Company troops defeated the Travancore levies at Quilon and elsewhere; Velu Thampi took his own life at Mannadi rather than be captured.
01The Kundara proclamation
The treaty of 1805 tied Travancore to a heavy annual subsidy for Company troops, and the Resident, Colin Macaulay, pressed it hard. Velu Thampi, who had risen from Thalakulam to become Dalawa, joined hands with Paliath Achan, the chief minister of Cochin. In December 1808 their men attacked Macaulay’s house at Cochin; he escaped to a ship. In January 1809 at Kundara Velu Thampi issued his proclamation, calling on the people to resist a power that would, he warned, take their temples, customs and land.
02Mannadi
The Travancore levies attacked the Company post at Quilon and were beaten back. Fresh Company regiments marched in from the north and from Tinnevelly, and the Maharaja’s court made terms. Velu Thampi went into hiding. Hunted, he reached the Bhagavati temple at Mannadi, and there, in 1809, he died by his own hand so as not to be taken alive. The Company hung his body on a gibbet at Kannammoola. His brother was hanged. Kerala remembers him with a statue before the Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram and a memorial at Mannadi.
Velu Thampi was the first statesman of Kerala to call the people openly to arms against the Company, half a century before 1857.
