01The first refusal
Nerkattumseval lies in the dry country west of Sankarankovil, under the Western Ghats. Its chief, Puli Thevar, held it as one of the palaiyams of the old Nayaka order. When the Nawab of Arcot, with Company troops behind him, sent Colonel Heron and Mahfuz Khan in 1755 to collect arrears, Puli Thevar refused, and the expedition went home without his tribute. He drew the western palaiyakkarars into a league, sought help from Mysore and the Dutch, and for six years held his forts at Nerkattumseval, Vasudevanallur and Panayur. Muhammad Yusuf Khan, the Company’s commandant at Madurai, brought heavy guns in 1760, and in May 1761 Nerkattumseval fell. Puli Thevar escaped, returned after Yusuf Khan’s own fall in 1764, and fought on until 1767.
02What remains
Of the fort only mounds and fragments of the palace walls are left. The Tamil Nadu government has raised a memorial to Puli Thevar in the village, with his statue, and his birth anniversary on 1 September is kept here every year with processions from the surrounding villages. Tamil memory counts him, with Velu Nachiyar, Kattabomman and the Marudhu brothers, among the first who stood against the Company in the south, decades before 1857.
The life of this place
- 1755Puli Thevar refuses tribute to the expedition of Heron and Mahfuz Khan.
- 1760Yusuf Khan besieges the forts of Nerkattumseval and Vasudevanallur.
- May 1761Nerkattumseval falls; Puli Thevar escapes.
- 1767Puli Thevar’s last campaign; he then passes from the record.
