tuticorin, is traditionally recognized as one of the 72 palayams of Madura. The name is a reference to the stand taken against the Nayaks of Madura by the Pancha (or Panchala, meaning the doab) Pandyas, local chieftains tributary to the Pandyas, at a nearby kurichi or valley in the central area of Tirunelveli.

According to tradition, Ketti [“Clever”] Pommu, who founded the Katabomman line of chiefs at Panchalamkurichi, served under the Pandyas and gained from them the possession of that territory.” “Each of the later Polygar was … called Kattaboma Nayaka, this name being the family title.” Under Polygar Jagavira Pandiya Kattabomman (ob. 1791), the father of the celebrated Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Panchalamkurichi was the leader of the Eastern Bloc of Nayak polegars.

Continuing maladministration by Amir ul-Umara, Muhammad Ali’s son and commander in the southern Carnatic led many polegars to stop paying tribute once again (1775). The Nayak polygar of Panchalamkurichi and the Marava polegar of Sivagiri led the opposition to the Nawab, and the stalemate continued until the outbreak of the Second Mysore War in 1780. Hyder Ali invaded the Carnatic, took Madura and restored the kingdom of Madura under a Nayak prince. Polegar Kattabomman proclaimed his allegiance to the new Madurai king and supported Polygar Varaguna of Sivagiri. On the capture of Panjalam Kurichi in 1783, the original of a treaty between the Dutch Government of Colombo and Kattabomman Nayaka was found in his fort and also various other military stores which were clearly beyond the capacity of any Indian power to collect.” Sivagiri and Panchalamkurichi submitted to the British, paid tribute, and posted bonds for the restoration of their forts (1783). The 1792 treaty between the Nawab and the Company empowered the Company to collect tribute (peshkash) from the polegars and thus to exercise power over them in the name of the Nawab. The tribute it required the polegars to pay bore little relationship to their actual resources and soon the treaty proved to be unenforceable. In 1795, the governor of Madras submitted a proposal to the Nawab, asking that the Company be authorized to reorganize the palayam system.

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